Bigger Financial Institutions Need Better Social Media Tools

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Most financial institutions struggle to find many (if any) relevant conversations about their brands in online channels, and for them, the solutions that can be cobbled together for free are fine for keeping track of so few social mentions.

But there are others — particularly the industry’s biggest players — who may need a more substantial, professional -aliber tool to monitor the social web. That’s where an option like Radian6 can come into play.

Platforms like Radian6 allow financial institutions to create and share reports with relevant information gleaned from a broad cross-section of social conversations. Radian6 says its solution not only allows financial institutions to listen, but engage with social media communities.

“Radian6 gives companies a way to not only measure how often their products, brand and competitors are being mentioned throughout the social space, but our clients can also measure the sentiment around it, and see who is doing the talking,” a spokesperson with the company said.

Knowing what’s being said about you, Radian6 says, is the most crucial component in any financial institution’s social media strategy.

Additionally Radian6 users can scan social networks for competitive intelligence, while also measuring the progress of their own social marketing campaigns.

Today Radian6 counts approximately 125 financial services firms among its clients, however the company did not disclose how many of those might be banks vs. credit unions. Financial powerhouses like GEICO, Discover, ING Direct, TD and H&R Block should give you some indication as to who’s on the Radian6 client roster. Other Radian6 clients include heavy hitters like Dell, GE, Kodak and UPS.

Perhaps the best thing about the Radian6 is its cost. Radian6 adjusts the price of its services according to the volume of mentions each company receives. Good news for financial institutions that don’t see a lot of social traffic.

The Financial Brand has previously estimated the number of relevant social mentions a financial institution can expect averages out to around one per month for every $100 million in assets.

Radian6 was acquired by Salesforce bank in 2011 in a deal reportedly worth $326 million. Financial institutions that plan on providing an extensive social CRM program should evaluate the “Service Cloud” solution from the Radian6 parent company. More than 15,000 companies around the world, including Ally Bank, have deployed the Salesforce “Service Cloud” for social customer service.

RADIAN6 DASHBOARD

RADIAN6 – SOCIAL MEDIA & FINANCIAL SERVICES
A brief video overview of Radian6 for banks.

Listen, Monitor & Respond

With Radian6, companies can monitor and respond to social conversations in near real-time. The Radian6 search platform scours the social web for mentions of a company’s brands, products, campaigns and competitors, delivering results to a user’s dashboard almost as quickly as they happen.

How much of the web does Radian6 scan? “Any media type that is open for public viewing,” the company says.

Radian6 uses Boolean logic to exclude data unrelated to the company in question. So if, for example, your financial institution was named “First National,” Radian6 feels confident that they can isolate only the social mentions relevant to you.

Radian6 users can filter results by language, region or media type, or organize keywords into groups to monitor competitors and industry terms separately from results about their brand or campaign.

Once a report has been configured, it can be downloaded or emailed from the platform.

RADIAN6 CASE STUDY – ING DIRECT ‘THRIVE’ CHECKING

Gloria Chik, Social Media Lead at ING Direct Canada, sits down with Radian6 to answer questions about their social media strategy and successes in this 30-minute webinar recorded live on Thursday, September 8, 2011.

How Does It Work?

How does the service work from a technology standpoint? It’s a multi-part dashboard that users access directly from the Radian6 website.

The “Analytics Dashboard” is Flash-based, and the summary dashboard is HTML 5. The “Summary Dashboard” is also available for most tablets and smartphones.
There is an additional “Engagement Console” (as they call it), an application which can be installed on IOS gadgets and customized for each user.

The “Engagement Console” allows for real-time collaboration between a company’s social media team and management (for approvals, as an example). This is one way Radian6 says it makes compliance headaches a little easier for financial services companies embarking on social engagement.

Metrics are presented as bar graphs and pie charts. Users are given the opportunity to drill down on any segment to get the full picture behind each post, and if they wish, engage with the author behind any particular post.

RADIAN6 ENGAGEMENT CONSOLE

RADIAN6 TRACKING 3 DIFFERENT MARKETING CAMPAIGNS FOR ING DIRECT

RADIAN6 MONITORING SOCIAL MENTIONS OF 5 DIFFERENT BANKS

Related Articles From The Financial Brand:

• Should You ‘Join the Social Media Conversation’ If No One Is Talking About You?
• Survey Reveals Mix of Feelings, Approaches Towards Social Media in Banking
• 11 Free Tools for Monitoring Your Financial Institution’s Online Reputation
• Does Google+ Matter to Retail Financial Institutions?