The Thought Leader's Voice Podcast

Rachael Kinsella: Brilliant. So this also brings us on to behavioural data, analytics the role that plays, obviously it’s crucial in Fintech and financial services more broadly. How do you balance that with security and consumer perception and also consumer demand?

Tom Newbould: Yeah, I mean, you know, every business talks about data, the importance of data, we talk about data in marketing you know, this data driven marketing or a data driven marketer is very prevalent now. I think, you know, data is very, very important in so many different ways. It’s obviously very, very important to people as individuals, you know, that their data is secure and protected and, you know, the organization is going to, first of all, use it in the right way, secure it in the right way. And I suppose, as marketers, we’ve seen things change, you know, through GDPR, for example, and other pieces of legislation, which make us have to collect permissions in certain ways, there’s a lot of rules around how we store and use data, I think, where some of the risks, you know, and some of the risks to an organization is, you’ve absolutely got to make sure that your data is secure across the whole organization, that’s a given. But then you’ve got to also make sure that you’re treating that data and using it in the right way. So, I think, you know, on the data, individual and personal data, that’s one thing, when we look at data and how it’s used in decisions within businesses in, you know, data science, in decisions around what services we can offer to certain individuals, you know, that’s the whole area that’s really developed and continuing to develop. So, if you look at something like open banking, and financial services, you know, that’s been a real game changer in, first of all, opening up services, to customers. But secondly, giving organizations a lot more data that gives them an assurance to transact with that individual. So, something like open banking is a great example of where trust is front and centre of that relationship, because someone has to really trust that their data is going to be used in the right way. And there’s not nothing hidden in the way it’s going to be used. And the organization is trusting that person more because it’s able to see more of what they’re doing in terms of their spending and income frame, for example. So that’s a great one, I think, you know, financial services, in general, you know, where it’s regulated, is a very good place to see communications and marketing and advertising, that does stick to the rules, you know, it’s regulated, people have to think very carefully about what they say, in advertising and the messages and the imagery that’s used. Usually, advertising has to carry risk warnings, and warnings of some nature. So generally, on the advertising side, you know, we’ve seen a very, very sort of stable use, I think, some of the more recent developments, the use of cookies, and the new rules around that’s going to, again, change things slightly for us. But I think other industries, you know, don’t necessarily play by the same rules that financial services organizations have to and FinTech businesses have to. So, you know, I think, because the trust, trust is there from the start, generally speaking, when someone has decided to respond to an advert, what the organization does, with the data that’s collected from the person, clicking the advert, right through to potentially becoming a customer, is very important. And that’s where, you know, you’ve really got to scrutinize the customer journey, and everything that’s attached to that, and how we’re going to use it, when it gets to the end, you know, and the data has come through all those permissions and safeguards, marketers, you know, have a responsibility again, to try and get the right service to the right group of customers at the right time. So that’s where something like CRM is, you know, in very good CRM is absolutely key to that. You can reinforce the relationship of trust; you can provide content and things to the customer that are very relevant to them. And you can even, you know, make them feel very loved. So, you can celebrate everything from their birthday right through to particular anniversary. So, you know, this data in an organization is the key to a lot of things. But I think it starts from a very responsible view in the vast majority of financial services businesses, which give the customers assurance that their data is going to be used correctly, because, after all, you know, no business wants any horror story behind the use of data, because that will absolutely kill you know, their ability to attract customers in the future.

Rachael Kinsella: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, I think you’re right in saying that there’s already a certain level of trust there. Through the regulation, we see we’ve got more regulation coming through, around FinTech more broadly, changes in legislation to cookie use. Are you seeing any innovative techniques or around use of data and analytics and that personalization angle? Coming out of all of this? Oh, do you think that’s something that’s developing any way as we’re providing more and more personal communications and services to customers?

Tom Newbould: Yeah, this is an interesting one, because I think, you know, some of the fundaments of what we might have seen of something that we might call customer insight, for example, or you know, customer journey mapping, CRM, again, you know, those, and actually market research and category research or consumer research, whatever we want to call it, you know, these are very, on the one hand, traditional things, but actually, they play a key role today in bringing the true thoughts, feelings, desires, you know, behaviors of customers into that, that pure transactional data. So, for example, you know, in a financial services business, we can typically see, when the customer is registered, which products they’ve accessed, we can see their credit profile, with open banking, we can see the transactional history, we can look at those as populations of customers, we can look at demographics, we can look at when they were onboarded, and cohorts and behaviors in the credit, credit profile and repayment profiles, for example. But actually, to really understand what’s driving the customers, and how we can better serve them, we need to go back to things like, you know, segmentation, you know, use it user personas, all this type of thing that’s been done, you know, for decades, really, and bring that into that conversation. So that’s where, you know, I think FinTech businesses can really get competitive advantage through looking at some of those things that they might classify as old or, you know, not relevant. The temptation is in a FinTech Business and Financial Services, to really give data science, a huge voice. But actually, you know, marketing has to continually put the true Voice of the Customer into those conversations, and usually a collaboration or synergy with what’s happening in contact centers, and what the contact centers are hearing from customers as well, it’s also important. So, this fusion of those things in a FinTech or financial services, business can be the key to success, you know, it can tell us everything from which words are going to resonate more with the customer to actually, you know, how do we change our products to better serve that? Of course, you know, and then it interfaces with tech and product in a business. So, you know, these are, these are ways in which we can bring all that together, I think, again, you know, attribution, and the way in which we, as marketers look at the interplay of channels in a business is a very important aspect as well, you know, and, again, lots of businesses struggle to do that. I saw a stat recently that 20% of marketers undertake no attribution whatsoever. You know, and that’s quite scary, because it’s basically saying that, you know, we just spend money on marketing, and we don’t really measure it properly. So again, that’s a very important aspect to financial services, marketing, which, which people need to give some attention to.

Rachael Kinsella: Yes, yeah, it’s all very well and good, bringing in new tech that can Mar tech stack and bringing in different ways of crunching the data and gathering the data. And, but it’s, you know, if you forget the end consumer, that’s the person that you’re appealing to that person you need to know and understand. And I suppose a lot of that comes back to in terms of bringing it all together, having that strong CRM that you’ve mentioned several times, and being able to track all of these different elements through that and evolve that customer journey so that it matches their needs more effectively.

Tom Newbould: Yeah, 100% because, you know, with that, I think, again, a lot of attention is given in FinTech and financial services, businesses to new customers. You know, we’ve seen some comedy around that where, you know, there was a particular advertising campaign, you might remember where it said, this is for new customers only. These existing customers are coming in and saying, Well, what about me, and I think, you know, over time, as a business matures, it starts to realize that the customers it has through the doors already are actually the key to growing revenue, you know, the lifetime value, customer lifetime value is something that that is getting attention now. And the key to that, again, is good CRM. So that that is above and beyond, you know, just transactional or general account reporting back to the customer, it’s giving them something of interest that’s relevant to them, giving them news, you know, interacting with them in it in a slightly different way, a more personal way. But it can really be a driver of loyalty and, you know, repeat business in so many different ways. I think, you know, whenever a business evolves its product, whether a business is building a community, if a business is launching something new, to have an even when a business has been set, you know, sold, if it’s got a pool of loyal, active, you know, revenue-driving customers, at some scale, the business is so much more successful in so many different ways. But marketers have to have, you know, at the very least a tool, which does CRM for them, I think the great news, you in the FinTech world is for every startup, there is, you know, relatively low-cost solutions out there that gives you the fundaments of CRM right through to you know, the leading edge, top of the range enterprise level systems and a business can evolve through those different CRM systems relatively easily, you know, you can have, one point I will make is you can have the best CRM in the world, but if you don’t use it properly, and you don’t have the right things going into it, it’s not going to do any good whatsoever. So, you know, the people who are writing content, the people who are managing the email process, the people who are maybe looking at some of the offline CRM, we can do, you know, they’re very, very important within a marketing team and function, whether that’s as an employer, or whether it’s someone who’s helping on a freelance basis. So, I think, in FinTech businesses, financial services, businesses, a lot of attention goes on measurement return on investment, which you would naturally expect, it’s sometimes quite difficult to quantify, you know, just what value a copywriter might be giving to the business. But you’ve got to look at them in the consideration of their work is across so many different edges, whether it’s social media newsletters, you know, web content, communications, generally customers, and that’s where the value is. So, it’s almost a 360-degree value, rather than saying they’ve written this and it’s brought us that. And I think, you know, a lot of businesses go back to, that’s how we want to measure things, but the world has changed, customers now have six to eight touchpoints, with a business before they’ll purchase. So, you know, a copywriter might not sound as exciting as a performance marketer, but they can be just as important in a successful marketing team.

Rachael Kinsella: Yes. Have you got any good examples of where that fit together an integrated approach using two elements of customization, personalization, but also content, different ways of communicating different channels?

Tom Newbould: Yeah, yeah. I mean, from my personal career, I think, you know, one of the places that we really put a lot of attention into it was my job where, you know, we had people in specific roles in the marketing team that I was running, who were very, very good at what they did, whether it was writing, copy, whether it was email, marketing, management, and we brought that together through our CRM. What we’re able to do with that content production, you know, content production, being articles being things that we’re writing, that we’re interested to customers, none of which were about the product, by the way, you know, it was all about topics and none of which were about the product, and we didn’t at the end, that’s a very interesting article, come and click here to buy the product. We didn’t do any of that, you know, we kept it pure content that could be used across social media, it could be used in PR, you know, we got some coverage for we did some work on the hidden costs of moving house, which had nothing directly to do with our product. You know, we weren’t an estate agent. We weren’t selling houses, we weren’t encouraging people to move house, but it was a topic that would affect and we knew it affected a group of our customers within our existing customer pool and people in the wide world. So, by spending some time developing that content, we used it across social media, newsletters, web copy, and we also got some great coverage in you know, everything from I think the independent right through to talk radio. So, something like that, you know, where you can leverage a topic that you know is of interest to your customers or segments of your customer population and bring them to Life and give people genuine copy that works well. You know, it was very, very difficult for me to say, to the chief executive, who was a brilliant guy LS, you know, he would say, Well, what return on investment are we getting from our content manager. It was very difficult for me to say, well, it’s this, because it was spread throughout the, you know, the everything we were doing within marketing. So I think sometimes, you know, you’ve got to appreciate that individuals are certain pieces of work in a marketing team, affect, you know, not necessarily micro measures, but macro measures, you know. So, if you’re increasing the business month by month, that individual is playing a role in doing that, a bit like a particular part of a car, it’s not the steering wheel, you know, it’s not the tires, it’s not very visible to you, but it could be playing, you know, something in your car engine, that’s cost, a pound, you know, that you can’t see might be playing a very, very important role. And I think, you know, that’s where you’ve got to look at where you’re going as a whole. I think in other businesses, you know, going back to GoldX, we put together the Gold trading Academy, which is completely we made the decision, and the chief executive was very keen to keep the content completely open, you know, to not require even anyone to leave an email address to access the content. The reason we did that was to show that this is us helping the wider industry and helping people who aren’t our customers become better. And I think that was generally very well appreciated by, you know, people who access the content, we paid for the content, we invest the time in pulling the content together, it was all very, you know, accessible to the end user, whether they’re a customer of ours or not. So, something like that, you know, I think there’s a, it helps, you know, demonstrate that the business cares, you know, cares about the broader industry, and what people are doing generally, I think, another business, an Australian business called Follow, which is founded by a guy called Gareth Crumbly, who’s a great guy, again, they’re serving up some great content that’s completely free. I’m not quite sure whether they’re, you know, I’m certain that they’re not seeing the return on investment of that bit of content is this, you know, it’s part of their overall mix of marketing activity. So yeah, I mean, so on the one hand, I’m saying that measuring the way in which channels are working is very, very important, particularly in a cross channel, where through attribution, and you know, attribution science coming together with data science, that’s very important. But what that doesn’t mean is it doesn’t mean that every single bit of activity within a marketing team and every single activity that an individual might be doing can be precisely measured. You know, it can’t be. So, there’s a certain you know, I think some people would look at this is what we’re spending on marketing. If we’ve got a high, let’s say, you know, large number of people doing certain roles, or high payroll costs for those individuals. The temptation is that you want to measure them in the same way that, you know, you’re measuring every single marketing activity, it can’t necessarily be done like that.

Rachael Kinsella: Yeah, I agree. It’s very much about campaigns as a whole compared to business objectives. Reaching the right audiences, raising awareness in the right areas, whether it’s, as you gave your example, for building trust and credibility and contribution to the industry, and to the wider community, not just existing customers. There’s a number of areas there that you have to factor in, definitely, you can’t just narrow it down to one piece of content or, you know, one person who’s actually responsible for that piece of content.

Tom Newbould: Definitely. And equally, you know, the balance between internal you know, team members versus freelancers versus agencies been involved, the whole sort of Formula around there can change at a particular moment in time. You know, I think you can, there’s a lot you can do to leverage different things to keep costs down. So, you know in, I think, always marketing now, a FinTech has particular challenges or objectives at different moments in time. So, when, for example, a FinTech, which has a mobile app launches, it will want to have, you know, lots of installs and lots of registrations somewhere down the line, it’s going to going to start to realize that it needs to now look at which customers are the right customers for those that are going to spend the most money or be have the best lifetime value than just let’s get everyone you know, everyone is really interested. So, all of those things require a slightly different approach to marketing in a different approach to advertising channels, and you know, advertising copy and the whole CRM piece as well. So, you know, that’s what I think, quite often, you know, people who were launching Fintech will say, you know, we want to get scale, and we want to get scale over this period of time, but they won’t necessarily have a fixed plan in place for, or any idea about how they go about that. And again, that’s where the FMA, you know, can come in and help them. And so this is, how will this have done it. But, again, going back to a successful industry, because FinTech has so many players in it, you can generally look at how businesses have gone from zero to wherever they are, and track back and look at how they’ve achieved success. You know, we can take a lot of lessons from that.

Rachael Kinsella: Definitely, yeah. And seeing that trajectory. And also, what happens at the next stage, as you say that a future thinking about how the customer is going to evolve, how the marketing process will, will have to evolve with it, and different approaches for different channels and marketing activities. So, it’s quite exciting as well to be able to be involved in those different stages of the journey.

Tom Newbould: Definitely, definitely.

Rachael Kinsella: Well, I think that leads me quite nicely on to my final question, which is, what’s your number one piece of advice to marketers in FinTech and indeed, other sectors that you’ve learned from all of your experience across these different sectors and through working with FinTech, in particular.

Tom Newbould:So, I think there’s a couple of things. The first one would be, make sure you’ve got a clear sense of objectives, so that you’ve got objectives on the table, and you’ve got a clear plan in place of where you need to get to. So, you know, the start point and the horizon point or the endpoint, I think that’s very important. Because usually, in FinTech businesses, there’s so much going on, you know, it’s a fast and furious world, you as a marketer need that sanity of this is what I need to deliver, then you can start thinking about how I’m going to deliver it. So that’s the first bit of advice. I think the second bit of advice is, don’t be afraid to look at everything, and test and learn within marketing is very important. So usually, what you would do is, you’d say, I think this channel would work because of X, Y, and Z, maybe customer searches indicating it, me, maybe you’ve seen competitors, use it, maybe you’ve done a bit of AdWords research, and you can see there’s a lot of search volume there. Don’t be afraid to try something, but then do it on a test and learn basis. So, start off with a very small budget, see how that goes, if the results look good, then scale it, scale it up and scale it incrementally. Because that can give you that month to month process. And once you’ve got what I would say is the success formula, you know which channels are working in combination. And as individual channels, you can start to scale that up. So, you know, with confidence, and you can introduce activities along the way. The third thing, and final thing is definitely, you know, work out how you’re going to measure those channels and get agreement of the CEO or whoever is your, you know, line manager in terms of that agreement. So, you know, define it, write it down. And definitely think about attribution from the start. So, there are some great tools for attribution out there that are relatively affordable as free trials for some of those tools. We have Google Analytics, which gives us some attribution models as well. Think about measurement, and think about, you know, measurement in the context of the end goal. So, what does a good CPA look like? You know, what return on advertising spend, you’re looking for? How can you measure across new customers and returning customers? Does the CEO buy into that? You know, does the CEO buy into the fact that you measure marketing spending that way? So once all of those things are clear, you know, it gives you this surety and foundation to move forward? I think some of the things that are challenges are the level of investment of time, resources and energy into something like search engine optimization, that won’t give you immediate results, the business might be looking for immediate results. So how do you balance that equation? And I think, you know, if you know, the horizon points, you know, there are things that you can do that will pay off over the longer term. And usually, you know, you can demonstrate how that will be valuable to the business so that they’re sort of little bits of advice that I’ve picked up through my career.

Rachael Kinsella: Really, useful bits of advice and very important. I think that final point is it’s critical that you know, so many elements that are for the longer-term results and, you know, particularly in FinTech and in financial services, often there’s that this real dry for instant results and being able to match it all up straight away and not seeing, again, sort of where different elements of the wider campaigns are contributing. So, I think that’s really, really key. And so, if you’ve set the objectives, and you’re mindful of those from the start, and you can measure up attribution, from the start, I think that that does give you a firm foundation, I think that’s very important. And I liked how you mentioned about being mindful of the CEOs expectations, and I’m being clear on objectives and outcomes from the outset, but then not being afraid to test different methods in between. If you’ve got something that gives you more than a hunch that it’s going to work, give it a go and test it. If it doesn’t work, then try something else. But at least you’ve tried it with an informed approach. And I think that’s one of the elements of agility that many industries and a lot of us in, in marketing can really learn from, from FinTech, in particular in terms of that agility, and that speed and that map pace and the fearlessness, I think of being able to try new things. Try them at scale and pace. So, thank you so much. I could really talk to you all day. I just find it fascinating and you’ve got so many great insights from so many different industries. I really appreciate your time with us today and hope to speak with you again about some other topics.

Tom Newbould: Well, thanks very much for having me and listening and it’s been a pleasure.

Rachael Kinsella: Brilliant, Thank you so much.

Tom Newbould: Thank you.