5 Powerful Advantages of Salesforce Marketing Cloud for Financial Services Organizations

From a traditional, slow-moving behemoth that consisted of just a few well-defined, powerful entities to a dynamic and vigorous sector that has ‘democratized’ finance, the global financial services industry has undergone a massive paradigm shift in just a couple of decades. 

In addition to the Internet, mobile banking and cloud computing, the financial services industry now benefits from cutting-edge, game-changing technology such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain and Deep Learning. Technology enables organizations to collect rich swathes of data that helps them design innovative products, tailor their customer approach, build stronger relationships with them and improve their overall financial performance. But all of this can only happen when this data is properly collected, analyzed and managed in ways that yield rich, actionable insights. And the best way to do this is through the use of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software like Salesforce.

In particular, Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC), an industry-leading solution from the Salesforce stable is ideal for financial services organizations looking to boost their sales and marketing outcomes as they build lasting relationships with their increasingly well-informed customer base.

SFMC is the Marketing CRM of choice for hundreds of financial services organizations all over the world. The top 5 reasons for this are covered below!

1. Right Customer, Right Message, Right Time

A CRM solution like SFMC can provide a much-needed customer-centric view of the business to the business. More importantly, it can provide a 360-degree view of every customer. And this always starts with data – data that can be pulled from multiple sources or spread out across platforms, and that can be tied to specific prospects, leads or customers. With SFMC’s powerful data management platform (DMP) Audience Studio, financial marketers and leaders can capture, store and most importantly, unify data to gain deep insights about their target audience. This then empowers them to engage with customers on the channels they prefer and at the right time. Best of all, they can do all this at scale and over a long period of time that engenders customer loyalty and builds meaningful relationships over the long term.

“Marketing Cloud enables us to give the right communications at the right time to the right fans at scale.”

–Bob Ritter, SVP, Product Management, Ticketmaster

Ticketmaster is a US-based global ticket sales and distribution company that is also a Top 5 eCommerce player. SFMC has enabled Ticketmaster achieve 250% return on marketing investment.

2. Personalized Marketing, Automated Marketing

With SFMC’s full suite of Marketing Automation tools like Pardot, financial services firms can increase the flow of prospects and high-quality leads, boost lead conversion and strengthen customer relationships. Even better, they can automate the entire process so they have more opportunities to develop a deeper understanding of their customers’ needs, maximize their marketing investment and thus get more bang for their marketing buck.

By automating all common marketing and sales tasks, financial organizations can focus on what really matters – creating personalized and engaging customer experiences at every touchpoint to enhance the buyer journey and supercharge their revenues and profits.

3. Cross-channel, Cross-functional Marketing

In today’s ultra-dynamic financial business landscape; cross-channel, cross-functional marketing and sales campaigns are absolutely critical. Journey Builder, another SFMC tool, enables financial services organizations to create targeted marketing campaigns by connecting the dots across important customer touchpoints including email, mobile, advertising, the web, direct mail, sales, commerce and service. They can also make dynamic adjustments to their campaigns based on customers’ current and predicted behaviors, attributes and interests to resonate best with them, and increase engagement and satisfaction.

For firms looking to create targeted, personalized email, SFMC’s Email Studio provide extensive functionalities not available in any other CRM solution. And for larger organizations with an advertising budget, Advertising Studio offers the ability to integrate personalized (1-to-1) advertising across search, social media and display into their holistic marketing strategy. This not only makes relevant content available to customers on their preferred channels, but also helps increase marketing ROI for the financial organization.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud ? +25% marketing ROI

Source: Salesforce Customer Success Metrics Survey (2017)

4. Leave the competition behind

With SFMC, financial organizations no longer have to rely on traditional channels and legacy systems to meet their clients’ expectations and stay ahead of the competition curve. They can now develop 1-to-1 relationships based on interactions that are both personalized and intelligent. They can get a bird’s eye view of how each marketing campaign is performing by leveraging the power of AI, and take relevant, data-driven actions to enhance their clients’ experiences.

With SFMC’s Interaction Studio, they can capture every customer interaction across all touchpoints in real time and make accurate decisions that can increase conversions, boost lifetime value and create brand advocates.

+27% lead volume | +30% lead conversion

Source: Salesforce Relationship Survey

Whether the customer is B2C or B2B, SFMC provides a world-class, comprehensive platform that enables financial firms to address changing needs before their competitors can – the key to survive and thrive in today’s cut-throat financial business landscape.

5. Drive regulatory compliance for greater transparency and trust

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a step in the right direction towards protecting EU consumers’ privacy. SFMC makes it possible for financial services organizations to remain compliant with GDPR even as they make use of powerful data to understand and serve their customers better.

SFMC enables these firms to perfectly balance compliance with customer-centricity so that they maintain control over their data and use it in ways that build trust, transparency and long-standing accountability across all their sales and marketing touchpoints.

Wrap Up

Salesforce Marketing Cloud includes a number of world-class tools that cover every possible marketing need for financial services organizations.

Get better leads, boost your conversions, increase your marketing ROI and create amazing experiences for your customers – with the power of Salesforce and the performance of Salesforce Marketing Cloud.