Maintaining customer’s loyalty and engagement has never been more difficult for businesses in the financial industry. With emerging free, convenient apps and alternatives to make payments the space has become very competitive for many financial services companies. To remain competitive, financial services marketers need to find a way to differentiate themselves from new competitors and provide value to their customers. Many have started to create loyalty programs to do this. Loyalty programs have expanded into many industries, with over 3.8 billion total U.S members participating in loyalty programs in 2017, they are no longer primarily for grocery and retail. Financial services loyalty programs require different thinking then a standard loyalty program, so here 3 ideas to focus on to make your financial services loyalty program successful.

Loyalty programs and customer incentives have been around for hundreds of years. It started by rewarding customers with copper tokens that could be redeemed on future purchases. Then it moved to the less costly programs like Green Stamps.

The work we do at J&C is entirely driven by business outcomes. The way we approach crafting an effective marketing strategy is founded on the concept of picturing the end goal first, and then building the pathway that will get us there. We are always proud of the work we deliver, but since being included on Clutch, we’ve gotten a valuable opportunity to see how our agency ranks compared to others in our field. In fact, we are excited to announce that Clutch recently included J&C in their research segments for the best digital agencies and email marketing companies in Chicago in 2018!

In a noisy and busy digital world, engaging with customers, providing them with a positive experience and building upon the relationship has become more challenging for marketers, these are top priority for many. Consumer behavior has changed and customers now have a preference toward companies that understand them individually and can relate to them directly with relevant messages and offers. Years ago this would have been nearly an impossible ask for marketers, yet with the advancements in marketing technology, the time required to do this has diminished greatly today. With many of these technologies being relatively new, many marketers still see this as a big ask because they are unfamiliar with the use cases and ways technology can help to build the relationships. Since building relationships and engaging with customers is a top priority for marketers, we have outlined three different ways marketing technology can help improve customer relationships.

The article below originally appeared in the October 2018 edition of the J&C Newsletter. If you are not already receiving the newsletter, sign up here. 

Email marketing automation has become a competitive necessity for many organizations. While still not in use among all categories, marketers that have adapted email marketing automation report great success. In this newsletter, I will explain email marketing automation, describe its benefits and explore some ways that email marketing automation can be used to improve marketing response and conversion in different kinds of organizations.

In 2017 an average of 269 billion emails were sent per day, meaning the competition for attention in inboxes for email marketers is very high. Email marketing continues to generate high ROI for marketing departments that build a well-thought-out strategy that delivers personalized messages at the right time to the recipients. Below are 3 types of emails needed in a marketing strategy today: welcome emails, trigger emails and re-engagement emails, and all play critical roles in the customer journey.  

With the increasing number of messages people are receiving today, from online to offline, the importance of delivering a message that resonates with the user has never been more important. Creating a personalized message that creates a connection is critical, and with the increasing amount of data available to marketers, personalization options have only expanded. Personalization needs to be incorporated into all marketing, shopping and service experiences. In many of his presentations on personalization, Ron Jacobs has referenced the 4 R’s of personalization from Accenture, and discussed how they are key ingredients in connecting with prospects and customers. The 4R’s are Recognize, Recommend, Remember and Relevance, and all play important roles in curating experiences to each individual in a seamless manner across channels.