Digital Transformation: Laying the Groundwork for Modern Marketing Success Part 2

Financial  services organizations  are racing  to modernize the customer or member journey to meet evolving consumer  expectations. They are also working to give their relationship managers the technology to compete in a new era of marketing.  

Implementing the right technology solutions to power digital transformation is a critical decision that will have a lasting impact on your lifetime profits and growth.

Although relationship managers should be deeply familiar with their chosen CRM solution, trusting a CRM alone for sales and marketing leaves you vulnerable to critical gaps that can derail customer engagement and relationships. A modern MOS (we’ve detailed the critical components required for a future-facing Marketing Operating System (MOS) here) improves business relationships with a focus on one-to-one engagement that not only streamlines the sales and marketing process but also humanizes it, creating customer relationships that last a lifetime.

Before you can enhance the customer or member experience to grow lasting connections, you must lay the groundwork for modern marketing success across four crucial steps. 

Below we detail step two in the process: 

Step Two: Gathering Key Input from Stakeholders 

Although technology exists to make life easier for everyone in your organization – from relationship managers to marketing admins to executive leadership – adopting new technology solutions isn’t always viewed as a positive measure.  

It could be that previous technologies, instead of driving productivity, created inefficiencies and failed to connect sales and marketing. 

No one wants overly complex systems, added distractions, siloed teams or needless processes. So before adding any new technology solution to your tech stack, it’s critical to gather insight from these key stakeholders.  

Executive Leaders 

Financial services leaders have been challenged with embracing the disruption surrounding digital transformation as they seek new technology to support the demands of modern marketing.  

The objective? Empower relationship managers and marketers with the tools to better understand their customers or members so they can drive lifetime value and boost technology ROI. 

As a key leader guiding innovation strategy, be ready to answer the following questions: 

  • What do your customers or members expect, and do you have a clear plan to exceed those expectations? 
  • Currently, do you have the capabilities to drive the full value of your customer experience? 
  • Where are the weakest areas across your customer journey? 

Relationship Managers 

As the face of your financial brand, relationship managers have unique insight into customer or member expectations. Take time to collect feedback on how your current technology performs and how it might be improved.  

Identify popular tools. 

Even if, as a leader, you’re convinced you have found a silver-bullet solution, you still need buy-in from your relationship managers, who can derail your entire digital transformation initiative if they refuse to adopt whatever solution you bring to them.   

Remember – there’s no innovation without adoption.  

Working with a familiar (albeit imperfect) solution is less disruptive than being forced to adopt brand-new technology. So, empathize with the challenges, needs and even preferences of your relationship managers. Be transparent about key differences in whatever solution you’re considering and take feedback from relationship managers to heart – what seem like trivial features to you may be critical to them. 

Gauge manual work. 

According to relationship managers, too much time is spent on tasks that could be automated, with 30 percent of relationship managers spending an hour or more on manual tasks every day.  

Relationship managers should highlight areas of excessive manual work to see what can be automated and scaled. By removing manual tasks, financial brands can support faster processes, reduce human error and empower relationship managers with more time.  

Consider the nature of your data access. 

Your relationship managers are using everything at their disposal to deepen the customer or member relationship; they can’t afford disjointed technology processes. 

From cross-channel engagement to compliance reporting to data permissions, your relationship managers need seamless access to data insights to support elevated experiences. 

Ask relationship managers for honest feedback about how well technology is putting customer data at their fingertips to drive human connections.  

Marketing Leaders 

As executive leaders and relationship managers race to connect with customers or members, marketing leaders employ technology to reduce friction for customer-facing teams. 

Financial brands must understand the impact a new technology solution will have on their marketing teams and their job responsibilities. You should discuss, in detail, these high-impact areas to inform all technology decisions: 

  • Integration – Does your current technology stack build or break silos? 
  • Organization – Are you currently centralized across sales and marketing? 
  • Simplification – Does your tech stack support the daily tasks of your relationship managers? 
  • Risk and compliance – When was your last audit and how did it go? 
  • Flexibility – How easily will your technology adapt to industry changes? 

Conclusion  

Selecting the right Marketing Operating System (MOS) requires gathering clear input from stakeholders on how technology supports top-down results for your financial brand.  

Once you’ve collected feedback, you can take the next step – building a business case – that directs the action toward empowering executive leaders, relationship managers and marketing teams to do their best work – today and tomorrow.