Collecting data regarding the return on investment (ROI) for a marketing campaign can confirm that you’re seeing the intended results and allows you to make changes for increased effectiveness. “Of course, top management wants the ‘bottom line’ on marketing’s contribution to business goals, and ROI is a handy yardstick” (forbes.com, emphasis added). Keep reading for some tips on determining and increasing your financial institution’s marketing ROI.
In order to determine your ROI, you must have something to measure. “If you aren’t measuring what’s delivered, you have no idea what you should be doing more of” (socialmediaexaminer.com). So before you begin your next marketing campaign, clearly define your goals. Here are some ideas:
- Increase the number of visitors to your website
- Convert a percentage of visitors into accountholders
- Acquire referrals from accountholders
- Gain more accountholders from a specific demographic
Then, while your campaign is underway, track statistics related to your goals to calculate your ROI. “Consider tracking stats like website hits, page views, file downloads, forwards, new subscribers obtained, sign-up forms completed and the like. These statistics can offer you abundant insight into the effectiveness of your campaigns” (business2community.com).
image.works offers a tool specifically designed to help you gauge your marketing campaign’s ROI: the Reporting Dashboard. You can use it to determine cost per visit, cost per lead, cost per conversion and more. Check out how well this worked for Argent Credit Union, a $185 million financial institution in Chesterfield, Virginia, when they used image.works’ Onboarding program to promote growth and retention of new members. image.works created welcome postcards, email blasts and a custom online landing pages for easy product sign-up. Four months into the campaign, Argent saw $200,107 in new income after spending only $4,643 on the promotion and was able to calculate their ROI: 4,210%. (Click here to read the whole case study.)
After you’ve put a strategy in place to measure your ROI, it’s time to think about how to increase it. One sure-fire way to increase your ROI for a marketing campaign is to identify your audience. With a targeted mailing list tailored to any demographic in any geographic region, you can reach a specific audience that is most likely to be interested in your promotion. “Behavioral targeting – sending a series of customized emails triggered by specific customer behavior – is a great way to improve your ROI. This technique gives you the opportunity to connect more personally with your subscribers by sending them content that is specifically relevant to them” (business2community.com).
image.works used this strategy to draw in new loan accounts with existing members for Securityplus Federal Credit Union, a $350 million financial institution in Baltimore. image.works identified and marketed to creditworthy members who had auto loans, home loans or credit cards from other lenders. Eye-catching jumbo postcards were designed for each of the three products and invited recipients to refinance their loans with Securityplus FCU. After three months, the credit union saw significant loan growth, and the total loan balance generated was $3,222,544.
So do more with your next marketing campaign by clearly defining what you want to achieve, putting a strategy in place to measure your results and targeting the audience that’s most likely to be receptive. “The [financial services] industry can boost its marketing effectiveness by 15 to 25%, resulting in significant bottom-line savings, by putting in place tools and processes that will measure marketing ROI more accurately than marketers’ intuition” (strategy-business.com).