For the past several years, consumers have felt the impact of economic peaks and valleys. From record-low prices and stimulus money to rapidly increasing inflation, it's been hard for consumers to keep up.
Despite this, consumer optimism remains up based on the Consumer Confidence Index (CCI), which standing at 106.4 as of this past May. What’s more is that the credit card industry seems to be on the rebound. Consumer demand in Q1 2022 has led to a record 197 million consumers with access to credit cards.
It has many marketers wondering how they can connect with customers regardless of the ebb and flow, especially for those in the financial services industry. The ability to accurately recognize individuals who are searching for credit card products can drive acquisition, increased card utilization and retention at scale.
People are still spending money, which means financial services companies have two options to drive payment revenue goals: You can efficiently attract high value, net-new cardholders and reactivate existing cardholders to become top of wallet.
Meaningful recognition matters
Financial services can recognize which prospects are searching for new credit cards while also pushing messages to their current cardholders regarding the card benefits most likely to drive increased utilization and retention.
With the help of accurate people-based recognition, real-time digital signals to understand consumer behavior and advanced analytics and intelligence, brands can drive acquisition, utilization and retention at scale.
One Epsilon financial services client used people-based recognition to target individuals outside their normal audience to activate interest in one of their credit cards.
Ultimately that resulted in 130% over the credit card approval goal, 23% under the cost per acquisition goal, and 197k+ estimated incremental approvals.
The value of messaging current cardholders
Acquiring a new cardholder can be more expensive than retaining an existing cardholder so there’s great value in accurately recognizing inactive cardholders.
One of Epsilon's financial services clients wanted to understand the value of messaging inactive credit cardholders in terms of cost to reactivate as well as how this will affect their future transactions. Using Epsilon's deep understanding of 200+ million real people and online and offline data, we accurately identified the right audience and delivered personalized display, CTV, and video which allowed the company to deliver the right message to this audience.
As a result, the client saw 50% of these inactive cardholders begin transacting on their own credit cards with some of the cost per reactivation being as low as $1.54. Not to mention this partnership also resulted in an iROAS goal 92% higher than what was initially set.
The relatively low reactivation costs of reactivating lapsed buyers with significant boosts to incremental card transactions illustrate that there is value in targeting cardholders who no longer made purchases on their credit card across their credit card portfolio.
Finding a strong strategy that works regardless of the current economic conditions creates a more persistent relationship, one that helps reactivate inactive cardholders, find new consumers in need of credit cards and maintains existing ones. And, when done correctly, these strategies can adjust to what is happening in real-time.
Ready to find out more about how Epsilon can help your financial services company reach customers at every step in their journey, using AI to help acquire new customers and ensure they keep coming back for more? Get in touch with us today for a complimentary consultation.
