How financial services firms can use mobile beyond servicing
April 17, 2009
Michael Foschetti is managing director of Mobisix
Nine out of the top ten U.S. banks either offer mobile banking services or are working towards this goal, and are building WAP sites or applications with those capabilities.
This race to parity is indicative of the U.S. banking industry, soon leading to account access via mobile for all bank customers. But what other opportunities exist for banks to leverage the power of mobile ?
Historically, banks have not been the first to adopt emerging media. Many people even doubt mobile can deliver anything outside of on-the-go services in the financial industry.
However, with mobile proving itself as a powerful customer engagement and direct response mechanism across industries, there is no reason to believe it can't be leveraged to drive acquisition in the banking sector.
Mobile is currently a cost-center for the banking industry requiring funds to build, maintain, analyze and securitize mobile sites and account transactions.
Today mobile is not proving to be a cost-savings, which it has the potential to be, nor is it a profit-and-acquisition center -- something financial services companies want it to become.
Mobile can become that desired state if banks use mobile to sell mobile.
While I was at XM Satellite Radio, we learned early on that we needed to use radio to sell radio. Banks can implement new mobile offers, deals, and advertisements through existing mobile services.
By also advertising on mobile sites outside their own, companies can reach mobile-friendly users on their terms.
The Hispanic segment, for example, is well-known for over-indexing on mobile, and for being very weary of U.S. financial services companies.
Targeted offers or ads available via mobile phones may help break down this barrier and become a crucial factor in Hispanic customer acquisition.
We can also look at the 18-34 age group. They are twice as likely to become mobile bankers.
Focusing initial mobile banking customer acquisition efforts on this demographic will provide the best initial returns. Exponential growth in nearly all demographics should soon follow.
Mobile marketing in the financial services industry may evolve where companies use specific mobile communities to create proprietary mobile media networks that deliver targeted opt-in messages.
A real-time decisioning infrastructure delivering personalized messages and offers to each customer will revolutionize today's financial services business model.
Whether John Smith receives an ad or promotion discussing the latest CD, credit card or checking account will depend on his recent actions, account balance and profile data. Every message will be targeted and selected from interactive data.
The opportunity is certainly here for mobile to explode in the financial services industry. The reward for early adopters undeniably outweighs the risk.
Michael Foschetti is managing director of interactive and mobile at Mobisix, a mobile marketing agency in Charlotte, NC. Reach him at .