How to communicate with the customer’s lifecycle stage in mind for better engagement

As credit card transactions are falling and lending products are becoming even more important, banks are fighting harder than ever before to remain top of mind and relevant to their customers. In this fight to maintain relationship status and wallet share - especially as an even greater percentage of interactions are digital - personalizing each communication to gain value from the limited amount of mindshare each customer is willing to give, is critical for success. 

Previous methods of becoming more personal included journey analytics, but traditionally those efforts have been aimed at driving the flow of a customer’s interactions – but in the digital age where information is readily accessible from many different sources, controlling every experience is not possible. The customer decides how, where, and when they interact. That said, understanding where a customer is among many different experiences, products, and lifecycle stages is important to deliver compelling messages that lead customers to choose to engage with you.

Prioritize how, when, and where to initiate conversations

Customers do not want to go through pre-set stages but rather have fluid conversations. Setting up a rigid onboarding campaign where everyone receives the same messages at the same set intervals leaves customers frustrated and makes many messages irrelevant before they even arrive. Just as sending information to a property investor who has opened multiple mortgages in the past, the same messages as a first-time prospective home buyer will leave them annoyed at best – getting the product or even the stage right isn’t enough.

Journey orchestration today needs to be aware of the many different journeys an individual customer is navigating. For instance, a single customer can need to order a new credit card, change their address, accept a balance transfer offer, and be interested in refinancing their mortgage simultaneously. You don’t want to inundate that customer with messages for each of those different journeys but rather prioritize how, when, and where we should initiate conversations, versus simply making information available to the customer. 

Instead of sending communications to the customer, the change of address request can just pop up when they log in next time as they had already received a mail-forward notification. After completing the address change, a follow-up could be delivered in the web session about whether the customer needs a new credit card mailed to their new address. Delivering these experiences in the web session allows for more targeted communications about the ‘higher value opportunities’ without being overload. 

Understand how customers progress through different journeys and adapt your content to that

Journey orchestration and management remain relevant though because marketers still need to understand how people are progressing through their funnels, see if their campaigns are working, and where along the cycle they need more engagement. The exercise of linking content and experiences to different phases of a customer journey is still valuable. Customers need to be able to progress through many different journeys simultaneously though without tripping automated systems that flood their inboxes, leading them to shut down rather than deepen their relationship.

In order to have effective conversations with your customers, you first have to continuously collect all the available customer data. For instance, the property investor from our previous example might not have mortgages with you, however, if you have their credit bureau file, you still do not have an excuse to send him first-time home buying information. Collecting information and having a holistic view of your customers takes you a long way. To go further though, you still need to understand how customers progress through different journeys and present content designed for where they are without overwhelming.

Marry a customer’s journey with a holistic understanding of that customer

Becoming and staying a customer’s primary bank has become even more challenging as customers interact more and more through digital channels. The digital acceleration created by the pandemic has made the fight for primacy even more difficult as many customers are also now working primarily from home and are experiencing digital fatigue as they stare at their computer screens more than ever before. Every brand a person has ever interacted with is sending messages in hopes of gaining mindshare, but the brands breaking through are the ones whose messages are the most timely and relevant. While traditional journey analytics may not be enough to get a customer’s coveted click - marrying a customer’s journey with a holistic understanding of that customer and using both to power every interaction is likely the best way to ensure your messages get more than a mindless scroll by.