I had the pleasure of attending an Adobe Café in NYC earlier last week. The Cafés are a series of workshops Adobe is hosting for its partners. This one in particular was specifically geared towards business development in the financial services industry.
Christopher Young, director of industry strategy and marketing for financial services at Adobe, presented some great statistics on the retail banking industry. In a recent industry poll, one question pertained to digital marketing strategy plans. This is an industry traditionally built on one-to-one relationships, and one that still relies on offline interactions to drive sales. Study results showed the biggest concern was how to keep those relational benefits alive in a digital space.
As a whole, the survey showed companies plan to increase their digital spend by 22%. Where do they plan to invest, exactly?
- 42% will increase spend on content marketing
- 42% will invest more in analytics
- 41% will invest in personalization
- 39% will increase spend in social media
The industry standard is to see an increase of 16% in digital sales per year driven by the increases in these digital spaces. As a result of the increased digital spend, they will also decrease spend in the following areas to achieve their digital goals.
Decrease spend in:
- Display 11%
- Paid search 8%
- Webinars/virtual events 7%
- Social media 6%
- Video ads 5%
The retail banking industry is also keenly aware that acquiring new customers (or new accounts for existing customers) is happening in the mobile space. Mobile will play an ever expanding role in acquisition.
Mobile plans:
- 87% indicate mobile will be an equal or higher source of new accounts origination in next three years
- 19% say mobile will be primary source of new accounts origination
- 59% will extend analytics to their mobile app
In the ever disruptive world of the digital space, retail banking is at a crossroads, but are navigating their way to drive sales through digital channels. If they can continue to leverage first-party data with their customer’s digital behavior thus improving real time personalization, they will begin growing sales and acquiring new customers and accounts like they did back when business was conducted one on one.
Lynn Brading
Director of Alliances
Adobe | Rackspace | Google
