A 200-year-old bank had just teamed up with an international airline, resulting in tens of thousands of new potential customers, many of whom had no previous contact with the bank. How did this financial institution use their momentum to reach and win them over?
Aktia is a Finnish asset manager, bank and life insurer with two centuries of history and pedigree. At the time of Aktia’s new deal with Finnair there was significant turmoil in the banking business, and a lot of potential customers were shopping around for new partners in wealth management. Aktia was about to get a lot of new customers with an internationally traveling, interesting profile. The problem was that many of them were not familiar with Aktia beyond the credit card service their Finnair frequent traveler card offered.
Targeted data-saving years of work
To increase the impact of this collaboration Aktia wanted to offer more services to both their old and new customers. To catch their attention, customers had to be approached with only interesting and relevant news specific to their individual needs. To achieve this, customer profiles and targeting data had to be consolidated into a single database, kept up-to-date, and made easily accessible for marketing.
“We wanted to improve marketing automation and needed more efficient tools for marketing campaigns” says Petteri Patjas, Director IT Business Value Streams at Aktia. Conventional marketing methods were out of the question, simply because they were taking too long. “Without efficient marketing automation and customer targeting we’d have been dead in the water. It would have taken years to go through the different sales databases”, explains Patjas.
From spreadsheets to Customer Insights
Recommended by Microsoft Finland as a one of the preferred partners in Dynamics 365, Bofor’s financial solutions team worked with Aktia. To collect and consolidate all relevant customer data into unified customer profile. All relevant customer data is now easily accessible, and available across the different functions of the bank.
“The new Customer Insights system was successful in many different ways. The process of designing a marketing campaign is the same, but the detailed and up-to-date information makes it much simpler to reach the exact target audience. We were able to increase the efficiency of our marketing automation, and got a completely new tool for creating campaigns”, exclaims Patjas, and continues: “it changed our perspective on managing customer data and underscored how crucial it is that all data is valid and the details correct.”
Making the customers happy
Aktia’s new approach to improved customer data management also benefits the customer. Better targeting results in relevant marketing and messages that are interesting to the target group. Patjas comments: “The frequent flyers are very potential customers to Aktia with all the different services they can benefit from. We can now approach them with our full portfolio in wealth management, insurance, and banking.”
“We get great feedback from our customers, they seem very happy with our relevant marketing”, says Patjas. “The number of our customers is growing, and ever more customers are opting for more of Aktia’s services.”
Efficiently into the future
Bofor’s financial solutions team has since expanded into other projects with Aktia. Petteri Patjas comments on the collaboration: “What raised our initial interest was Bofor’s expertise and know-how. The Customer Insights project went as planned and was very successful, and the Bofor team proved themselves by being innovative, agile, and very uncomplicated to work with. We’ll certainly continue to work with Bofor in the future.”
In conclusion Petteri Patjas summarizes the Customer Insights project: “When all data is available in one place, using every tool with the right information for every campaign and target group is simpler. We work much more efficiently now that the data architecture and governance is sorted.
Contact the Bofor Financial Team: markus.savolainen@bofor.com
Aktia on suomalainen varainhoitaja, pankki ja henkivakuuttaja, joka on luonut vaurautta ja hyvinvointia sukupolvelta toiselle jo 200 vuoden ajan. Palvelemme asiakkaitamme digitaalisten kanavien kautta kaikkialla ja kasvokkain toimipisteissämme pääkaupunkiseudulla sekä Turun, Tampereen, Vaasan ja Oulun seuduilla. Palkitun varainhoitomme rahastoja myydään myös kansainvälisesti. Työllistämme noin 860 henkilöä eri puolella Suomea. Aktian hallinnoitavat asiakasvarat (AuM) 31.3.2024 olivat 14,1 miljardia euroa ja taseen arvo 12,1 miljardia euroa. Aktian osake noteerataan Nasdaq Helsinki Oy:ssä (AKTIA). aktia.com.