6 KPIs Every Bank & Credit Union Should Be Measuring
In the financial world, you know how much numbers matter. But when it comes to measuring the success of your marketing, sometimes it can be hard to tell which numbers you should be looking at. You know the goal is to maximize your ROI for the marketing dollars you spend, but the connection between your marketing efforts and your ROI isn’t always straightforward or obvious.
Tracking a simple ROI for a smaller campaign is relatively easy. But when you look at the big picture, a lot of factors come into play – and some of them can be difficult to put a number on. For example, promoting a positive brand image can increase customer loyalty and make account holders more likely to recommend your bank or credit union to their friends and family. How do you measure the impact of your marketing efforts on something like that?
The answer is that you may need some new key performance indicators (KPIs). Here are 6 of the main KPIs you should be looking at to gauge the success of your marketing, and tips for capturing them more effectively:
1. COST OF ACQUISITION (COA)
There are a lot of factors that go into trying to calculate your COA, and being able to calculate an accurate COA means tracking the acquisition process on a granular level.
Digital marketing channels such as email campaigns and landing pages are great ways to see how well people engage with your ads. You can track them easily and follow them on their journey. Other marketing channels can be somewhat more difficult to track, however, and many banks and credit unions don’t account for the non-marketing dollars spent, such as time spent in-branch, and on the phone.
Knowing what to track and how to track it is a big part of calculating your acquisition costs, but if you really want to know where you’re going to get the best ROI on your marketing spend, you have to start calculating the COA for different products and customer demographics. Then, you can add another layer of sophistication by factoring in the value of those acquisitions, which tells you a lot more than simply calculating the cost of a new account. For example, do you know the cost for your bank or credit union to acquire $1,000 in new deposits, $10,000 in auto loans, or $100,000 in mortgages?
2. CUSTOMER LIFETIME VALUE (CLV)
When marketing to potential customers, you’re going to get the biggest ROI by focusing on those who will bring the highest lifetime value. But figuring out how to measure this can be tricky, since there are many factors to consider beyond just deposit and loan amounts. For example, how long is the person likely to stay with your financial institution? Are they likely to take advantage of multiple services, such as home and auto loans or money market accounts? And what are the chances they will open both personal and business accounts?
In order to forecast CLVs that can inform your marketing decisions, the place to start is with customers who have been with your institution a long time. The better you understand how your relationship with different types of customers evolves over time, the better you will be able to predict which potential customers are going to have the highest lifetime value – and that is great information to have when you’re deciding where to spend your marketing dollars. This information can be easily sorted and accessed using an MCIF, or Marketing Customer Information File. These databases store member accounts and relationships, providing you with information and illumination some marketers only dream about.
3. DIGITALLY INFLUENCED SALES (DIS)
In the last 5 to 10 years, an increasingly large percentage of marketing budgets have gone to digital marketing. This is true across all industries, and banks and credit unions are no exception. But while tracking stats like Facebook likes, clicks from Google Ads, and time spent on your institution’s website can provide useful information, what you really want to know is what percentage of your sales were influenced by your digital marketing.
It’s possible to track this when a new account is opened online, but to truly understand the impact your marketing has, you need to know if it played a role in getting people to call or walk into your branches. That’s why it’s important to ask new customers which marketing channels they were exposed to, and what influenced their decision. Once you start tracking this, you will be able to see how your digital marketing is performing by comparing your year-over-year marketing budget to the sales you are generating.
4. NET PROMOTOR SCORE (NPS)
Having account holders who are enthusiastic enough to recommend your bank or credit union is every financial marketing executive’s dream. Glowing customer reviews and personal recommendations are more powerful than any other marketing tool you have. Of course, you can’t buy recommendations the same way you can buy a television spot – but you can turn account holders into brand ambassadors by cultivating relationships with customers and building your brand identity.
The Net Promoter Score® is a measurement of customer experiences. Respondents answer how likely they are to recommend your bank or credit union on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is not likely and 10 is extremely likely. The responses are tallied and segregated as follows: those giving a score of 9-10 are Promoters, 7-8 are Passives, and 1-6 are Detractors. Your NPS can range from –100 to +100 and is simply the percentage of Promoter respondents less the percentage of Detractor respondents. You should then compare your NPS to the industry average. For example, if your recent survey tallied 50% of respondents as Promoters and 10% Detractors, your NPS is 40. This would measure favorably to the current banking industry average of 35.* The banking industry beacon is currently USAA with an NPS of 79.*
*NICE Satmetrix 2018 Consumer Net Promoter Benchmark Study
5. BRAND IMAGE & AWARENESS MEASURES
To get the full picture of your brand image, you have to go beyond what your customers think and do non-customer surveys as well. Asking potential customers how well they recognize your brand and what they think of it compared to your competitors will give you a sense of the overall impact of your marketing, and can point out areas where you need to focus.
6. LOYALTY & REFERRAL MEASURES
Knowing how likely your account holders are to recommend you is great – but seeing how much new business you’re getting from these referrals is even better. Along with referrals, you should also measure how many existing customers add on products, and then compare rates of those who close accounts to those who open new ones. Using a set of metrics like these helps offer the most accurate picture of lifetime customer value.
MEASURING KPIs
For each of these major KPIs and the smaller metrics that go into them, what you really want to be tracking is your year-over-year growth. Then you can compare changes in spending to changes in your performance metrics, and see how different strategies are contributing to both short- and long-term returns on investment.
Want to discuss how LIGHTSTREAM can help you better measure your marketing performance, develop strategies to create a stronger brand image and loyalty, and maximize the impact of your marketing budget? We’d love to start a conversation.
