The Importance of a Strong Digital Foundation
As financial services companies dive into app development and digital growth, many rush to invest in marketing initiatives before ensuring their digital transformation is robust. Without a strong digital infrastructure, however, marketing spend can be wasted, with conversions failing to go beyond the onboarding phase. A thoughtfully designed digital experience is essential for driving trust, engagement and loyalty, ultimately laying the foundation you need to grow consistently and sustainably in the current competitive landscape.
Before pouring money into marketing, financial app developers need to focus on their core digital transformation. This means establishing seamless user interfaces, optimizing backend technologies and ensuring data security. A strong digital foundation acts as the backbone that supports both the app’s functionality and its ability to gain and retain users.
Why Customer Journeys Matter in Financial Services
We aren’t talking about buying a pair of shoes. We are talking about people’s money and so the digital experience is key. Customers are unlikely to trust a financial app that feels complex or unintuitive, and a bad experience leads to low conversions and lack of trust. Who wants a bank account or a business loan from a financial institution that has a complicated mobile app?
“Customer journey mapping helps identify areas for improving and optimizing your customers’ experience with your bank. A customer journey map can help fix errors and identify opportunities to increase conversion. “ – Fintel Connect
The Connection Between Digital Maturity and Conversion Rates
Why is it crucial to have your digital transformation established first? For one, today’s users demand more. It’s not enough to have a great product; the way that product is delivered, accessed and experienced matters just as much. If your app isn’t ready to handle an influx of users or doesn’t align with their expectations, marketing dollars will fail to convert beyond the first step.
Expert Insights from Fintel Connect
To explore this topic further, we connected with Fintel Connect, a leading expert in performance marketing for financial services, to gather their insights on this issue. Here are some questions we asked them and their thoughtful responses, which shed light on how companies can build the right platform from which to dive into marketing campaigns.
What are the most critical aspects of digital transformation that businesses need to address before launching marketing campaigns?
A well-managed and designed customer journey is key for any marketing campaign. Publishers like BankRate or Forbes look at the customer onboarding process to consider working with you. If they can’t see an easy, seamless process, then they might not want to work with you because, often they work on a CPA basis, meaning they don’t get paid unless the customer completes an action such as filling out an application form, or making an initial deposit into the savings account. Therefore, for many affiliate partners, the need of both a solid onboarding process and customer engagement are key.
- Converting and retaining customers is key and to so a seamless onboarding is crucial. It doesn’t matter how much traffic your website or app receives if you can’t complete the registration or account setup easily. Every single interaction has to be streamlined to retain user interest.
- Personalization: As a bank, the goal is not only to have high conversion rates but also to retain customers. This is why personalization is a critical part of digital transformation when wanting to spend money on marketing. By offering personalized services and products for example, customers are more likely to stay. For this, however, data is key and so having the right tools in place is important. It will help you predict and deliver customized interactions. Who wants an approved and opened checking account and no deposit from the new customer? Timely and relevant personalized messages through SMS, email or app SMS notifications can not only help convert a new customer but also create trust and enhance their experience.
How do leading publishers measure the digital maturity of a business before working with them? What benchmarks should businesses be aware of?
Every publisher and partner have different requirements, and often, it depends on the product type; however, one thing they all look at is that the FI has a good customer experience. If they are going to be sending traffic to your site, a publisher or news outlet is only going to recommend a product that they deem as a good one, and so not only does, let’s say the rate matter, but the customer onboarding is key. They don’t want their traffic to drop off and see low conversion rates. And neither do you as a financial institution – why spend money if the customer experience isn’t of good quality?
Some publishers not only require FIs to pay a CPL or CPA but they also require that their conversion rate from click to lead to be a certain percentage. Some want to understand the click-to-lead and lead-to-sale rates. The requirements are often different with each partner, but this is an example of how important your conversion rate is. And to get a high conversion rate from click to lead means that not only does your product need to be competitive, but the onboarding needs to be seamless. It’s not just the account opening form but it’s customer support, it’s the positioning of the product on the landing page and so much more.
What are common pitfalls or mistakes businesses make when trying to rush into marketing without ensuring their digital infrastructure is ready?
Converting and retaining customers is an ongoing process – it’s never ending. FIs and all businesses are going to make mistakes and it will affect your marketing. It’s ok to make mistakes if you have the tools and data to figure out where the mistake is. A common pitfall is not being able to track end-to-end and not having the data to learn from your mistakes. You can’t fix and improve something if you don’t know where the problem is!
Why Digital Transformation Comes First
A business’s marketing success is only as strong as its digital infrastructure. High-quality customer experiences, intuitive onboarding and personalized interactions are essential to retain users and convert leads. At unosquare, we specialize in building these strong digital foundations, which once in place, enables you to scale confidently, knowing you’re built on solid ground and primed for growth. //Once the foundation is in place, a great way to get a return on your investmetn can be updating your UI/UX to boost your engagement and loyalty.// Partner with us to set the stage for success today and drive sustained growth tomorrow.
