By Paige Pace
Digital reach enables businesses to connect with customers anywhere. Developing a strong online presence was essential for the National Bank of Canada to engage customers and encourage growth across the country, particularly in areas with low numbers of bricks-and-mortar branches.
National Bank deployed Adobe Experience Cloud to help build a digital foundation for expanding its reach. But as Eboni Boicel, its senior director, digital marketing explained, simply having solutions deployed wasn’t enough.
“Insights about the customer now drive strategic decisions, whether that means changing the messaging on the web site or expanding mobile accessibility,” said Boicel. “With Adobe’s integrated solutions, we could achieve greater results by transitioning to a data-centric culture.”
With Adobe’s guidance, National Bank simplified its implementation, relying on integrations that allow its marketing teams to take advantage of new features and updates from Adobe. Encouraging greater use of data also led to bank staff putting a greater emphasis on enabling customers’ personal preferences.
“Working with Adobe was a key aspect of our digital transformation for National Bank,” said Boicel. “Our goal is to continue the digital transformation to bring our knowledge into every area of business and push digital growth to the next level.”
Focusing on the customer
Combining Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Target and Adobe Analytics, National Bank uses customer behaviours to guide digital optimization. It has rebuilt most of its public sites using Adobe Experience Manager Sites. The nimble Experience Manager Sites capability makes it easy to create and update web pages in both French and English.
“Using the integrated Adobe Experience Cloud solutions, we can put fresh content on the web, measure it, optimize it and deliver seamless messaging across marketing channels,” said Boicel.
Standardizing on a single content management solution allows digital marketers to quickly create new content for the web. They can also develop variations for testing, from changing the call to action on a new account page to changing banners advertising new services with Adobe Target.
“Previously we would build our web sites according to how we wanted to present our products to the public,” explained Boicel. “We’re now using Adobe Experience Cloud to test and build client-focused web sites based on data-centric insights. By changing images and content to personalize the web site experience we can make the customer feel like we understand them and we’re talking directly to them.”
Adobe Target pulls in real-time data from Adobe Analytics to determine which option better connects with customers and leads to higher conversions. National Bank performed 50 tests in the first year after starting its new digital strategy, enabling it to optimize numerous experiences.
“Using Adobe Experience Manager, Target and Analytics we can build tests and measure performance throughout the conversion funnel to pinpoint areas where customers may drop out,” said Boicel. “By understanding why we’re losing customers, we can address issues and improve conversions online.”
Increased conversions, lowered costs through personalization
National Bank also pulls data from Adobe Analytics into Adobe Audience Manager, Adobe’s data management platform (DMP), to build unique audience profiles and identify audience segments. The Adobe Marketing Cloud ID (MCID) unifies user behaviour across web sites and platforms to create a 360-degree anonymized view of consumers. By activating these high value segments in Adobe Target, National Bank is personalizing content for customers, whether they’re a Millennial exploring new account options or a startup company trying to find the right services for its growing business.
“Introducing Adobe Audience Manager as our DMP has kicked off such a rapid change in our culture,” said Boicel. “Everyone is excited about how we can use audiences and personalization to better reach our customers.”
Adobe’s solutions have helped National Bank see dramatically increased conversions. They have also enabled it to reduce costs. It saw a 30% decrease in the cost-per-optimization and lowered development expenses. In one example, the bank created a new partner credit card offering, but it was not available in one jurisdiction
. The bank used location-based audience segmentation to create a proof of concept that worked perfectly, rendering an additional $150,000 in development costs unnecessary.
National Bank is also using Adobe Advertising Cloud to bring media buying campaigns in-house. Using in-house resources improves agility while decreasing outsourcing costs.
“The way that all Adobe solutions work together and share information is a key advantage for us,” said Boicel. “We can use each solution’s strengths to gain a holistic view of our audiences and how we are performing in digital environments. We can even connect Adobe Experience Cloud to third-party systems with ease. We plan to continue expanding our use of data to drive smart decisions and reach customers across Canada.”
Paige Pace is senior manager, customer engagement programme at Adobe www.adobe.com.
