Data-driven marketing can be defined quite simply as the process of using data and insights to inform your marketing efforts. In a recent report, Deloitte took this definition further and described data-driven marketing as having five core stages:

Identification: An understanding of what data exists and a strategy for capturing and analyzing it effectively.

Capture: Establishing processes for capturing customer data from various sources in a way that’s compliant and responsible.

Analysis: Reviewing the captured data to better understand customer behaviors, parse out audience segments and craft actionable insights.

Activation: Using the insights to activate customers with relevant messaging and experiences across touchpoints.

Optimization: Leveraging insights to understand what’s working and what isn’t, and improving where appropriate.

Marketers that adopt this approach are thus able to build a culture of continuous iteration and optimization within their team, ultimately making them more effective and impactful in the long run.

Employing data-driven marketing is also key for improving the return on investment (ROI) for your campaigns. With the right insights, for example, you can better direct your content to the right audience segments, making them more likely to convert. At Fintel Connect, we’ve identified that customers that use data-driven strategies are able to drive five-to-eight times more ROI than businesses that don’t. A better ROI means that data-driven marketing campaigns are more impactful and revenue generating.

Data-driven marketing is also key for making teams more efficient. By injecting data into their decision processes, they can quickly determine the best approach to take in each new campaign. This can help provide direction at the conceptualization stage, and ultimately reduces the time to execute and benefit from a campaign.

Lastly, a data-driven marketing strategy can also ensure that marketing teams take a more targeted and personalized approach in their campaigns, meeting customers where they are and providing a better overall experience. Given today’s current consumer landscape where expectations are higher than ever, this is arguably one of the most important benefits.

So, now that we understand the benefits of this approach, let’s explore what you can do to make your marketing strategy more data driven. Here are five things you should consider.

1. Set Clear Goals and Metrics

Start by defining the goals for your marketing strategy. This can include increasing brand awareness, improving customer satisfaction, or even boosting organic traffic to your site. The goals should be SMART — specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound — and should be paired with strategic metrics that help you understand how your marketing campaigns are performing against those goals.

Another element that will inform your goals and metrics is your measurement capabilities. What data do you have access to? Are you set up to measure specific marketing KPIs? How so? These are all questions that will identify where you can prioritize your efforts currently, and what gaps you might have when it comes to tracking your goals.

2. Segment Your Audience

Before you start delivering data-driven and targeted campaigns, you need to know who it is you’re trying to reach. Take the time to identify your target audience and segment it into tangible personas. Some of the important factors to consider as you build these personas are demographics (age, gender, education level, income), behaviors (how they engage with financial brands, their comfort level with social media) and motivations (what encourages them to choose a new financial product).

3. Give Customers What They’re Looking For

As indicated above, personalization is a big motivator for customers. It shows them that your brand is paying attention and that you’re taking the time to create custom experiences for them. Beyond building trust, personalization also streamlines customer interactions with a brand, as they only engage with content that aligns with their interests and needs. Katie Resch, VP Client Partner at Hero Digital says, “A common trend we see across the financial vertical is financial institutions tend to be very siloed in their marketing approach with separate teams focusing individually on deposits, loans, etc. Working with CMOs to gather data across those silos into a full life-cycle view has enabled us to make smarter decisions about cross-sell and what might be the next best product to market to each individual client.” Incorporating personalization as a core element within your marketing strategy will ensure that you’re being as effective as possible with the data you have available.

4. Optimize Wherever Possible

Implementing a data-driven approach will help you optimize the content and evergreen campaigns you already have. Use what you learn from your data to test and refine web copy and on-page calls to action. Refine your blog content with SEO research to ensure that all top-of-funnel content is drawing in organic traffic. Your customer data can help here as it might indicate what customers typically search for and how they typically arrive on your site in the first place.

5. Leverage the Right Tools

How successful your data-driven marketing strategy is will rely largely on the tools you adopt. As of 2022, there are almost 10,000 marketing technology solutions available on the market. Many of these tools are designed to streamline marketing initiatives, leveraging data and automation to do so.

To help financial brands set themselves up for success with a data-driven approach, Fintel Connect has designed a suite of solutions. This includes Fintel Performance, a specialized network of affiliates and influencers designed exclusively for the financial sector. The platform includes advanced affiliate management capabilities, helping to extend the reach of a financial brand.

In addition, Fintel Results helps financial brands measure marketing results with end-to-end customer journey tracking and analytics. Plugging into any customer journey, the solution is able to capture real-time data and directly integrates with third-party account opening or loan originating systems to accurately track conversions.

To date, we’ve partnered with over 80 North American financial brands of all sizes, including the likes of Ramp, First Citizens Bank, RBC, and CIBC. In some cases, our data-driven solutions have helped these brands drive up to 45% of their overall digital acquisition, showing that there’s significant value in an approach that centers customer data.

While the steps above will set you on the right path towards creating a data-driven marketing strategy, there are some additional success factors that are important to keep in mind. For instance, your data isn’t going to be as effective if it’s not clean or set up properly. Make sure you’re taking the time to set up your tools properly, integrating them appropriately, and establishing a process to keep your data as clean and uncluttered as possible. A marketing data analyst could be helpful here.

It’s important to remember that a data-driven approach shouldn’t remove creativity from your marketing efforts. In fact, it should promote more creativity. Set your team up to come up with new concepts that could appeal to your designated personas, and use data and analytics to test and experiment what works and what doesn’t.

Another key consideration in your data-driven approach will be compliance. Today, there are many rules, regulations and standards around data collection and use. Falling into non-compliance can have a negative financial and reputational impact on your, and it’s just not worth it.

The biggest value of employing a data-driven approach to marketing is that it empowers your team to be more proactive in the way they do things. If you’re constantly reviewing trends and behaviors within your customer audience, you’ll be better able to craft marketing campaigns that meet them where they are, build trust and encourage conversions. This agility is key not just for eliciting positive customer behaviors, but also for improving your business’s ability to respond to market shifts and global incidents.

Ready to empower your financial brand’s marketing team with the right data and insights? Speak to one of our specialists today.