Webinar Recap: Findings from Relay’s Commissioned Study with Forrester, “Reverse Disengagement with Contextually Relevant Content”

It seems dormant customers – those who may still be around but simply don’t engage with the bank’s communications – are on the rise. But are banking customers truly more and more difficult to engage? Is disengagement a significant problem in the industry? At Relay, we believe it is, so we set out to test this hypothesis through our commissioned study “Reverse Disengagement with Contextually Relevant Content”, conducted by Forrester Consulting.

In the study, we take a deep dive into the challenge of disengagement in the financial services industry, what causes it, and how leaders in the banking space are reversing it. Recently, to review the results of the study, we were joined by guest speaker Peter Wannemacher, Principal Analyst at Forrester, in a Relay-hosted webinar where Wannemacher shared an analysis of the findings. The following is a recap of highlights from the discussion, but if you are interested in watching the full webinar, click this link.

While the findings were supportive of our hypothesis, including the fact that banks and credit unions know that engagement with their customers and members is crucial, and that these institutions have either already invested in, or are planning to invest in engagement solutions, the hurdles that they are facing in doing so were surprising.

The study found that engagement at banks and credit unions is primarily focused on newly acquired customers and members rather than with those existing customers. These same organizations, however, cited that fostering trust through engagement is important to them, somewhat contradicting the previous engagement prioritization. While there is no perfect formula for balancing the two, Wannemacher shared keen insights on how banks and credit unions can approach engagement with both groups effectively to foster trust.

Wannemacher divulged another way to build trust and drive-up engagement was through the delivery of contextually-relevant content. While many financial institutions have access to robust customer data, the study found that 68% of respondents face challenges delivering contextually-relevant customer communications. Wannemacher spoke on the ripe opportunity to leverage available data to build out personal and relevant experiences for customers for better and more effective engagement.

A more eye-opening finding that the study uncovered was, regardless of customer status, according to 73% of respondents, customers are increasingly opting-out of marketing communications year-over-year. Active and passive disengagement is widespread, offering an opportunity for banks and credit unions to reevaluate their strategies, as Wannemacher coined, through “subtractive innovation”: rethinking what tools they have and what value they are bringing to the company from an engagement perspective. Too many tools can actually thwart engagement efforts, leading to the opt-outs seen here.

Many times, the variety in tools is directly connected to another challenge impacting engagement at financial institutions: internal silos. Wannemacher noted that many times banks and credit unions can’t get out of their own way, which could be contributing to disengagement.

However, one thing that the majority of respondents (90%) agreed on was the opportunity for banks and credit unions to invest in new and innovative customer engagement platforms to help connect the fragmented dots, a place where we see the Relay Feed fitting right in. Head of Product Marketing at Relay, Patricia Diaz, shared more on the Relay Feed and how we see feed technology as a viable solution for the disengagement challenge.

To hear the rest of the findings and discussion, you can watch the webinar here. And if you are interested in learning more about how the Relay Feed can help your business with engagement, reach out to our team using this link.