Three ways marketers use intent signals to help boost retention

In the hyper-competitive credit landscape, improving customer retention is critical for financial institutions’ long-term stability and growth. Consumers have more options for credit and lending products—and more ways to search for them—than ever before.

Consumer expectations and purchase habits have rapidly evolved over the past decade, and they expect the same level of searchability, variety and ease from their bank that they find when they engage with other industries, like retail.

“Consumers expect more in today's environment,” shares Elissa Rodd, Head of Data and Data Science at Deluxe. “Consumers want brands to be there with them through the journey and not just at the transaction.”

And if increasing expectations aren’t enough, a competitive surge of fintechs and alternative lenders have exploded across the marketplace, putting once-reliable customer relationships back in play.

Undoubtedly, customer loyalty is harder to secure than it has been in the past. There’s simply too much competition on every customer value metric—from rate and term to service and experience (and more often than not, a combination of both). This is why knowing what levers to pull to increase customer retention is critical for today’s financial marketers.

Why is customer retention important?

Financial marketing is often focused on a significant factor in growth: new customer acquisition. But retaining and growing existing business is just as critical.

In the same way that lead-nurture paths are part of new customer acquisition tactics, customer nurture is critical to retention tactics. You can’t sit back and wait for your customers to come to you when they have needs. Succeeding in this market means actively and continually cultivating trust among existing relationships.

For financial marketers focused on improving customer retention, intent signals can be a powerful tool.

What are customer intent signals?

Intent signals are pieces of information consumers create through their everyday actions that indicate they are potential customers. Knowing what signals to watch for—and what to do with that information—is the core of any customer loyalty and retention program.

In the context of trigger marketing, a customer signaling their intent to make a large purchase, move homes or any other major life event is the trigger for a specific campaign to launch based on their intent. Responding to triggers allows marketers a chance to reach out before the competition can capture that business.

As Rodd explains: “You're finding and reaching consumers when they want someone to give them advice, support them and be there at the celebration when they get the keys to their new house.” 

Customer buying signals typically fall into one of three categories:

• Behavior-based signals: These are explicit behaviors, like hard credit inquiries or online searches that signal intent to purchase; they can also be subtle, like filing a change of address form.
• Event-based signals: Examples of these signals include an expiring auto lease, an adjustable mortgage rate resetting or a child heading to college.
• Passive signals: Passive signals require no action from the consumer at all and include things like debt that’s ripe for consolidation or a higher-than-average mortgage rate.

Three ways to use intent signals to improve customer retention

Marketing signals are a powerful way to target account holders and keep them on board. With the right tools in place, marketers can monitor for behaviors that indicate a need or intent to buy, screen against your current customer list and lending criteria and proactively reach out with relevant offers before your competitors can.

1. Easily identify at-risk customers

Account holders who don’t use services like direct deposit, online bill pay, and debit card transactions are more likely to let their accounts go dormant, which is sometimes called ‘silent attrition.’ Tracking the signals generated by the absence of these behaviors can help you identify customers who aren’t fully engaged and target them with relevant communications to encourage them to use your financial institution for services. Fully engaged customers are not only less likely to leave you, but they’re more likely to open a credit card, brokerage, mortgage or other additional accounts.

Of course, the best way to avoid silent attrition is to engage customers right away, when they’re new to you. Successful onboarding ensures a higher rate of conversion from new customer to fully engaged account holder.

2. Reengage with customers who are shopping around

With the availability of marketing signals like hard credit inquiries, there’s no longer a good excuse to watch an account holder walk out the door without putting an offer in front of them. A hard credit inquiry is a surefire intent signal that someone is actively looking for a car, a house or some other purchase that requires financing.

Knowing a customer is in the market for a loan can help you head off defection by quickly getting in front of them. However, lenders who monitor only one or two credit bureaus can sometimes miss hard inquiries. Among Deluxe’s own clients, it’s been found that tri-bureau credit monitoring provides a 50 percent lift over single-bureau monitoring and a 25 percent lift over dual-bureau monitoring for trigger marketing campaigns.

“You want to make sure you’re capturing all people who are applying, so three credit bureaus is a must,” shares Kathryn Turnoff, Senior Product Manager of Data Solutions at Deluxe. “Our in-the-market alerts program monitors all three, and that’s really important to getting the complete picture of who’s in the market.”

In addition to tri-bureau monitoring, make sure you’re also matching loan inquiries against your customer database to identify account holders who might be shopping the competition.

3. Extend the right offer at the right time

Banks are in a prime position to market additional products to their existing customers, something most non-bank fintech lenders cannot do. But even the most engaged account holder will only take further action if the offers they receive meets their specific needs.

Scouting for signals helps you extend a relevant offer when your customers are more likely to purchase and, if you desire, even make a firm offer of credit. Signals like hard inquiries, which show an intent to buy, are the strongest indicator. But other less obvious signals like a consumer’s income rising into a more desirable credit bracket, an online search, a mortgage rate increase or paying off debt can also be predictors of a financial need—so can milestones like getting married, buying a new home or having a baby.

“You want speed to market,” Turnoff explains. “It’s so important, especially if you’re monitoring your own customers. They’re expecting to hear from you, so you want to get in front of them to remind them of what you can do for them; timing is super critical.”

Effective retention marketing requires partnership

If you don’t have the internal capabilities to monitor multiple credit bureaus, check signals against your customer database and operate ongoing retention campaigns, it might be time to outsource these tasks to an external data provider.

“That's what makes [leveraging intent data] so special,” Rodd concludes. “It's about being there for the consumers in this really important moment in their life.”

However, not all data partners are created equal. When you need to defend and deepen existing customer relationships, a great option is to partner with a full-service supplier that can provide customer data and strategic recommendations for accomplishing your exact business needs.