Globally, the Financial Technology (fintech) market was worth $127.66 billion in 2018 and is expected to grow at a rate of 25% until 2022, for a total value of $309.98 billion. The principle concern for the financial services industry is not one of growth but one of trust.
Personal finance is an area in which trust comes at a premium and confidence in financial services, and institutions is still strained by the aftermath of the financial crisis.
Bricks and mortar financial institutions are still struggling to overcome the general reservation about handing over control of one’s personal finances to companies that are still considered untrustworthy, especially among millennials.
However, building trust and a personal relationship built on trust is one area where marketing excels.
While marketing companies mostly live in the shadow of fintech SMEs when it comes to product development, the reality is that most mature businesses have been using marketing technology (martech), with significant applications for use in the financial services sector, for over a decade.
In this article, we look at how credit control automation is similar to marketing automation and how looking laterally at martech solutions for your business could be more successful than looking to your direct competitors.
Ensuring a connection
No amount of effort put into building a relationship with your customer will be effective if you are unable to establish a connection in the first place.
Both marketing automation and credit control automation are touted as solutions to overcoming connection problems between you and your customers. A great example of this is ensuring email deliverability. If your emails aren’t getting delivered, then the time and effort taken to craft and send them is money wasted.
While sending an email might seem like a simple step, there are a wide variety of variables to consider when it comes to ensuring email deliverability. Both credit control automation and marketing automation software can ensure your sender reputation is high enough to avoid ISP spam traps and ensure a consistent send schedule.
Using automation software also removes the issue of human error. The simple fact is that emails chasing payments are a repetitive process, and mistakes do creep in. Using credit control automation eliminates the risk of asking for the wrong amounts, asking for payment at the wrong time and other mistakes that impact customer trust in your business.
At the end of the day, both sectors’ automation software is there to guarantee email deliverability to connect businesses with their customers.
Nurture streams for payment enquiries
Marketing companies use automation platforms to assist with lead nurturing, an inherently fragile process. According to MarketingSherpa, almost 80% of new leads don’t lead to a purchase.
Automation allows marketers to create adaptable and flexible communication strategies to both develop and maintain relationships at scale. Those same successes can be applied to the credit control sector.
The use of the same automation as marketers can cut down on time wasted chasing manually, ensure that your customers are chased at the correct times, and generate data such as send times, email opens, and responses.
That's what Chaser has been building. Inspired by the sophistication of marketing automation platforms, Chaser looks beyond competitor offerings, but rather at the innovation that exists across all industries.
Deep personalization
Modern digital customers expect a different level of personalization to previous generations. This applies equally to both the finance and marketing sectors.
Automaton software can be used in both cases to add personal touches to communications, such as signatures, style templates, placeholders for customer data, and personalised thank you messages after payment.
Maintaining a positive and trust-based relationship with your customers has the potential to significantly future payment times in the future, keeping your accounts receivable in the black.
Chaser's sophisticated personalisation features encourages on-time payments because emails and reminders look like they've come manually from the user. It offers pre-written templates that auto-fill your desired customer information, such as the name and amount owed. Add or edit a branding theme, or simply upload your logo and you're ready to go.
Generating actionable data
With finance being such as personal and emotional subject, generating data on what works for your customers and what doesn’t is crucial.
One of the most significant benefits of automation for both marketer and those working in credit control is its ability to generate actionable data that can then be turned in measurable key performance indicators (KPIs). The use of KPIs is a vital part of tracking how well all aspects of your business are performing and are a large part of any roadmap to future success.
At the end of 2020, Chaser worked to develop more insights for credit controllers to be able to track KPIs effectively. A customer insights report is now available in app that gives our users the ability to easily identify their current and potential bad payers. Through analysis of customer trends Chaser can provide advanced insight into how customers should be treated.
Conclusion and closing thoughts
I cannot help but be surprised that whilst fintech is booming, martech's product capabilities have improved at a greater speed. Is it because of our [marketers] desire and urgency to move quickly and prove our worth? I do not know. What I can say, however, is that the revenue and cash flow is hugely impacted by both. And they are hugely similar in more ways than I originally thought.
