8 Financial Services Best Practices to Drive Client Engagement

Today the journey doesn’t end with the “yes” – that’s only the beginning.   Getting clients is hard work – but it’s only part of the battle. Keeping them is obviously critical to success. But if you don’t engage them intelligently and appropriately at each critical step, they’ll inevitably fall straight out of your organization and into your competitor’s waiting lap.

Below are 8 best practices to drive client engagement.

1. Optimize your preference center.  Organizations must be able to segment contacts based on asset ownership, purchase information, current level of engagement as well as preference for receiving information, updates, and notifications.  Give the power and preference for engagement back to your audience.  Provide the ability to select when they receive communications, the frequency, the type of content, and device preferences.
2. Better deliver on Know Your Customer policies.  This campaign should educate and familiarize clients, encourage client retention, and aid in advisor productivity by automating KYC reminders. Also incorporate monthly portfolio communications and quarterly satisfaction surveys to gauge client satisfaction.
3. Automate welcome campaigns to your new clients.The objective of a welcome campaign is to drive engagement through nurturing and onboarding.  The campaign should leverage educational content and other marketing initiatives.  Incorporate satisfaction surveys into your campaign to better understand the effectiveness of your communications.  The campaign journey and content delivery should be determined by the engagement of each contact.  Wolters Kluwer saw a 42% increase in revenue thanks to their welcome initiatives.
4. Address the client relationship stage.Communications should address the stage of each client relationship.  For example, the first year of an advisor’s relationship with a client is a bit of a honeymoon period.  Retention rates drop dramatically in year two.  The life stage of each client also needs to be accounted for.  FIS developed a scoring model to address the stage of each client and doubled their sales acceptance through this program.
5. Meet Regs and Legs requirements.  Regulations and legislation are highly restrictive.  How you engage with clients, and how data and engagement are stored, are under tight scrutiny.  Respect the regulations and make your clients feel at ease doing business with your organization.  American Express Small Business Services implemented a secure hypersite for their reward program and saw an increase in engagement and loyalty.
6. Recognize the opportunity found on social media.  Social media provides a fantastic platform for community development.  Social tactics develop advocates, communities, and potential opportunity.
7. Deliver content based on behavior.   Companies understand that the best way to engage with their audience is by providing useful content.  It’s necessary for a company to understand their brand message, and develop and share content that aligns with that message.  But even a content library brimming with innovation is useless if the content is not delivered to the right person, at the right time in their journey. Allow the Digital Body Language of the user to dictate which content they receive, and when.  Learn how Crowe Horwath gained insight into their content effectiveness and saw a 16% increase in engagement.
8. Use analytics as a barometer for existing engagement, and as a tool for uncovering new engagement opportunities.   In order to enhance revenue and profit, companies must uncover new opportunities through business acquisition and targeted promotions.  Identify trends in content effectiveness, advisor success, and geographic opportunity.  Include engagement data into your persona development.  Use this analytic output to guide your decision making. This information can also be used when deciding how to convert unknown visitors, where to invest with new advisors, and what options provide the greatest opportunity for revenue.  By implementing scoring models, GAIN Capital delivered a better customer experience and saw a 15% increase in conversions.

By implementing these engagement best practices into your existing marketing automation and customer experience strategies you can rest assured that satisfaction levels will increase.