6 tips to increase relevancy and personalization of customer communications in financial services

Personalization of the experience for financial services can apply to a broad spectrum of activities and communications, really every aspect of customer interaction. This eBook explores strategies for removing the barriers that prevent organizations from achieving desired personalization goals, in order to create a stronger connection with customers.

Summary

6 Tips to Increase Relevancy and Personalization of Customer Communications in Financial Services

The Personalization Challenge in Financial Services

Despite extensive research proving personalization’s impact on customer loyalty and purchase behavior, the financial services industry struggles with a significant execution gap. Less than 20% of organizations feel they effectively personalize communications, even though 72% of consumers only engage with personalized messaging and 80% are more likely to purchase when experiences are tailored. The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified this challenge, with digital-first banking experiences eroding customer loyalty and forcing organizations without personalized communications to compete solely on price.

Modern customers expect seamless, personalized experiences across all touchpoints, yet over 67% of financial services organizations cannot deliver consistent personalization across channels due to varying platform capabilities. Legacy technologies often lack rich personalization options, while separate teams managing different channels create organizational silos that prevent coordinated customer experiences. This disconnect between rising customer expectations and limited organizational capabilities results in missed opportunities and inconsistent messaging that undermines trust and loyalty.

The Reality of Current Personalization Efforts

The current state of personalization in financial services is underwhelming, with over 70% of organizations doing the bare minimum or offering no personalization at all. Research reveals that 13% of financial services organizations include no personalization whatsoever, while 58% limit their efforts to basic “Dear Customer Name” greetings. Only 18% implement targeted text and offers based on customer demographics, 3% use targeted graphics, and just 8% achieve true 1:1 personalization with custom text.

This data demonstrates that the vast majority of financial services organizations are missing significant opportunities to create meaningful customer connections. Many still rely on generic salutations like “Dear homeowner” or “To whom this letter is addressed,” representing the most basic level of personalization that fails to meet modern customer expectations.

Six Tips for Enhancing Personalization

• Tip 1: Ditch “Dear homeowner”, “Dear customer”, “To whom this letter is addressed”
• Tip 2: Put valuable personalized information up-front
• Tip 3: Show your customers you know them with value-added content
• Tip 4: Enable 1:1 Personalization
• Tip 5: Don’t forget to be empathetic
• Tip 6: Maintain Cross-Channel Consistency

Removing the Technical Barriers to Personalization

1. Managing your content in one location with a centralized content hub
2. Accelerate time to market by empower your business authors to manage content
3. Look for systems with APIs that enable you to leverage existing investments
4. Optimize your content using AI to improve clarity and consistency at scale
5. Empower your customer-facing teams to deliver 1:1 personalization

This is just a preview of the insights provided in this e-book. Complete the form above to download the full PDF.