Thursday, June 25, 2020

Three Ways to Align Marketing With Profitability

The inability to connect Marketing activities to the bottom line is what I frequently hear from bankers that think the Marketing Department is a cost center. Measurement is difficult. 

I also hear that silos are a problem in banking. Yet Marketing is frequently held to account for the ROI of the checking or home equity campaign. And branch bankers say they weren't consulted nor were they included in promotion planning. They often hear of the campaign on the radio while driving home. 

If you read my articles, watch my videos, or have heard me speak you know I'm a big proponent of the Marketing function taking a more prominent role in banks because customer acquisition and the customer experience has changed so much in the past decade. There must be an integrated, cross functional approach to acquiring, onboarding, and serving customers well to deepen relationships and turn them into champions of your brand. And that includes support functions. Nothing is more frustrating than turning a raving fan customer into a cynic because they get buzz sawed by the wire transfer person at HQ.

I have a bias towards profitability and against widgets. I remember doing a process review at a bank where one branch had hundreds of checking accounts with $100 or less. When I asked... you know the answer, right? A CD promotion that required opening a checking account. Widget counting. If the branch manager was accountable for consistently improving the profitability of her branch, and the Marketer was responsible for the continuous profit improvement of retail checking, this wouldn't have happened. Because having hundreds of low balance retail checking accounts attracts cost, with little revenue. But I bet you the CD promotion report had none of this.

So here is what I suggest:


1. Make profitability the ultimate accountability. 


Mandatory disclosure, my firm measures line of business, product, and feeds to customer profitability systems. And I work diligently with banks to analyze, adjust, and improve their profit trends using this information. Because I believe it is the way to go. Imagine if Marketing were responsible for the continuous improvement of the home equity line of credit product (see table).



The pushback from using profit and profit trend as the ultimate accountability, and not just from Marketing mind you, is that there are so many things outside the control of the marketer. True. But isn't that the case for any line of business with their profit and loss responsibilities? I have no control over the D&O insurance premium at my firm. But I'm sure as heck responsible for the firm's profitability. Which leads me to my second way to hold Marketing accountable.


2.  Implement Product Management. 


Which is totally related to (1) above. If Marketing was accountable for managing the HELOC product, wouldn't they engage in cross-functional collaboration to improve the profit picture? For example, in examining the above table, it is clear that the Bank has done a good job at increasing the product's spread. Fee income has been flat. And operating expense as a percent of the portfolio has been rising, even as the portfolio has been growing. Aha! What is afoot? Is credit underwriting manual? Do customers apply online and the loan moves seamlessly and electronically through the bank's underwriting, closing, and booking process? Does someone in loan servicing spend half their time on insurance tracking? i.e. are your processes scalable and efficient? Did you have a $100,000 marketing spend to generate 10 loans? All would be on the table as the person responsible for the continuous profit improvement collaborates with all areas of the bank that touch the product to improve the profit trend. And if the HELOC profit trend improves, branches will be more profitable (if they are the line of business responsible for HELOC origination).


3.  Identify Root Causes and Track Improvement. 


I'm currently reading the book Everything They Told You About Marketing Is Wrong by Ron Shevlin. In it, Ron says "The key to future profitability isn't in simply keeping customers-it's from deepening their relationships. And engagement is a necessary precondition for that to happen." There's that profitability word. What was Ron thinking? But fine, let's assume that "engagement" is key to keeping and deepening relationships. What the heck is engagement? Ron says it's whatever the bank thinks it is. And here was the chart from the book to highlight the point: 


I took a picture from my Kindle. Don't judge.

I asked Ron how to measure it, and he sent me a slide deck that showed it was measured by survey. If there was evidence that there was a strong correlation between engagement and customer profitability, I think the savvy marketer can measure it without having to perform surveys in today's AI and CRM world. But let's assume engagement deepens and lengthens a relationship. Let's look at the profit trend of a business interest checking product.


This product is much more profitable than the HELOC. In terms of ROE, fuhgetaboutit. So profitability should drive what marketing initiatives you implement.

Back to increasing engagement to increase profitability. If Marketing was responsible for assisting bankers migrate customers from low, to medium, to high engagement, how would that impact the profit picture? For one, it would lessen the operating expense as a percent of the product portfolio, because there would be no Know Your Customer, Address Checks, promotions to win a new customer, etc. And second, the deposit spread would increase because the duration (CFO term) of the product would increase, yielding a greater FTP Credit for Funds. 

By increasing the profitability of Business Interest Checking, you also increase the profitability of branches that are generally responsible for deposits, and possibly the commercial lender if the bank measures their portfolio profitability, including the deposits they brought in. 

So identify root causes with high correlation to improving product profitability, and measure Marketing on them. 


This level of accountability breaks down silos as Marketing now works with various departments within the bank to improve the profit picture, and aligns Marketing interests with those of profit centers (i.e. no hundreds of low balance checking accounts). When product and therefore line of business profitability goes up, so goes the bank.

What's stopping you?


~ Jeff















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