As part of your financial institution’s marketing strategy, you likely manage a variety of publications that face your customers or members, communities, employees, shareholders, and government agencies. While they may serve as tangible points of pride for your organization, print publications can be costly to create and produce, are inflexible to regular updates, and don’t align with the green initiatives financial institutions like yours typically support, like paperless statements and eco-friendly lending policies.
Digital publishing can help your institution solve problems related to cost, accessibility, and environmental awareness and is a natural next step for banks and credit unions that have already embraced the wide variety of digital tools and services they offer account holders. While you don’t have to abandon print pieces altogether, the benefits of transitioning at least some of your newsletters, annual publications, and community reports to a digital format are clear.
1. INSTANT REACH
Internet-savvy audiences can access your content instantly wherever they are, so your insights on saving or investing, customer or member success stories, and community impact stats will be available to a wider range of readers than ever before. Making your publications mobile-friendly is a must, as more people are consuming content on their smartphones and tablets.
2. VIBRANT VISUALS
A picture is worth a thousand words. In a digital publication, you can pair your articles and data with tutorial videos, detailed animated guides, and interactive graphs, charts, and visuals.
3. AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION
Easy shareability and integration with your social channels means your audiences can share your content with others, helping to attract new customers or members. Interactive calls-to-action allow readers to instantly take your desired next steps: scheduling an appointment with one of your financial experts, opening an account or applying for a loan online, or reading more about your financial services.
4. IMPACTFUL INSIGHTS
With digital publications, you have access to analytics that print publications could never provide. Now, you can see who is looking at your content and how they are engaging with it, so you can tailor your communications to reach the people whose readership and subsequent reactions you value most.
5. LOWER COSTS
Moving your publications to digital formats means no more printing, paper, or shipping costs. The cost to the environment will be a lot lower, too, since no forests will be sacrificed to produce digital formats of frequent newsletters and reports.
6. EASY EDITS
Do you need to update or amend an article? Have you added a new financial tool to your portfolio that readers may find helpful? Want to add some exceptional new data to an existing digital spread? You can do so instantly with a digital format for your publications.
7. SAVEABLE AND SEARCHABLE
You can easily archive your digitized works to keep previous publications quickly accessible and searchable. Your readers will thank you for it, as finding the article they need will likely only take moments versus the time they would previously spend sifting through paper copies.
PREPARE FOR NEW CHALLENGES AND STAY TRUE TO YOUR MISSION
Moving to digital formats may present some new challenges for your team, but they are easily overcome by researching reliable digital publishing platforms, working with experienced digital content creators and designers, upholding your existing editorial standards, and making sure you’re appropriately trained in engagement strategies and SEO. Above all, stay true to the mission you’ve already established in your print publication – to share well-rounded, informative, and accurate content that engages and educates your audience and positions you as a trusted resource for financial products and expertise.
Need some help transitioning to digital publications? Contact us today to learn how LIGHTSTREAM can extend your reach, save you money, and help you engage more effectively with all of your audiences.