Financial Services Companies: It's Time To Start Talking Again

Financial services companies, everyone is talking about you. You know that. But lately, the drumbeats are getting louder for you to starting talking for yourself.

We know that you’ve had any number of preoccupations—serious and steep revenue declines cascading into budget cutbacks, lay-offs and business reorganizations. But it’s been a year since Bear Stearns and six months since Lehman Brothers, plenty of time for surveyed investors and pundits to reach a consensus: Financial services companies need to be heard from.

Consider the commentary from the last few weeks alone.

"Out of sight can mean out of business," according to Nielsen IAG, which tracked a 13%-plus decline in year-over-year ad spending on financial services and insurance from 2008 to 2007. Spending dropped 23%-plus in the fourth quarter alone.

Citing the data shown in the chart below, a March 19 report from Nielsen links reduced spending to reduced confidence in an organization.

Eight percent of Americans today have full confidence in banks and financial services companies compared to the 31% confidence level expressed as recently as 2006. That’s according to a consumer poll sponsored by Waggener Edstrom Worldwide (WE)/RT Strategies and reported on March 20. Other findings:

Click to read more ...

Email Open And Click-through Rates? Benchmark Study Sheds Light On CRM/Database Development

Many experts (including this report from Marketing Sherpa) expect email to get a workout in light of shrinking marketing budgets. But email marketing is something that requires a lot of attention to get right. It hasn’t been a strength at many investment management companies previously, and we’d caution against a kneejerk decision to just stoke up the email machinery as you’re cooling off on your direct mail and other print communicating. There’s a high probability you run the risk of burning through some of your high quality contacts.

Click to read more ...

Don't Use The Economic Downturn To Delay Building Your Digital Competency

The latest relevant data on the adoption of digital media by financial services marketers comes from our partners at SwanDog Strategic Marketing. According to survey results released today as part of a SwanDog/FRC update to the 2007 ground-breaking Beyond The Collateral research, more than 50% of investment management marketing executives expect digital media to have a significant or moderate effect on their brand in the next 24 months. That’s about 3 percentage points more than when the groundbreaking Beyond The Collateral research was conducted last year.

Click to read more ...

'Connected Consumers' Have Serious Headstart Over Financial Services Marketing

It’s about the highest compliment I can give to:

print…
a highly designed document…
in color.

But I printed every page of the 18-page Meet the Connected Consumer and I’d urge you to, too. And then together let’s figure out how we’re going to bridge the gap between what financial services marketing is working on and what consumers are doing online.

Seriously.

Click to read more ...

Is Your Site Ready For The Small Screen?

What does your Web site look like on a mobile device? If your target market includes affluent investors, you might want to look into that sooner rather than later.

Consider a datapoint cited in Friday’s issue of MediaPost’s Behavioral Insider e-newsletter, highlighting the recently released 32nd annual Mendelsohn Affluent Survey.

While less than 20% of all cell phone subscribers use their mobile devices to access the Internet, 40% of affluents (the 23 million Americans earning $100,000 or more) do–and 57% of those making $250,000 and above.

Click to read more ...