From launching digital prescreen to eliminating media waste, it’s time for a financial services shake-up

We all know prescreened offers are a great way to engage with people that meet the criteria for specific financial products. But we also know they can be incredibly expensive. With these offers typically delivered via direct mail to comply with regulatory restrictions, banks and financial services brands must leave behind credit-qualified individuals that are cost-prohibitive to reach using the direct mail channel.

So what if you could use a digital prescreened acquisition solution instead? Just imagine if you could cost-effectively present prescreened offers to a credit-qualified audience, that’s up to ten times as large as with a typical direct mail campaign, with all the necessary approvals from credit bureaus and legal and compliance teams in place.

One of our customers – a prime financial services card issuer – is currently on this journey to digital-first presentment. It’s testing out ways to modernize its credit card acquisition strategy and tap into the digital opportunity in a way that complies with the regulatory restrictions of prescreen.

This card issuer started testing digital prescreened acquisition with a second-touch amplification campaign on a major retail media network (RMN). This campaign was designed to re-present prescreened credit card offers to authenticated customers that had already received an offer in the mail, while they were logged into their retail account. When customers clicked on an ad on the retail site, it took them to the card issuer’s website, where they authenticated their identity to access the same credit card offer they’d received through direct mail.

The amplification test was repeated several times and the results were impressive. The campaign achieved a net lift of 7-9% in incremental applications at the household level, over direct mail alone.

In addition to generating more applications for the promoted credit card, a number of other intriguing trends were seen within the campaign results:

• Low frequency effectiveness: The ads were highly effective at low frequency, with the majority of conversions occurring after the user had seen just one or two ads.
• Response across the household: Although the ads were targeted at the person that had received the credit-card offer, the card issuer saw response across the entire household, from anyone using the retail account.
• Interest in a variety of products: Even though the ads were designed to drive applications for a specific credit card, the campaign drove interest in a variety of other products offered by the card issuer.
• Activity across channels: The campaign increased interest in the brand and its products in a wide variety of channels – from search engines to comparison sites – not just on the retail platform.

Overall, the campaign delivered the type of holistic engagement we would expect to see from a branding campaign, with benefits extending beyond those usually seen with prescreened credit card offers.

So how did our customer achieve this? The answer is simple. They used a relatively new Acxiom solution we call Direct Connectors.

Direct Connectors is an innovative solution that helps brands maximize efficiency by reaching their customers directly across the digital ecosystem. It provides an alternative to the imprecise, non-transparent methods of traditional onboarding which leave brands wasting their budgets talking to vast, nebulous audiences that may or may not be interested in their products and services.

The brands that use Acxiom for services such as identity resolution and enhancement can use Direct Connectors to pass audiences straight to their chosen publisher platforms using direct integrations or APIs. Deterministic matching between the Acxiom Addressable Universe of 340+ million individuals and the publisher’s authenticated user base means brands know exactly who they’re talking to.

This deterministic matching means Direct Connectors can be used for large-scale digital prescreened acquisition campaigns like the one described above. Financial services companies can comply with all the necessary regulations without the high costs and limited reach associated with direct mail.

There are three elements that make Direct Connectors a more effective solution than traditional onboarding.

• Direct relationships: Brands can avoid existing onboarding processes that are slow, imprecise, and rely on too many non-transparent, third-party intermediaries.
• Speed: 90% of audiences are available on the platform in 48 hours, compared with the days or even weeks required for traditional onboarding.
• Brands have control: Brands have full control over their data and their audiences from start to finish. They are able to be platform agnostic, consistently reaching the same audience across different publishers and platforms.

Which platforms can brands connect with?

With Direct Connectors, we’ve already established direct pipes to a variety of digital publishers, RMNs, social platforms, and advanced TV providers – from Google, Amazon, and Meta to Comcast, NBCUniversal, Samsung. and LG. And we’re continually expanding the number and variety of premium publishers and platforms we work with.

We’d encourage banks and financial services brands to test out a variety of publishers and platforms and compare the results to find out which ones are most effective at reaching and engaging their unique audiences.

The card-issuer we discussed earlier (the one that saw such success with an RMN) is now exploring other platforms to really understand the role of publisher choice in driving campaign performance. This type of testing will validate the campaign’s results and answer questions around whether platform selection was a major driver for the trends witnessed throughout the campaign.

For instance, is it possible that there is a halo effect associated with trusted retailers that encourages users to explore other products offered by a brand even if they aren’t interested in the specific product or service on offer? Is household engagement at the account level a unique benefit of RMNs, or do other publishers and platforms have a similar model? And does advertising as a non-endemic brand on a retail site provide a performance boost?

These are all questions we aim to explore with our customers as they use Direct Connectors to reach specific audiences across a variety of publishers and platforms.

While digital prescreened acquisition is a great use case for Direct Connectors, it’s far from the only way banks and financial services providers can benefit from the solution. One of the most effective ways we’re seeing brands use Direct Connectors is to boost the efficiency of their campaigns, and eliminate the media waste that plagues the ecosystem.

Anyone involved in the digital advertising industry knows that there’s waste and audience distortion happening via the traditional onboarding channels. But quantifying it has always been a challenge. Now, with Acxiom customers running campaigns via Direct Connectors, we’re finally able to put some numbers behind that media waste and quantify the efficiency gains that can be achieved by going direct.

Take the example of a large retail bank that was experiencing distortion of audiences via traditional onboarding. It ran a month-long test campaign where it launched the same audiences through Direct Connectors as through its traditional onboarder – allocating the same budget to each – so it could compare performance. Let’s take a look at some of the results.

25% reduction in CPA

Early signs of success came from higher CPM values for Direct Connectors audiences. This may sound counterintuitive but, through performance tracking, DSP algorithms are capable of recognizing audiences with higher likelihood to engage. They are therefore willing to bid more to acquire those valuable audiences, so higher CPMs are a positive sign.

Despite these higher CPMs, the cost per acquisition (CPA) – with an acquisition defined as a customer submitting a form – was 25% lower with Direct Connectors than with the onboarder. $11 vs $15 to be more precise. Delivering fewer impressions overall but still achieving a lower CPA indicates the campaign was reaching more of the right people – those most likely to engage.

44% increase in booked accounts

The bank got 44% more booked accounts from the Direct Connectors test than from the traditional onboarder. And bear in mind that was from 30% fewer impressions. The cost per booked account was almost 30% lower – at $57 with Direct Connectors compared with around $80 for the onboarder.

To put those figures into context, $1,000 spent through Direct Connectors for this campaign would result in 17 booked accounts, compared with just 12 using traditional onboarders.

More realistic reach and match rates

More impressions were served with the onboarder than with Direct Connectors, but conversions were lower. This is indicative of over-inflated onboarder match rates which are not necessarily an indicator of campaign success. Maximizing matches is often the main objective for onboarders, which means they tend to work on the basis of incentivized imprecision.

By connecting with their audiences directly, rather than using onboarders, brands get genuine matches. And because they’re connecting directly with real people that are likely to engage with their message or offer, they can spend less to get the same results. Or spend the same and get better results. A nice choice to be faced with!

The campaign results these financial services brands are seeing serve to dispel the myth that addressable digital isn’t worth the effort. With our customers seeing a 20-30% reduction in CPAs with Direct Connectors, it clearly has the potential to deliver sizable savings, or to allow brands to achieve far more with the same budgets.