InMarketing This Week: This time it's personal

Innovate > Interact > Influence

Written for CEOs, marketers and other leaders in the financial sector, InMarketing This Week is a showcase for news likely to impact them - delivered with insight on why it matters and ideas on what to do about it.

It’s published from London every Sunday evening at six to give you a head start on the week. Read it here, or subscribe to have it delivered straight to your inbox.

Read on to learn why:

① For more personalisation, 71% of clients are willing to share personal data.

② Delivering a delightful experience via digital channels depends on personalisation.

③ Consent and collaboration are the key to leveraging personal data effectively.

④ When it comes to ESG, most brands aren't being nearly ambitious enough.

⑤ Fintechs now have a buffer between the sandbox and the big bad world.

⑥ Marketers who still rely on tracking people need to have a rethink.

⑦ You should surround yourself with the best people you can. And reward them well.

What’s new?

Wealth Adviser reported this week on an EY survey that concludes that wealth management clients are prepared to pay more for personalised service.

In short:

• “53 per cent of wealth management clients are willing to pay more for personalised service, according to the 2021 EY Global Wealth Research Report.”
• ① “71 per cent, in exchange for greater personalisation, are willing to share personal data with their primary wealth manager, a higher proportion than those willing to share with doctors, retailers, technology firms and media platforms.”
• “‘With basic investment products and services becoming available at very low costs, experiential factors will become the key drivers of pricing in wealth management. Leading firms will provide curated interaction points, allowing clients to enter the advisor-digital spectrum at their choosing and customise communications according to their evolving needs,’ said Mike Lee, EY Global Wealth & Asset Management Leader.”

Why does it matter?

This survey (together with Apple’s move to protect its customers from apps that want to follow them around the internet which you can read about below) got me thinking about personalisation.

② Covid has accelerated one of the most important trends in marketing: the ability to provide delightful experiences via digital channels. How do we replicate the sensation of meeting a relationship manager face-to-face on our website? There’s no doubt that a big part of doing so depends on personalisation, on our ability to demonstrate - even online, even on an automated channel - that we know our clients, that we remember their circumstances and what they care about. By providing an experience that feels bespoke to each client, we build rapport and earn trust.

The EY survey results matter because they remind us - at a time when data privacy is rightly at the top of many agendas - that personalisation will only become more important and marketers need to figure out how to provide it without compromising privacy or appearing creepy.

What’s next?

Take action

Remember mail merge? We’re way beyond that. Nowadays the technology exists to do all sorts of things to make our digital experiences feel more personal, such as:

• Your website can recognise returning visitors based on their IP address and serve up the most relevant content (whether it be thought-leadership or product information) based on the type of client they are (for instance, retail clients will have different needs to sophisticated institutional investors) or what they’re interested in (the young female tech entrepreneur keen on private equity will likely want to read very different content than the veteran male CEO of a charity, for example.)
• Your outbound email marketing can hit your clients inboxes at exactly the time they are most likely to open and read it - and you can ensure it contains only information they’ve shown an interest in during previous campaigns.
• Your digital advertising can be very precisely targeted based not just on demographic data but also the hobbies and past-behaviours of the recipients. 

③ As is often the case though, this clever tech depends on accurate data. The most sophisticated personalisation engine in the world will churn out generic tosh without the right information. That’s where two key considerations come in:

• Consent: As Facebook et al are finding out (see What else? below), the days of harvesting people’s data and following them around the web without their knowledge are coming to an end at last. But, as the EY survey shows, that doesn’t mean clients aren’t happy to share the data as long as it’s a transparent process and they’re getting something for it. So, be sure your’e offering value in return.
• Collaboration: All client-facing staff - business development, relationship managers - need to be part of the process. Digital personalisation efforts often fail because the information in the CRM just isn’t detailed or accurate enough. Marketing needs to demonstrate the benefits of maintaining this data - and one of them is that it empowers those client-facing staff to have more productive conversations with their clients. 

Get help

I’m currently looking for a full-time, in-house role but in the post-Covid age of depleted marketing budgets and remote teams with skills gaps, many organisations need marketing and communications support that’s agile, flexible, and risk free. That’s why I founded WhatsNext Partners.

Whether it be as a permanent member of your team or with 'on demand' support, let me know if you need my help.

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What else?

Three other articles that are worthy of your time.

FINANCE

HSBC to introduce recycled plastic payment cards globally

④ The ESG bandwagon continues to gain momentum but most brands aren't being ambitious enough. Why not eliminate cards entirely? We all carry smartphones with biometric security in our pockets, after all.

• “HSBC is attempting to burnish its green credentials with a new programme to eliminate single-use PVC plastic payment cards in favour of recycled PVC plastic (rPVC) across all its global locations by the end of 2026.”
• “The initiativee - which includes HSBC’s debit, credit and commercial cards - is part of the bank’s strategy to reduce its carbon emissions and achieve net zero in its operations and supply chain by 2030 or sooner.”
• “HSBC currently issues 23 million card per annum. The bank reckons the move to rPVC will reduce CO2 emissions by 161 tonnes a year. Each card will also reduce plastic waste - 73 tonnes per year, equivalent to the weight of over 40 cars.”

TECHNOLOGY

FCA planning regulatory ‘nursery’ for fintechs

⑤ Fintechs now have a buffer between the sandbox and the big bad world.

• “The FCA will unveil a regulatory ‘nursery’ for fintechs this Autumn, after taking on the Kalifa Review’s recommendation for a ‘scalebox’.”
• “The argument for this is that newly-authorised firms still require higher levels of support from regulators and often enhanced oversight as part of this.”
• “‘Currently, firms gain regulatory status and are treated in the same way as a firm with a long track record. The regulatory nursery will keep us in close contact with firms immediately post-authorisation so we can provide support and, where we need to, intervene earlier to steer firms in the right direction,’ FCA chief executive Nikhil Rathi said.”

MEDIA & MARKETING

This is when Facebook’s nightmare officially begins

⑥ Marketers who still rely on tracking people across apps using Facebook and its ilk need to go back to the drawing board.

• “Apple’s iOS 14.5, which stands to potentially dramatically reshape the business of companies like Facebook - that is to say, companies that are heavily reliant on tracking users, a practice this new software upgrade should sharply curtail - will be released next week.”
• “All app developers must start following Apple’s App Tracking Transparency framework which requires developers to get explicit permission from users if those developers want to track those users and their activity across apps.”
• “Facebook has pushed back hard on this and launched a splashy marketing campaign to try in vain to rally users to its side in light of these coming changes.”

Quotable

⑦ António Horta-Osório, incoming Credit Suisse chief - who had lunch with the FT this week - on Santander’s revered chair Emilio Botín:

“By far the best executive chair I have ever met. What made him great was his capacity to allow great people around him, something many bosses are afraid of. And he always paid his people better than himself.”

One more thing…

The BBC’s Media Show is always a great listen for anyone who wants to better understand how the press works.  This week’s show is particularly relevant as Amol Rajan interviews Roula Khalaf, the editor of The Financial Times. In addition to the paper’s recent scoop on David Cameron's involvement with Greensill, they cover the print vs digital conundrum, the ongoing debate on whether paywalls encourage fake news to flourish, and how to defend capitalism and globalisation to a sceptical, post-Covid audience.

About

Written for CEOs, marketers and other leaders in the financial sector, InMarketing This Week is a showcase for news likely to impact them - delivered with insight on why it matters and ideas on what to do about it. It’s published every Sunday evening to give you a head start on the week. Read it here, or have it delivered straight to your inbox at six, before it's available anywhere else.

InMarketing is a broader celebration of marketing that innovates, interacts and influences. It's available on Twitter, on LinkedIn, and as a Flipboard magazine.