Category Archives: Marketing

SuperBanker: The making of a gamified conference experience

Compared with traditional training and marketing strategies, gamification – the application of social gaming theories and techniques in commercial contexts – can dramatically increase audience involvement and the degree to which communications actually change audience behavior. Firms across all industries are becoming increasingly aware of the power of gamification for business objectives, such as motivating and training a sales force or connecting with customers.

This week, EMI launched SuperBanker, an online mobile game, at SourceMedia’s 17th Annual Best Practices in Retail Financial Services Symposium. SuperBanker demonstrates the use of gamification for business purposes, and was designed to enhance attendees’ conference experience. Players could create their own superhero alter ego, and earned points for answering questions about the session presentations, networking with other players, or visiting the exhibitors at the conference.

Almost 200 top-level banking executives and service providers played the game, which culminated in an exciting fight for first place in the final hours of play. It wasn’t easy to make SuperBanker the success that it was – a delicate and detailed strategy lies behind the colorful graphics of the game.  Here’s a peek behind the curtain:

  • Fitting the imagery and tone to the audience – can a game be too fun? The theme for the game had to balance fun with seriousness, because conference-goers would be in a professional mindset while playing the game.  Rather than the traditional superhero tights, the game avatars were dressed in business suits; rather than playing through an animated world of villains and crises, players answered conference-related trivia challenges.
  • Walking the thin tightrope between engaging and too involved: A game that is too demanding will discourage participation; too easy, and it won’t be fun to play.  In a conference setting, there is an additional layer to setting the difficulty of a game: the goal of the game is not to engross players, but instead, to allow them to engage with the game and the conference itself simultaneously.  SuperBanker play was designed to be accomplished in between conference  activities; what’s more, it rewarded active participation in the conference with game points.
  •  Bringing the game into the physical world: Because a conference audience is physically located in the same place, it was important to bring the game into the physical setting in which the players were interacting via stickers, life-sized cutouts, and other things, in order to connect the game experience with the conference itself and generate continued participation.  Perhaps the most important example was a large leaderboard screen that displayed the top ten players’ scores – even though players could instantly access the leaderboard from their own devices, many walked back over to the screen to see it displayed there.
  • Creating a sense of progress and the attainability of winning: At the conference, one player pulled ahead early and maintained a solid lead throughout.  This could have discouraged others from signing up or continuing to play, but SuperBanker was designed to create a sense of accomplishment for everyone playing the game.  Players could win smaller prizes throughout the conference; every member of the team with the best average score was awarded a prize; and for the highly engaged group, there were also prizes for second and third up for grabs.  And indeed, attendees played the game to the bitter end – resulting in a last minute upset!

2012 Email Evolution Conference: Email Isn’t Dead; It’s Just Evolving

The conference kicked off its Thursday session with a substantive and thought-provoking keynote from Jessica Harley, VP of Customer Marketing at Gilt Groupe. While her presentation touched on many aspects of Gilt’s email marketing efforts, the most notable theme was that we — as marketers generally and email marketers specifically — can’t think about email marketing in a vacuum. In that email marketing vacuum, response rates appear to be declining and social seems to be gaining precedence. But outside that vacuum, email continues to play a vital role in driving engagement and conversions.

Expanding outside the vacuum enables email marketers to recognize that conversions and email’s impact may be felt in ways that aren’t captured by traditional measures. In Harley’s experience at Gilt, customers may look at emails on a mobile device but then convert indirectly on the same day via the web or via an App. In this scenario, the email is the trigger to go to those transactional channels. Therefore, we need to evaluate email performance not always on an immediate basis — how many viewers or clickers did the email drive in the first day or two — but with a longer term view. And if we think of emails as doing more than driving a single transactional response, we need to extend our measurement, for example, whether a series of emails over time produce a more engaged, higher value customer population.

In EMI’s presentation with State Street, I expanded on this theme: consider thinking of email in the context of all the other response channels. Since our objective as marketers is to drive engagement and transactions, it’s important to remember that email is but one means to that end. For certain customers at certain points in the decision-making process, email might not be as effective a means as direct mail or calling.

Financial institution financials reveal differences in marketing spend intensity

A review of reported marketing/advertising expenditure by leading financial institutions revealed the following trends:

  • 2011 spend levels: Five FIs (JPMorgan Chase, American Express, Citigroup, Bank of America and Capital One) each spent more than $1 billion on marketing in 2011.
  • 2010-2011 trend: Of the 12 FIs included in the review, six increased marketing spend by double-digit percentages in 2011, led by Citigroup (+43%) and Capital One(+40%). Four FIs reduced marketing spend in 2011.
  • 2007-2011 trend: Taking a longer-term view, we see that although Citigroup and Capital One had very strong growth in 2011, spending was actually down relative to 2011, indicating that these banks’ recent strong growth is more of a return to historic norms. JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and PNC all had strong growth between 2007 and 2011, but each of these FIs had made a big bank acquisition during this period.
  • Marketing as a percentage of revenues: To eliminate the effect of merger and acquisition activity, and get a gauge on marketing investment intensity, we also looked at marketing as a percentage of net revenuefor 2007 and 2011.
    • American Express has the highest level of marketing spend intensity, with its 2011 marketing expenditure representing 10% of net revenues in 2011, up 70 basis points from 2007
    • Other leading FIs for marketing investment intensity are Discover (no branch network, national credit card operation) and Capital One (regional branch network, national credit card operation)
    • Among the regional national banks, JPMorgan Chase has the highest level of marketing intensity (3.2%), ahead of Citigroup (3.0%). Chase, which has both an extensive branch network and a national credit card operation, actually increased marketing intensity by 33 bps from 2007 to 2011. Citigroup has a limited U.S. branch presence, but again has a national credit card franchise.
    • Bank of America’s market spend intensity fell from 3.5% in 2007 to 2.4% in 2011
    • Wells Fargo maintains significantly lower marketing spend levels than its national bank competitors, with a marketing spend intensity of 0.7% in 2011.  However, it was recent named as the leading U.S. bank in The Brand Finance Branding 500 rankings, indicating that topline marketing spend does not necessarily correlate to brand strength.  However, it should also be recognized that, unlike some of the other leading banks, Wells Fargo’s operations are mainly concentrated within its retail banking footprint.

 

In terms of setting optimal levels of marketing investment in 2012, financial institutions face competing forces. On the one hand, many FIs have established cost containment programs with defined targets, and this will put downward pressure on marketing spend. On the other hand, the above table shows that many FIs have reduced their marketing intensity levels in recent years. With signs of economic recovery now emerging, these FIs may need to increase their marketing investment to compete effectively in a growing market.