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I just read a report from the CMO Council entitled “What’s Critical In the Vertical: Retail Banking in Australia”. If you don’t believe there is any relevance between Australia and the United States, stop reading. For the rest of you, I feel that the report makes some very valid points.

The report surveyed 1,270 consumers and 113 bank marketers in Australia. The reports key findings focus around the need for marketers to make their marketing more relevant to their customers.

Here are a few of the findings:

• Customers are demanding higher levels of personalized service and communications. 18% of consumers feel that banks “do what I want them to do” but don’t think about their customers with any regularity.
• 81 percent of the consumers had accounts with at least two banks. “This means that both banks missed an opportunity to build additional business.”
• 88% of marketers believe that access to data and analytics is necessary for precision (one-to-one) marketing. Yet, only 27% of marketers reported investment in data analytics to better segment and target key customers. Amazingly, 100% of those that invested in analytics reported that they improved customer segmentation “to better execute targeted communications”.
• 54% of marketers are “being pressured to develop more effective retention marketing campaigns in order to secure the loyalty (and accounts) of current customers.” Yet only 26% plan to make this a priority for the year.
• Only 13% of marketers claim to know their customers – blaming this on limited access to vital resources and customer data. They lack the data, strategies and programs “to retain customer relationships or even up-sell or cross-sell products or services.”
• “Personalization is, in fact, a key strategy bank marketers will turn to in an effort to add value to customer communications and engagements….Marketing must seize the opportunity to combine relevant communications in a personalized, targeted engagement that can educate AND cross-sell services.”
• “Customer-centered Precision Marketing strategies can make a sustainable business growth plan in even the most competitive market. Regardless of data sophistication, Precision Marketing focuses more on what is known about a customer than on what is not available to the marketer.

None of this is new. But this report further verifies what LKCS has been saying for several years. We routinely help our customers identify, execute and measure targeted marketing campaigns by importing their data into DataFlex, our database marketing, reporting and tracking system. We help customers establish automated matrix marketing campaigns to retain customers and cross-sell additional products and services. And we provide cross-media solutions to deliver these precision marketing messages via direct mail, e-mail, transpromo marketing, mobile marketing, and more.

When you’re ready for affordable data analysis, effective cross-selling, personalized cross-media precision marketing, and automated marketing campaigns, contact LKCS. We do that.