Digital Tactics for Measuring Traditional Bank Marketing

If your bank allocates marketing dollars towards billboard, print ads, television, radio, or direct mail, then you already know it’s a real challenge to accurately measure the impact of these traditional marketing channels. You’ve likely heard from your local ad agency that the true value of their multi-channel campaign is more about “branding” than actual ROI. While branding and local awareness certainly have their place in marketing strategy, getting executive buy-in for your marketing plan becomes a whole lot easier with measurable results.

Try adding these digital tactics to your existing bank marketing campaigns to more effectively capture the true impact for your financial institution.

Get Prospects to Your Website

Create memorable URLs to include on your direct mailers, billboards, radio spots, and other campaigns. Ideally, your campaign is using a landing page specifically built for each campaign to ensure a consistent experience for prospects. Any person that hits your campaign landing page can then be tracked using website analytics.

Don’t have the resources to create individual landing pages for each campaign? No problem! Use a simple redirect to forward users from your memorable campaign URL to another page on your website. By appending URL parameters to the forwarded URL you can then track the source of these visitors regardless of where they go on your website.

Here’s a simple example. I could use the URL bankbound.com/amazing as my campaign URL for a postcard sent to bank marketing directors, encouraging them to partner with us to make their bank’s online presence amazing. After setting up a page-level redirect, anyone who attempts to visit bankbound.com/amazing will automatically be forwarded to: https://www.bankbound.com/?utm_source=mail&utm_medium=postcard&utm_campaign=be-amazing-mailing

This doesn’t interrupt the user experience at all, but it does allow me to properly attribute this visitor to my postcard mailing in Google Analytics.

Additionally, remarketing ads can be used to entice website visitors from a specific campaign to come back to the website after they’ve left. You can create remarketing audiences from a wide range of variables; for the example shared above I could create a remarketing audience of only visitors who viewed the postcard landing page but did not submit a contact form. This audience would then see ads that support my “be amazing” campaign on other websites and apps.

Capture Results Outside of Your Website

Regardless of how many people respond to your marketing campaign by visiting your website, a certain percentage of visitors are not going to complete a contact form or online application. This is especially true for mobile users and certain demographics that aren’t comfortable sharing their personal information through a website. Many of these visitors may prefer to simply pick up the phone to speak with someone. Don’t miss the opportunity to capture phone call leads that were generated from your marketing campaign; use a call tracking number!

Tracking numbers simply forward users to your real phone number, but along the way they can capture details about the caller’s location, call duration, number, and other details. Many call tracking providers can even record the entire call which is great for training purposes and lead qualifying. Call tracking services are an additional expense that is a smart investment for proving ROI. However, if you don’t have funds available for call tracking right away you can build a case by using the free dynamic call tracking that Google provides to Google Ads advertisers.

Lead forms and tracking numbers are certainly great tools, but let’s not forget about branch visits. By offering customers a special offer they can physically bring to a branch you’ll be able to accurately measure exactly how much new business was generated from your campaign.