8 Inspiring Examples of Effective Financial Services Marketing Campaigns

Marketers in the financial services world deal with unique challenges that many of their contemporaries in other industries worry less about. In addition to extensive regulatory compliance concerns, developing buyer trust and customer loyalty is critical for financial services marketing success.

As a result, financial services marketing pros often play more of a long-term game when using marketing techniques to position their firms as industry leaders.

After all, when you offer financial services to consumers or businesses, you play a role in their financial future. They have to trust the financial advisors they work with.  

As a result, marketing campaigns for a financial services firm must be approached in a unique way. Customers need more nurturing, and marketing campaigns need to be sharper and more in-tune to resonate. 

The financial services industry also happens to be home to some of the most creative marketing strategies in the world. Financial services marketers understand that winning customers is a long game and that reaching customers means appealing to their emotional side, as financial security is a very emotional subject for most people. Customers want to work with a financial advisor that provides stability and peace of mind. But everyone claims to offer that. So how do you stand out?

This article will look at real-world examples of marketing financial services across many common channels. You’ll likely find a few common threads among many of the campaigns discussed in this article but will find unique and creative ideas in each financial services marketing strategy that we showcase.

 Let’s look at some quality examples that have been used in the financial industry.

1. Investing Service Using Branded Social Content

Many companies put their Facebook page last in priority of their social media platforms as due to algorithm changes, organic Facebook page updates don’t have the reach they used to.

But that isn’t the case for Transamerica. 

The Transamerica Facebook page is exceptionally consumer-focused and has more than 550,000 followers. 

The company has taken a unique approach on Facebook to promoting its services. They look at personal finance through the lens of health and wellness, athletics, and charitable outreach. As a result, much of their content on Facebook tend to fall into those buckets. 

You’ll find that connecting health and financial wellness is a common thread among the examples in this article and financial services marketing in general. 

As an example, take a look at this infographic that the company published on its Facebook page. The infographic covers how to find time for exercise among your daily activities. On the surface, this would seem completely unrelated to the financial services that they offer. However, in approaching financial services from an overall health perspective, they endear themselves to their audience and make more genuine connections. In essence, Transamerica is building trust with their audience and helping them to focus on overall health, of which financial health plays an important role.

2. Financial Services Companies Utilizing Creative Video – MasterCard

MasterCard is a titan in the industry when it comes to creative financial services marketing. They have released some of the most memorable TV commercials in recent memory, but that isn’t the only video marketing Mastercard does! One area where MasterCard is certainly unique compared to the competition is in their YouTube channel.

MasterCard has been sharing financial services information and advice with consumers since 2006. Today, their channel offers a wealth of videos that cover a wide range of topics — many about financial services and financial literacy, but many others that touch on a range of important subjects to their customers while also being fun.

Much of their content is documentary-focused. They might cover a specific city, industry, or even personal bobbies on their YouTube channel. 

3. Financial Services Company Produces Thought Leadership Content and Data Visualization – JPMorgan Chase

JPMorgan Chase is an excellent example of a financial services company taking a unique approach to content. On their Research page on their website, the company produces exceptional thought leadership content and original research that helps to build credibility in very specific Industries.

For instance, the company recently published a report on gas prices in America, covering the response from consumers to the lower gas prices as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. 

This type of original research, utilizing data that the company was able to collect on its own, is content that can’t be copied or delivered by another company. It is completely original because it incorporates their own experience and insights while delivering highly useful information to specific markets.

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Financial services companies should look toward original research that they can publish for their audience to build authority with specific segments of their customer base.

4. Financial Services Marketing Agency Uses Partnerships and Email Marketing – Acorns

Acorns Is an investment app that has grown rapidly in popularity in the last few years. This is based partly on their innovative and modern marketing approaches, one of which we can see in the company’s recent email marketing campaign.

Acorns partnered with several travel and entertainment industry brands to offer specific perks and investment matching when you spend your money with another partnered brand.

For instance, if an Acorns customer spent money with Expedia, up to 4% of their total spend would be matched and placed in their Acorns account for further investment.

These simple Partnerships are achievable at a relatively small investment and can greatly improve consumer engagement through your platform and content. By advertising these partnerships directly to their customers through email, their partners also benefited from The increased incentive for customers to spend money with their brands as well.

Simple partnerships combined with effective marketing channels like email marketing can be a great way to build awareness for those partnerships in a mutually beneficial way. 

5. Combining Direct Mail and Social Media for a Fun & Effective Campaign – Barclays

Barclays is a well-known financial brand. In a recent campaign, they harnessed the power of direct mail marketing along with social media to create an innovative campaign that encouraged user-generated content and raised awareness for their services.

The company delivered a package through direct mail to choice customers that included a Diet Coke and a pack of Mentos inside a nice box with instructions.

If you know anything about placing Mentos and Coke, you know that it creates a chemical reaction that isn’t unlike the volcano experiments that you ran in elementary school as a child. Placing a single Mentos in a coke bottle will send Coke shooting out of the mouth, feet into the air.

The Barclays campaign included instructions that walked recipients through the process of running the Mentos and Coke experiment. The experiment symbolized how Barclays would help their customers “explode” their investment returns. In other words, they were trying to show the explosive results that they deliver to customers.

Those who conducted the experiment were asked to share a video on social media and share it with very specific hashtags. This campaign was a fun and innovative multi-channel campaign that garnered a lot of attention for an industry giant.

6. Creative Direct Mail Financial Services Marketing – AXA Insurance

AXA Insurance was looking to reach very specific segments of customers with a new marketing campaign — women between the ages of 25 and 40. The company sells life insurance, and many of its campaigns connect personal health with the benefits of life insurance. This campaign was no different.

The company delivered something useful to customers through direct mail — a jump rope. Meant to help their customers exercise and live a healthy life, delivering something useful to your audience is a great way to build brand loyalty, and position you as a brand that truly cares about its customers.

For financial services companies, delivering useful items through direct mail that your customers will truly appreciate is a great way to build credibility and trust with your audience.

The jump rope example is a great example of connecting your service (in this case, life insurance) to something more emotional, such as an individual’s health. They signaled that they want their customers to stay healthy and live a long and fulfilling life by delivering the jump rope.

7. Jyske Bank Private Banking Publishes Journalistic Style Videos to Capture Market Attention

“If you can’t rely on the media, you have to become the media,” JyskeBank editor-in-chief Lasse Hoegfeldt told the Content Marketing Institute. “And that’s what we are thinking.”

The company was one of the first in financial services marketing to truly embrace digital video marketing as a potential growth channel for their brand. After having trouble securing coverage from traditional media sources, the company has produced hundreds of truly insightful journalistic videos.

Even today, the company employs video marketing heavily with other channels. They focus on employing education-first strategies that position them as a trusted advisor to their audience.

In the early days of this strategy, few financial services companies had truly embraced digital video, and none had done it in a way that was so journalistic. Jyske Bank videos look like they might belong on TV, which helped them stand out from the competition.

8. Thought Leadership Interviews on LinkedIn to Connect with a Business Audience – Prudential

Prudential is one of the largest names in financial services. The company is also taking a unique approach to social media marketing, using LinkedIn to target business customers, connecting with them with a wide range of different content types.

The company has garnered over 220,000 followers, mostly by sharing industry experts’ high-level thought leadership content.

Through their “Thought Leader of the Week” campaign, which featured interviews, white papers, and articles from senior employees at the company and other financial services brands, Prudential was able to share a wealth of educational information in a very personal way. The LinkedIn audience ate it up, growing from 30,000 followers to more than 220,000 followers within six years.

This approach helps to solidify their brand as a thought leader in the industry and build their employees’ personal brands.

Effective Financial Services Marketing Doesn’t Have To Be Boring

Financial Services marketing is an industry that necessitates that many companies play it safe in their ongoing marketing campaigns. There are certain rules and regulations regarding what can and cannot be said in financial services campaigns. However, that doesn’t mean that you need to allow those restrictions to limit your creativity.

The best way for the financial services sector to run campaigns is with Postalytics. Our tools can help you reach your target audience and enhance your marketing efforts. You can create postcards, create flyers, or letters that promote your financial products to potential customers in a manner of minutes.

Our direct mail automation allows financial institutions to send bulk mail to their database. Even if you don’t have a dedicated marketing team, our system allows you to create simple financial marketing campaigns that help you use customer data to retarget cold leads.

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Sign up for a demo of our direct mail designer now, or contact us to find out more about the price of the Postalytics tool that many financial organizations are using to power up their marketing.