What Works? An Analysis of Campaign Results and Best Practices – Part 3 Featuring Marquis’ CMO, Dr. Tony Rizzo
Video Transcription
What Works? An Analysis of Campaign Results and Best Practices.
Part 3: Campaign Analysis
Dr. Tony Rizzo, CMO, Marquis
One of the questions I get asked frequently is, “What works?” So, taking that question to heart, we executed a very extensive analysis of campaign performance throughout campaigns that we managed and produced over 2019. Now, on to some granular detail in terms of campaign analysis.
The first thing we’re going to talk about is Invitation to Apply. An Invitation to Apply is a quasi-data element. But it’s like a credit score, basically averages 10 households, say with a 780 score. We don’t use it to make pre-qualified offers. We use it as a filtering tool in comparison, or in contrast to the credit score, and I’ll talk to credit scores in just a second. You can see the results of these campaigns. I am going to draw your attention to the direct mail and email category, where you see that substantially higher balances were generated with the combination of the two channels.
Why do we care? Well, here’s something interesting, and I’ll bet this would hold true for your institution. We do a significant amount of analysis of loan potential and loan portfolios. And here’s what we found on average. That for every one loan you own, there are 46 loans elsewhere within your customer base. For every dollar you own, there are $66 in the membership base that you don’t own, that are financed somewhere else. That does include the mortgage.
But you can see, just by this slide alone, you could 2X your loan portfolio by focusing on your existing members, your existing customers. Super important. A lot of times we go looking for the acquisition, and that’s important. But we don’t go and do outreach to our existing customers. And I meant with a lot of method to it. We’re doing ourselves a disservice because there’s a lot of potential that we’re leaving on the table.
You can see a sample Invitation to Apply. Professional tip: first of all, best month to do these campaigns is in June, worst month is February. If you’re going to do this, keep your offer, and this is kind of global, simple and easy to understand. Not a lot going on in the letter. Not a lot going on in the email. On the postcard, keep it simple.
Next campaign we’re going to talk about is something called the Value Statement. The Value Statement is a content heavy execution. Remember, content was one of the sources we talked about in terms of data and variable production. The Value Statement speaks to what the individual consumer has with you compared to local competition. The idea is to show for a credit union, for example, the value of being a credit union member versus a customer. So, it’s a very heavy analytical project. And you can see again, our DM plus EM category, you’re still generating more balances, right? Your response rates on this are higher than a singular channel.
Here’s a sample of what this particular campaign looks like. It basically shows every account that the consumer would have, and what the annual savings are or earnings would be based on a competitive dive. It’s a statement of value. Why it is important to remain a customer or remain a member here.
Onboarding: if you don’t do Onboarding, this is the only thing you should do next year. Get your Onboarding campaign going, super important. Now, on average, when somebody becomes a new customer, they receive 10 exposures. Could be five emails and five letters, but an average of 10 exposures are coming through. We classify Onboarding campaigns three different ways: standard Onboarding to retail households, to commercial customers or indirect customers – people that got an auto loan on Saturday through the dealer, now we’re going to onboard them. So, we classify those things three different ways.
Why is Onboarding important? From a number standpoint, the average annual churn rate for financial institutions is 11%. Of those, 20% of your customers will leave you that joined within the first year, they don’t even stay 13 months. Of those, half leave in the first 90 days. Now, there’s a lot of mitigating circumstances that go into that. But don’t let one of the circumstances be you didn’t communicate with the new member. Because if you do that, you can control that. Other things you can’t control. This you can control. If you’re not doing Onboarding, you’re leaving money on the table.
Now, our typical Onboarding campaigns are very advanced. They are a spider web of communication that run through various products, various relationships, and various channels. That approach has proven to be very good, very profitable, very high performance. You can see some of the numbers. If you look, the direct mail and email is out-pulling in terms of the average balance generated. Some by a lot. Some by a little. There is something to this multiple channel approach. Our highest performing onboarding campaigns have 16 versions. Don’t know why it’s 16, but our highest performing segment has 16 versions.
The only pro tip I can provide with Onboarding is doing it. If you’re not doing it, you must do it. For Business Onboarding, biggest pro tip I can provide, if I’m speaking to a business account, is to be informational, to use a little bit longer form of a letter, not so offer intensive. If I’m doing something from an indirect perspective, I would add on additional products. That could be for an auto loan, mechanical breakdown, it could be GAP or it could be like the retention segment we talked about earlier. I could just add on an offer that says if you have another auto loan in your household, refinance it here.
I would do that for the Onboarding. What I wouldn’t do … I wouldn’t sell checking accounts. I wouldn’t sell deposits. You can. It just isn’t going to work. But sell me more on an indirect basis, something that’s closer to me, that I understand.
All right, Product. Next one for the campaign analysis is Cross Sell. That is using our predictive model set where you bought a credit card. Now we think you want a mortgage. So, we’re using that. When I do a Cross Sell campaign with two channels, it is driving higher balances. Again, something to this multiple channel approach.
The chart here represents the likelihood someone will leave you in the first 12 months if you don’t onboard, if you don’t cross sell appropriately. I am 50% likely to leave with only one product versus 5% if I have four more. Now, that’s kind of common sensical, right. But now you have some numbers to back up that claim when you’re in the meeting, and they’re talking about the importance of repetition in marketing. The importance of continuing to outreach. Keeping that like a machine and always running, there is a definite financial impact, a benefit of doing that.
We execute cross sell campaigns in lot of different ways. You’re looking at one that has several different suggestions. This particular client wanted to focus on term and balance versus another that wanted to keep it simple, branded and direct with very little copy in there. Either one has proven to be pretty successful. I can certainly say more in a letter than I can on a postcard. So, if I’m going to product cross sell with a postcard, keep it very simple and very branded.
Pre-Approvals. For Pre-Approvals, we use our FICO data. I’m using credit scores to make some type of a pre-qualified offer. This is my only example where multiple channels didn’t have higher balances, by the way. I don’t know why, just reporting the numbers to you. You decide.
If I’m doing a sample, or if I’m doing Pre-Approval, the best month is April. The worst month is October. The best product are credit cards. The worst product are mortgages. Here’s the thing with credit data: less than 60% of your customer base, your membership base, has opted into having their credit score looked at from a marketing perspective. So, what that basically says is you’re leaving opportunity on the table if you’re only doing pre-approvals. The other thing I’m not as juiced about with this credit data is it a risk. It is a liability. All you have to do is Google credit score lawsuits, misuse of credit score, to see that data is risky to use. It’s not to say I wouldn’t use it, but eyes wide open when we’re getting into credit data. All credit data is purchased for a very specific and narrow purpose and cannot be reused. So, if you are doing a portfolio review, and you’re pulling those scores and using them for another purpose, that’s a huge NO. So be very careful when you use this data.
Let’s take a look at Reboarding. Reboarding is when I have a group of people that have detached. They might be a single service household, and I need to get them reengaged. You can see here that although not demonstratively higher on multiple channels, when I use two channels, direct mail and email, I do get a higher average bounce generated. If I’m doing a Reboarding campaign, you isolate for single service. I would also isolate for tenure and those geographically close to you. We don’t reboard everyone. Again, we use predisposition of response to narrow our funnel. The biggest thing with Reboarding is it has to be something that’s frequent. Just like we saw earlier in the campaign versus matrix, the comparison of those two, this is a great example of that. I have to do something frequently in order to rebuild trust, to rebuild familiarity and to open that filter to make a good offer.
