CASE STUDY

Data Driven Marketing
in the finance industry

Marketing professionalization and budget optimization

The financial sector faces unique marketing challenges that require in-depth expertise and “out of the box” strategies. Especially when it comes to money and investments, trust and security are crucial. The decision paths from initial contact to the closing of a contract are long, and any mistake can damage customer confidence. At the same time, an intensely competitive landscape, strict regulatory requirements and the protection of customer data require precise and well thought-out activities.

An uprising FinTech startup turned to us to professionalize its marketing through data analytics and make the best use of its large marketing budgets funded by private equity.

Thanks to the introduction of data-driven marketing, budgets are now optimally distributed, the efficiency of the marketing activities has been increased and there is more transparency both internally and towards investors.

Start your Data Driven Marketing

Overview of the most important facts

Originally, the financial services provider was looking for a reliable digital analytics implementation partner to put its web tracking on a sound foundation.

During this initial project, our consultants quickly realized that the FinTech company had a lot of untapped data potential in the areas of marketing and sales.

Further optimizations were therefore gradually suggested and implemented, which clearly contributed to achieving the company’s ambitious growth targets.

The combination of different services (data strategy, digital analytics, data engineering, data visualization) was essential and created a successful 360° approach.

Objectives

The FinTech company had very aggressive growth targets, which were driven both by the high market potential at the time of founding and by the investors. The marketing activities therefore had to generate large amounts of high-quality leads within a short time frame, which could then be processed by the sales team. The overarching common goal was to quickly acquire a solid base of new customers.

This resulted in the following goals for the introduction of data-driven marketing:

Merging data sources accurately

At the start of the project, the tracking of the financial services provider’s website needed to be set up properly. This included both the publicly accessible website and the web app, which is a closed area of the website for customers. The next step was to seamlessly connect additional marketing data sources.

Using the marketing budget efficiently

As a result of the private equity financing, the FinTech start-up was provided with a substantial marketing budget. This budget was to be distributed in such a way that the customer segments could be reached and converted most effectively across the various channels.

Sustainably increase lead and customer growth

Before the project started, the performance of the individual data sources (Google Analytics, Hubspot, Salesforce, Google Ads, financeAds, Outbrain, Bing Ads) was tracked and analyzed manually and separately. In order to obtain a unified picture of the marketing successes, the data from different systems and channels had to be consolidated.

Find out more

Approach: From the idea to the goal

As soon as the decision to introduce a data-driven marketing approach was made, it was necessary to work together on the objectives, project scope, timelines and responsibilities. Alongside an inventory of all existing processes and systems, the most important KPIs had to be defined (number of leads, number of sales, conversion rates).

The focus was then set on the following steps:

Creating a closed-loop marketing cycle for planning, data collection, analysis and customization that puts the customer at the center
Development of a measurement framework that goes beyond pure website tracking and includes sales-relevant metrics along an entire funnel
Setting up a marketing data stack based on Big Query, Airflow and dbt to integrate all relevant systems and data sources
Implementation of consent management that focuses on data protection
Conception and development of the reporting infrastructure with corresponding rights and role concepts
Automation of marketing processes with the Modern Data Stack (e.g. automated approval processes in affiliate marketing)
Continuous testing and optimization based on the results

Challenges & solutions

There were a few obstacles to overcome during the introduction of data-driven marketing. Thanks to very good, close cooperation with the financial services provider, creative solutions were quickly found and applied. The two biggest challenges at a glance:

Attribution in the sales process

The FinTech company’s core business is digital asset management, which enables private individuals to access asset classes that were previously only available to professional investors. Due to the high initial investment amount, the acquisition process for new customers is very long. It often takes several months from the initial contact to closing the deal, during which many different touchpoints (online, telephone, etc.) come into play. Marketing attribution to the various channels and activities was therefore a major challenge.

Solution: We collect user IDs, with existing consent, which are tracked across all touchpoints. This allows attribution to be tracked and assigned across multiple channels. Close cooperation with data protection officers and lawyers was necessary in order to comply with all data protection regulations and implement consent management properly.

Data quality and tracking gaps

At the start of the project, the existing data quality was a major challenge. Data was available in a wide variety of systems and types. In addition, many different cloud systems were used that were not integrated (Hubspot, Salesforce, Google Analytics, etc.). This led to numerous gaps in tracking, which meant that neither attribution was traceable nor other analyses could be carried out reliably.

Solution: A competent data analytics implementation and custom programming made it possible to merge and automate the data from a wide variety of systems in the marketing data stack.

The results are impressive

The introduction of data-driven marketing has paid off for the financial services provider in a sustainable way. Thanks to the improved professional reporting, the marketing team can now see at a glance which activities are working and where adjustments should be made. In addition, automation has freed up a lot of working time, which can now be used for strategic thinking and competitive analysis.

The most important successes:

General professionalization of marketing
Increased transparency of all marketing activities (for own employees, investors and the board)
Optimized budget allocation to the right channels, to the right target groups at the right time
Measuring of the various marketing initiatives and increased customer insights
Increased efficiency: automation reduces errors and frees up time for other important tasks

Our most important KPI: your data success!

“This project is a great example of the potential that can be tapped into thanks to our many years of expertise in the financial sector. Although the initial focus was only on digital analytics, we saw the potential for the client and advised them on an eye-to-eye basis. They now have a modern data-driven marketing framework in place that provides them with the best possible support to achieve their goals – with sustainable, measurable success.”

Jörg Hopmann, CEO
Hopmann Marketing Analytics

Data Driven Marketingin the finance industry