Maximizing digital marketing ROI: A deep dive into acquisition, retention and attribution strategies

In today’s fiercely competitive environment, marketers are feeling the pressure to drive engagement, strengthen loyalty and achieve deposit growth.  

Robert Ropars from Vericast joins us on this episode of BAI Banking Strategies podcast to share his perspective on customer acquisition, retention and attribution strategies in the digital marketing space.  

A few takeaways from the conversation: 

• On their own, many digital marketing channels and solutions work well to drive brand awareness engagement, and the tactics are evolving. Digital out-of-home in particular changes the targeting tactics from a one-to-one focus to a more one-to-many scenario. Further, combining direct mail along with digital to create an omnichannel approach can provide consistent, efficient and cost-effective results that help to drive deposits with a higher response rate typically than either channel alone.
• However, budgets can be tight, so finding ways to maximize dollars is a key consideration for most marketing departments. That requires strategic decisions based on current tactical approaches.
• There are a multitude of ways to measure campaign ROI including the more traditional tactics such as integrating QR codes into ads, utilizing vanity URLs and trackable phone numbers, as well as foot traffic studies. As technology improves and, taking privacy into consideration, there’s going to be an evolution and growth in campaign measurement.

Interview transcript 

In today’s fiercely competitive environment, marketers are feeling the pressure to drive engagement, strengthen loyalty, and achieve deposit growth. Robert Ropars from Vericast joins us on this episode of the BAI Banking Strategies Podcast to share his perspective on customer acquisition, retention, and attribution strategies in the digital marketing space. 

Actual insights can help power smart business decisions. The BAI Banking Strategies Podcast focuses on important issues facing financial services leaders, as well as the emerging trends that are rapidly reshaping the financial industry. I’m Holly Hughes, chief marketing officer at BAI and guest host for today’s BAI Banking Strategies Podcast. Let’s jump in. 

Joining us today is Robert Ropars, senior account executive of digital at Vericast, who’ll share examples of how targeted digital marketing spend can lead to growth and help marketers maximize their ROI. Robert, welcome to the BAI Banking Strategies Podcast. 

Thanks, Holly. Thanks for having me today. I appreciate the opportunity to share today. 

Absolutely. Let’s go ahead and jump in and talk about that quest for deposits. With so many marketers focused on this area, are there certain channels or strategies that you feel provide the best results? 

My main focus with Vericast is digital advertising, and on its own, many of these channels and solutions work really phenomenally to drive brand awareness, engagement. But we also have found over the years and continue to find that combined with direct mail and other channels to create an omnichannel approach, we’re consistently seeing fantastic results driving deposits, and importantly, efficiently and cost effectively for our clients. Our information shows, for example, that with the direct mail side of things, consumers often hold on to pieces that catch their eye for up to 10 days. And when you talk about those coveted gen Y and gen Z folks out there, it can be as long as 14 days, according to my colleagues at work and focus on direct mail. 

And when we combine those two channels in particular, we see a lift in response consistently in the end result. And so, while all of this is occurring at the same time they’re receiving the direct mail piece, they’re holding onto it, so it’s kind of a constant reminder in their home. They’re also being reached with display ads, streaming commercials, digital signage, out of doors. And so, you’re basically reaching them when they’re at their home, moving around the real world, on their phones. All of that really builds to what I often call the brand awareness moment. Basically, they know who you are, they know what you’re trying to offer them or help them with, and then they seek out your engagement. 

And do you think there are any marketing channels or strategies that don’t get enough credit and should be included in a marketer’s tool kit? 

Within the financial industry, many institutions that we talk to, some of them who are savvy and have tried a lot of different channels and are doing a lot of different channels, but many are still, to this day, are still dipping their toys in, experimenting with digital, but it’s often paid search, it’s display ads, things like that. But there’s certain channels, one of which I alluded to was OTT or also known as connected TV, over-the-top, CTV. Those streaming commercials and digital out-of-home advertising have both proven to be really exciting, effective, and more importantly, fun ways to promote brands and drive engagement. 

Digital out-of-home in particular is changing the digital focus where most of the channels are focused on a targeted one-to-one approach to a more one-to-many scenario. So, it allows marketers to really reach consumers in many of the places that they’re frequenting every day from driving on the highway, grocery shopping, charging their electric vehicles, going to the movies which have made a significant comeback in 2023. So, definitely something that I don’t think is as prevalent but is growing in marketing in general, but particularly in the financial space. 

You mentioned streaming TV. We definitely saw a huge boom during the pandemic. And now, people seem to be evaluating their subscriptions, dropping some maybe as a result of just the overall economic environment, and providers also seem to be making changes to their plan options. What do all these changes mean for marketers as it relates to streaming TV? 

It really presents a dual-opportunity when you think about, particularly from gen alpha all the way up to gen X, as they pare back and are trying to adjust to economic realities, they’re gravitating back to what are called FAST options, free ad-supported TV. So, in addition to those premium options out there, and many of them have started to raise their prices, many of them have now introduced lower costs with ad-supported options, so that’s increasing the amount of ad-supported streaming reach there. But those FAST options are really growing exponentially again, like they did during the pandemic. And as people, of course, going back to the movie theaters, it’s also allowing to add in that out-of-home channel. So, you’ve got multiple ways to reach people as they are reacting in real time to the changes in the economy, but also what the streaming providers are doing as they consolidate and increase their prices and changes, which of course, then force people to make choices. 

And as marketers, we know that it’s all about ROI, but so types of marketing are harder to measure than others. How can marketers measure digital out-of-home efforts or other wider market-based strategies that you spoke about? 

It is a challenge. Certainly, foot traffic studies are one great way to try and at least visually and anecdotally understand what happened during the course of the campaign with your physical locations and the traffic to them. Certainly, I’ve seen clients integrating QR codes into their ads. Obviously, using special vanity URLs, those personalized or perl URLs, trackable phone numbers. All of those things can be used to coordinate and match back really what the engagement has been in what would traditionally be seen as hard to quantify channels back to actual real-world reactions. And of course, as technology improves, taking privacy into consideration of course, but there’s going to be evolution and growth in being able to tie what devices are near certain digital out-of-home signs, for example, and then pair that back to a household and be able to combine that to understand what the reach was and what the reaction was. 

And continuing on that ROI theme, paid search and social campaigns such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads can be really costly if it’s not managed effectively. What are some tips for maximizing ROI in paid search and social that you’ve seen? 

The key really is making sure that the team, whether it’s internal or in partnering with an agency or provider, being able to analyze the footprint that you’re in, the search traffic that’s occurring, and being able to continually monitor and analyze and refine that strategy, so that you have a control of the budget. So, you’re meeting the demands of the campaign, you’re making the engagement happen, you’re getting the results that you’re looking for. But at the same time, not over or underspending on a monthly basis and over the course of the campaign. That’s really the key factor there. I think in some cases it tends to have a view. In some cases the advertisers view it has more of a set it and forget it kind of a thing. But in both cases, especially search, you really have to have somebody monitoring to see what’s going on, what’s working, testing, learning from the types of ads that are going on, leveraging Google’s tools in particular to analyze what’s occurring and be able to refine the campaign in real time as it’s going, so that you have that maximum ROI by the end. 

Robert, let’s dig into marketing challenges in more detail. There’s certainly a lot of them, and challenges can look different based on the size of your organization, the resources that you have. What advice do you have for smaller banks and credit unions, the ones with little in-house or agency support? How can these financial institutions keep up with their larger competitors when it comes to creating more costly content like video? 

Video in particular has gone through such a revolution, really, as much as an evolution, in terms of the available high quality, especially now as we move into the AI zone of things, but even without that, the quality of stock footage, photos, voiceover talent, AI voiceover talent, music, all those different things combined, whether you’re working internally or working with an agency, being able to leverage those things, it’s really gotten to the point where even in a smaller institution with limited resources would be able to put together a very nice looking effective commercial or and, that could be then run on streaming, posted to their YouTube channel, posted on social media. 

There’s other channels of course. Display is of course is a workhorse cost-effective way to reach consumers. We see a lot of our small to medium clients that we work with in the digital space leverage display heavily as the main go-to channel. But if video becomes an option or even geo-targeting, there’s ways to cost-effectively target the competition and meet the competition out in the marketplace without breaking the bank. Pardon the pun. That was too obvious. 

Sure. And another challenge is certainly personalization and data privacy, they’ve become hot topics in digital marketing. How can businesses strike the right balance between delivering that personalized content, but also respecting user privacy? 

It is a challenge at the state level, the federal level, and then, obviously within institutions, their own compliance restrictions and things like that. So, really working particularly with partners and agencies that can really take all that into account and stay abreast of those things, and be able to chart out the path for the campaign and make sure it’s compliant with all those things. But also, of course, even tactical things like making sure that the advertising that’s running has the ability for consumers to opt out of future… Much like email marketing. That’s a stellar way obviously of respecting the privacy and the concerns of consumers. Making sure you have a clear privacy policy that explains that information is going to be used, why it’s going to be used, but also, highlighting what the benefits are. 

It’s one of those things I believe in the past when they’ve surveyed consumers, they’re certainly concerned about giving away their details and their privacy, but the same number of them, of course, would rather have ads that are personally relevant to them, which can only occur if you know something about them. So, it’s about as much leveraging the consumer needs and also the data that our clients have on their consumers. And really, that’s what a lot of what we get into with our clients is understanding their current customers and understanding who we’re looking for that’s out there like them, or finding other people that they haven’t encountered yet and bringing them to them. But it’s a combination of tactics working both internally and externally with partners and agencies that understand the complexities of working with both compliance, state regulatory issues, and of course federal issues. 

And building on that, there’s certainly a lot going on with cookies. Regulations are growing tighter when it comes to targeting. How should marketers approach finding new customers while making the most of their shrinking budgets? 

Well, as we’ve kind of talked about a couple of the times today, digital ads really are an efficient, cost-effective way to reach current and prospective account holders. That’s one thing that really has been successful that we’ve seen with our clients, is keeping in mind that there tends to be a prospect-only mentality. When we think about our current customers, those are folks who are also still looking for things. And being able to capture their attention and bring them back in and keep them with you obviously expands the relationship and it’s important. But as cookies go away, it becomes a challenge because, in many ways, they’ve been mainstay in digital advertising for tracking consumer behavior. But there are other things besides cookies, pixels obviously being one way that you can easily leverage to retarget people visiting websites. 

But beyond that, there’s a lot of digital channels that we work with that don’t necessarily require cookies. That’s something that we typically don’t rely on for our types of campaigns. But with streaming commercials and particularly digital out-of-home, you’re really looking at a variety of ways digitally to reach consumers that don’t rely on cookies, but still have that ability to reach consumers. And if possible, leverage that in-market signals that they would be giving off as they’re doing their normal things every day, the searches they’re doing, the things they’re buying, all of that. And of course, again, keeping in mind that cookies have a place, but they’re going away. Preparing for that now and learning as much data as you can about your current customers. And then, working with partners that have ways to avoid relying on cookies is obviously a huge component of all of this going forward. 

And finally, Robert, many of us tend to look for inspiration and insights from a variety of resources. And as marketers, that’s so important to keep us fresh and get those new perspectives. So, as we wrap up the conversation, could you share what financial institutions can learn from other industries that could help them improve their digital marketing overall? 

Absolutely. In the larger scope of things, Vericast works with a multitude of verticals. I sit within the digital team, focused on financial, but we work in retail, restaurant and healthcare. And so, when you look kind of across the broad thing. And one of the things that is always successful, besides the omnichannel approach, is making sure the campaigns are reinforcing your brand, striking the right tone, focused on your community and the impact that you have and connection you have with them. Positivity. Using humor, but using it smartly and selectively. The most effective campaigns I see tend to be the ones that kind of pull at the heartstrings and focus on family and the community, that kind of stuff. But look for ways to reach consumers when they’re in need, where they’re at, when they’re engaging online, and connect with them in multiple ways over time as they’re making those decisions, so you’re ensuring you’ve got captive audiences recognizing your brand, what you’re able to do to help them and make their lives easier, and keep them considering you or considering you for the first time. 

Really great advice for us to end on today. Robert Ropars, senior account executive of digital at Vericast. Many thanks again for joining us on the BAI Banking Strategies podcast. 

Thank you very much for having me today.