Using ‘Identity Resolution’ to Fix Your Bank’s Marketing Blind Spots
By Justin Estes, Contributor at The Financial Brand
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Need to Know
- Financial institutions are overwhelmed by ‘marketing chaos’ driven by fragmented tech stacks and disjointed customer data.
- Marketing teams are often juggling as many as 16 different martech tools, according to research.
- Identity resolution has become the make-or-break foundation for personalization, compliance, targeting and ROI.
- Banks that modernize identity data see major performance lifts—clearing the way for AI adoption, better branding and full-funnel growth.
On a recent episode of the Banking Transformed podcast, host Jim Marous spoke with Harmon Lyons, vice president of strategy and market development at TransUnion, about why identity resolution has become the critical foundation for effective financial services marketing and how institutions can achieve up to 40% improvements in completing customer profiles.
Q: What exactly is meant by “marketing chaos” in financial services and why has it become such a big issue?
HARMON LYONS: The chaos in the industry is insane to say it broadly. We actually conducted research with Forrester that discussed how brands are utilizing over 16 different martech stacks solely for marketing purposes within their organizations.
So, 16 different technical platforms are required just to do marketing effectively; that’s a lot. And you can’t do it well with that much, considering all the different fragmentation.
When we talk about chaos, it’s about bringing clarity to it. How do we distill that down to something that’s both easier to use and ultimately easier to understand and give marketers a platform on which they can do that?
Q: How does identity resolution actually work and why is it the foundation for everything?
LYONS: Yes, and it’s important beyond just marketing. So, if you think about identity at its core, it is the basis for everything that you want to do as an organization. You need to know who your customers are, who you’re talking to and have that almost exact match.
Take identity resolution, for example, such as when someone changes their name upon getting married. So, it’s Jane Doe, now it’s Jane Smith, is that the same person? Is that a different person? And that’s a really rudimentary one. It could involve multiple name changes and address changes. How do you connect those dots?
And so, the identity resolution really helps do that. It’s this common data set that allows you to tie in these multiple pieces of identity that are fragmented across your life. Whether I’m Harmon Lyons somewhere, Harmon P. Lyons somewhere else, connecting those with multiple data points across the board.
Whether that’s online or offline, being able to know who that person is to make good financial decisions as a financial institution, but then even more so as a marketer, how do you send the right message to the right person?
And if you don’t have that resolved, you could be wasting money. That’s the idea of getting identity right at its core; it’s super important across the board.
The 40% Identity Resolution Lift
Q: You’ve helped clients achieve up to a 40% identity resolution increase. What’s actually happening behind the scenes to drive that improvement?
LYONS: Yeah. And it’s a great statistic, and one we’re extremely proud of. It’s actually really simple. Imagine I go onto a bank website, and they’ve got a great CD rate that they’re offering. I want to find out more. I type in my email, send me more information, and often that’s it. I obtained the necessary information, but the bank only received the email from me; that was the only piece of information they obtained.
I gave it to them so they can now have this conversation because I asked them to send me information, but they don’t know anything else. So, now, it’s how do you complete those records? If I’m not willing to provide more information, how do they learn more about me to move forward? And that’s where the identity resolution comes in.
They partner with a company like TransUnion that, “Hey, I know that email. I know who that person is. I know where they live, I can now complete that data set for that bank so they have a fuller picture of who I am.”
Now, the use cases encompass a variety of permitted use cases when utilizing that data. It doesn’t mean they can send me direct, personalized marketing information, but from an insights perspective, they now know they have someone with more information about me somewhere who’s interested in their products; they can start tailoring their communications a little more effectively than they could before.
Q: If you had to pick one piece of missing customer data that provides the biggest lift in results, what would it be?
LYONS: That’s a really good question. Everybody’s a bit different, so it all depends on their tactics to fill in what’s missing and what’s not. However, the crucial piece is the ability to communicate effectively. So, it’s a phone number or an email. To me, the phone number is the thing that ties me to me.
People often have multiple email addresses that they use for various purposes, but their phone numbers tend to remain consistent. So, if you can get the phone number correct, that’s a significant differentiator in my mind, and one you want to fill.
And that’s from an identity perspective, because emails are easy to get; I know I have a bunch of them, and I use them for different reasons. I have one phone number. If you can get to me that way, that’s a great way to identify who I am.
Dig deeper:
- The Identity-Driven Marketing Playbook
- 10 Practical Prompts to Fight the Rise of AI ‘Workslop’ in Bank Marketing
- The Omnichannel Gap Is Growing Faster Than Banks Can Close It
Full Funnel Strategy For Regional Banks
Q: Why is incorporating upper funnel brand awareness so crucial when institutions have traditionally emphasized lower funnel acquisition tactics?
LYONS: The full funnel is extremely important, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re a credit union, a regional bank, or a large national bank; that top-of-funnel branding communication is all about building trust. It’s building trust and building awareness.
And if you think about it from a conversion standpoint, if I receive a piece of mail, whether it’s direct mail, an email, or even a text from an institution I don’t know, nothing’s happening from that; I’m not taking that next step. It’s about having that awareness of who they are, whether that’s within my community or more broadly.
Today, more than ever, branding can be accomplished on a limited budget. You can really get into branding because of how well you can target these days. TV used to be out of reach because it was either a national or regional buy, and it was extremely expensive.
You and I are being targeted with video ads on streaming services that are directly sent to us. They can be a regional bank telling that story on not a large budget, and they’re building a connection, they’re building an emotional connection, and that’s really the top of the funnel piece.
Our research reveals that top-of-the-funnel marketing effectively increases conversions at the bottom of the funnel.
Q: How can a community bank or small regional bank improve brand awareness on a limited budget?
LYONS: It’s different for everybody in terms of the size of their budget, what they could pull off, but I’ve seen the regional banks still sponsoring stadiums, like the regional sports complexes, that happen. You see outdoor ads, you see local streaming ads; all of those are top-of-funnel type opportunities, and in the right mix, it’s really a test-and-learn approach.
So, I can’t go and say, “Hey, you should put 30% into the top of the funnel and you’re 70% in the bottom of the funnel.” What you want to do is start, try it, see how the performance works, and figure out what it takes to drive it. Because if you can get the results at 20% top of the funnel with 80% at the bottom, hey, then you didn’t make that big of a change to your overall marketing budget, and you’re improving your results.
You need to have that top-of-the-funnel presence; you have to build that awareness. It doesn’t have to be streaming TV, although that’s a great way of doing it. It could be billboards, it could be community outreach – there are many ways to build your brand and establish trust with both current and potential customers.
AI Natives And The Next 12 Months
Q: What excites you about what’s coming down the road with regard to financial marketing and the use of data?
LYONS: I love that question, and there’s a lot that excites me about what’s coming and also a little bit what scares me about what’s coming, but it’s that constant learning piece that you’re talking about that you have to do in order to stay ahead of this.
AI obviously is super exciting. How do you use it? How do you use it effectively? And then if you look at the kids in college now who are going to be AI natives, this is how they’re living and learning. We’re picking this up as we’re running right now, but this is a part of how they’re moving through college.
I was at a summit where Sam Altman was speaking (who’s the CEO of OpenAI), and he gave an example, he’s like, “12 months ago, ChatGPT was not enterprise-ready, it was a good use case, but it wasn’t good enough to be used in the enterprise. Here we are 12 months later, and it’s being used across the enterprise. It is now fully adopted across the enterprise.”
And what 12 months from now will look like, nobody knows, but it will be exponentially farther along than we are today in terms of understanding those use cases. And what we’re talking about today, identity resolution, how much easier does that get? How much quicker does that happen? Deploy audience, targeting messaging, how fast can that happen?
Q: If you’re a CMO at a mid-sized institution feeling overwhelmed by data fragmentation and compliance concerns, what’s the first piece of advice you’d give them?
LYONS: To me, it’s always the foundation. What are the fundamentals and foundations that you need to build your business effectively? It always comes back to identity. None of this, not even AI, likes any of this. If you get the identity wrong, it goes off the rails.
To me, that’s the focus, and those are the conversations I have with community banks. It’s where do you start? Let’s start and make sure that the data is accurate. If we can get the accuracy and resolve identity, and we have that as a starting point, just think of all the places you can go from there.
But if you’ve got that wrong, the messaging you send out’s going to be wrong, who you’re targeting is going to be wrong, the measurement’s going to be wrong. So, you’ve got to start with that core layer. And it makes the conversation a lot easier and a lot more palatable. For someone who’s overwhelmed by everything that’s going on around them, let’s focus right here at the core and get that right.
