Category Archives: Payments

Banks focusing attention on the mass affluent market

Recent news and presentations from leading banks show a widespread desire to grow the mass affluent segments. Some examples:

  • At its recent Investor Day, Bank of America highlighted mass affluent as a key customer segment as it aims to achieve its objective of leveraging the franchise–driving closer relationships between different business units in order to grow share of customer wallet.  Earlier this year, the bank launched Merrill Edge, a new integrated banking and investment platform, for mass affluent clients.
  • Citi reorganized its U.S. credit card and retail banking units, with each unit creating segments dedicated to affluent customers.  It also recently launched a range of premium cards (ThankYou Preferred, ThankYou Premium and ThankYou Prestige) for affluent cardholders.
  • At a recent Citigroup Financial Services Conference, SunTrust highlighted mass affluent as a targeted growth area.
  • This month, Capital One introduced the “Match My Miles Challenge” promotion to attract new customers to its high-end Venture Card.
  • Chase radically simplified its credit card product portfolio, with cards now dedicated to specific customer segments, including the Freedom card, which is targeted at the mass affluent segment.

To reach and serve this segment, banks first need to conduct comprehensive research into the characteristics, financial needs and behaviors of mass affluents, as well as into the competitive environment.  Insights from this research feed into: new products and services; advertising and branch merchandising; pricing decisions; level of online and offline service provision; as well as training and ongoing support for branch and call center personnel.  It is also imperative that the bank’s organizational structure, processes and systems to support, rather than inhibit, targeting efforts.

Let’s rename social media

Social media is misnamed. Media are channels advertisers use to communicate one-way messages to target audiences. The real power of social networks is in the creation of the virtual community and the sharing and messaging it enables. Brands that use social networks simply as a media outlet are missing the point, and will alienate prospects and customers rather than engaging them.

Email Re-Engagement Strategy #4: Looking for Answers and the Last Chance

Recent EMI blog posts discussed the growing importance of email engagement and the roles of preferences and pursuing new tactical and multi-channel approaches in re-engaging customers. But even after you deploy all of these tools, some customers will inevitably remain unengaged. Typical engagement best practice advice will tell you that this is the time to pull out the ultimate arrow in the re-engagement quiver: the Last Chance email. But this is a scary step, especially if you are a company that nurtures a relatively small email list. A Last Chance is, after all, the end of the road—a non-response shuts down all email communication.

For this reason, if the number of remaining non-responders is great enough to justify the investment, we recommend conducting primary research among the unengaged to learn:

  • Are they chronic non-responders? That is, do they sign up with other companies as well and then not view or click on emails?
  • If not, what are the content, messaging, and media elements that drive their response to other companies’ emails?
  • What is their actual, current level of interest in your product and their position in the buying process? 

If this research indicates that there is little hope that changes to the re-engagement program would deliver a strong return, then the Last Chance is an appropriate next (and final) step. If you do implement this tool, think of the Last Chance as a series of emails rather than a single one. Over the course of two or three emails, introduce the recipients to the idea that you will be ending their email communications and then incrementally increase the pressure on them to respond. With the final email in the series, you close the book on the non-responders and treat them like unsubscribers, secure in the knowledge that you have done everything you could to re-engage them.