A long held belief has been that what the large scale national and super-regional financial institutions had in terms of assets and resources in marketing, while the community institutions were able to compete based on granular customer insights gleaned from day-to-day interactions. This was accurate, for the most part. However, the widespread adoption of mobile technology had fundamentally changed when and how consumers may be engaged by their financial institutions, providing larger banks with the ability to leverage a more intimate approach. The heads of marketing in community financial institutions will need to access the capabilities and tools to compete. To do so will test the diplomatic skills of the heads of marketing at community financial institutions.
As marketing leaders, CMOs need to pull these key stakeholders together from across the company. This includes all customer-facing and operational departments. These stakeholders must be able to see and feel the power of data analytics. With it, they can make decisions that increase revenue, manage costs, increase profitability, improve processes and enhance services.
Mercator Advisory Group agrees with the author’s favorable assessment of the holistic approach to marketing analytics at resource stretched smaller FIs. In many cases, the Service Providers and Processors catering to these smaller banks are actively creating anonymized profiles to provide a deeper and more varied data pools to augment the community FIs customer set. We believe by taking advantage of this access marketing analytics will yield the well-timed and relevant offers the Community FIs clients. Simply put, by operating as a member of a larger community, the community bank helps to ensure its own competitiveness.
Overview by Joseph Walent, Associate Director, Customer Interactions Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
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