Studies show that people see anywhere between 6,000 to 10,000 ads per day (Forbes, 2022). It’s symbolic of the ear-splitting barrage consumers are exposed to in the digital era, as hungry marketers fight for their attention.
Although this is prevalent across all industries, finance is particularly competitive. Why? Because when you’re managing people’s money, you’re managing their future. Trust needs to be built and lots of it.
But splatter-spraying customers with the same generic marketing campaigns won’t suffice. Personalized marketing is what cuts through the clutter and financial institutions know this.
Around 80% of banks will scale their personalized marketing experiences across every stage of the customer lifecycle (Forrester, 2023). This comes as no surprise, given the power of personalized marketing to maximize client engagement – a strategy that delivers tailored content aligned with each client’s unique needs and position in their journey.
Lifecycle marketing is rooted in data. But to be effective the data must be accurate, accessible, and delivered in real time. However, many CMOs fail to fully leverage a lifecycle marketing strategy due to their fragmented tech stack.
It's a frustrating situation where insights are scattered across disparate tools and platforms, making data gathering time-consuming and prone to errors. As a result, many CMOs are turning to solutions like HubSpot due to its ability to unify data within a single system. Data is accurate, accessible, and delivered in real time.
With this consolidated system, client insights are clearly illustrated through visuals to allow you to interpret data from various touchpoints, draw meaningful connections, and make informed decisions that drive personalized client engagement.
In this blog, we’ll explore how a unified tech stack is the secret to achieving personalized lifecycle marketing success and how HubSpot can help turn prospects into clients.
Customer lifecycle marketing is the crux of maximizing revenue. Financial CMOs know this but many aren’t able to leverage this sophisticated marketing approach due to their disjointed tech stack. Although lifecycle marketing remains possible in this scenario, it is fraught with challenges that hamper progress, making the path forward difficult to navigate.
Inconsistent data leads to incorrect assumptions about a client’s financial situation. Such a scenario is the byproduct of a fragmented tech stack – a digital infrastructure that’s built upon a minefield of scattered data silos. It’s a situation that’s becoming more prominent due to the explosion in SaaS tools, which help firms drive higher productivity at a lower cost.
The ingenuity in SaaS has been nothing short of phenomenal. However financial services businesses are faced with one stark problem - the more tools you use, the more fragmented your data becomes. On average, businesses worldwide use 130 tools to complete daily but crucial tasks (Statista, 2024).
That's potentially 130 different locations an employee must manually search and extract data from, all to assemble a comprehensive view of their target market's needs. Errors are unavoidable and data hygiene is compromised.
In such a scenario, CMOs are making incorrect judgments about their clients’ needs, wants, and challenges. Lifecycle marketing campaigns are then doomed to fail because there’s a consistent misalignment between the marketing and clients’ needs.
Apart from anything else, data silos are a nightmare to deal with, causing as much frustration as inefficiency. A heavily siloed business is costly and will create a ripple of drawbacks that will affect all corners of the company. These include:
The Damaging Effects of a Fragmented Tech Stack
Cross-selling and upselling is a cash cow strategy that can open new growth potential for finance businesses. This makes sense given that the easiest customers to sell to are existing ones. But what does the research say?
McKinsey & Company suggests that cross-selling and upselling can increase sales and profits by 20% and 30%. They also discovered that cross-selling has the potential to boost customer lifetime value by up to 14% (McKinsey & Company, 2021).
And just to top it off, a survey by Zendesk reveals that 74% of customers are more likely to return to a business after a positive cross-selling or upselling experience. Undeniably, these are lucrative activities that can open the floodgates for additional revenue.
But if we zoom in closer, studies show that 31% of sales representatives who engage in cross-selling report that mapping the customer journey is among the most effective strategies (Hubspot, 2024).
What does this imply?
That data is central to mapping the customer journey.
With these insights, you can identify the sweet spots of cross-selling without damaging client relationships.
This is crucial because cross-selling is a delicate process where timing is everything. Should a business get this wrong, it risks damaging customer relationships and even potentially losing money. It’s an understandable scenario – nobody enjoys a pushy salesman trying to pinch every last cent in your wallet.
Moreover, a study from Harvard Business Review found that a retail bank that cross-sold at every opportunity had created an unwanted customer segment – the “revenue reversers.”
These were customers who generated revenue but then took it back, costing around $5 million a year. Instead, businesses need to leverage data to snipe the best cross-selling and upselling opportunities.
However, this is contingent upon the quality of data available to the business. Anything false will cloud judgment, leading to mismatched offers that fail to resonate with clients. Let’s see how this would work in a real-life scenario in financial services.
John is a client and uses your firm for tax preparation services. Recent data shows that he’s made inquiries about retirement planning and has demonstrated interest in investment deductions through the number of content assets he’s downloaded. When you connect the dots, it's apparent that John could be interested in wealth advisory services.
However, because John’s data is spread across separate systems—one for tax services, another for general client records—your team lacks a comprehensive view of his full profile. When John interacts with your tax team, they have no knowledge of his potential interest in wealth advice, and this missed connection results in a lost cross-selling opportunity.
Maximum data accuracy is a prerequisite for effective personalized lifecycle marketing. But it’s not the only factor. Different departments will have different insights that reveal a precise perspective on the client’s situation.
In isolation, they only tell one part of the journey. In unison, they give you the full picture. However, this ideal scenario is often far from reality.
A whopping 82% of marketers state that having high-quality data about their target market is mandatory for them to succeed, yet over half admit that they are missing key information (Hubspot, 2022).
Once again we’re going to point our finger at the fragmented tech stack. This is because siloed systems isolate teams, preventing departments from working in sync with data that collectively reveals a comprehensive understanding of the client's journey. Here’s how this would look in a real-life situation.
Your marketing team is shrewd and is keeping a close eye on client engagement metrics such as website activity, email opens, and content downloads – all indicators that reveal customer interests.
Meanwhile, your sales team has recordings of in-person client conversations, adding more depth and nuances to their needs. This includes specific needs, objections, or preferences shared during calls or meetings, adding context to the numbers in the marketing department.
Merge these two together and you have a comprehensive client profile where you understand A-Z of their needs, wants, and life cycle stage. All that’s required is for you to connect the dots and provide content that facilitates their progression.
However, this integration rarely happens. Only 27% of marketers report that their marketing data is fully integrated with their systems and tools (HubSpot, 2021). A fragmented tech stack requires members to individually search, extract, and analyze these pieces of information. Due to its time-consuming nature, many choose to overlook this task, and when they do address it, the data they gather is often riddled with errors.
In its purest sense, disjointed digital infrastructures create a barrier between your sales and marketing teams. Crucial insights are hidden. Gaps in the customer journey appear. And departments can’t work in harmony to deliver a cohesive and personalized experience, undermining the entire lifecycle marketing process.
A unified digital infrastructure helps you keep your finger on the pulse of client interaction. Every digital touchpoint can be tracked and pulled into a consolidated platform for leadership members to view.
HubSpot enables this level of data control due to its integrated platforms, which connect tools like Marketing Hub, Operations Hub, Sales Hub, and Content Hub. All of these different components work in sync to provide a real-time perspective of the customer journey.
Businesses that have leveraged HubSpot’s marketing automation and reporting tools have experienced a 10% higher deal close rate and close 17% more deals monthly (Hubspot, 2024).
With HubSpot, you can transform fragmented client data into holistic insights that allow you to create tailored marketing messages that resonate with clients at every stage of their journey.
HubSpot Marketing Hub is a cloud-based, all-in-one marketing platform built to help businesses attract and close leads. It plays a crucial role in lifecycle marketing due to its ability to automatically pull and streamline marketing data from various channels into one centralized system. Here are a number of different ways Marketing Hub can facilitate customer lifecycle marketing.
Marketing Hub can monitor every single key action a client takes when receiving an email, including open rates, click-through rates, and link clicks.
Let’s say a financial advisory company sent an email titled "5 Smart Strategies for Retirement." John, a prospect, opens the email and clicks on a link to download a related guide. HubSpot immediately logs this interaction, signaling John’s potential interest in retirement planning. What’s more, if you have automated workflows designed to nurture prospects who have signaled interest in retirement planning, HubSpot will automatically trigger this, sending John additional resources, such as a webinar invite on 401(k) rollovers.
Impact: The firm maintains consistent and relevant communication with John, nurturing him through the consideration stage with targeted content.
A content download clearly signifies a state of interest from the prospect. HubSpot automatically tracks this, enabling staff to identify patterns in user behavior to help segment them into a tailored lead nurturing campaign. For example, you may have some visitors who download multiple eBooks on wealth management, signifying their interest in potentially exploring wealth advisory services. This is one of many examples of how HubSpot integrations can enhance lead nurturing.
Having these interactions documented provides your team with actionable insights to personalize follow-ups in a way that’s aligned with their needs.
Impact: The firm delivers hyper-relevant marketing messages that increase the likelihood of conversion.
Website monitoring is one of the most powerful ways to understand client intent and behavior. Marketing Hub can analyze and document a prospect’s journey across all your web pages, tracking page visits, time spent on specific pages, and actions taken.
If a prospect frequently visits the “Investment Strategies” page and spends significant time reviewing FAQs about portfolio diversification, it signals a strong interest in tailored investment services.
HubSpot stores this information and can automatically alert the sales team to follow up with a tailored proposal highlighting the firm’s expertise in this area.
Impact: Marketing and sales alignment ensures timely, informed follow-ups that address the prospect’s specific interests.
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Nurturing client engagement needs to be executed with precision and speed. Timing is everything and HubSpot can do this automatically. Financial firms can create workflows that trigger based on client behavior.
After a lead downloads a tax planning guide, HubSpot automatically sends a follow-up email offering a free consultation with the firm’s tax advisors. If the lead clicks the consultation link but doesn’t schedule, the system sends a gentle reminder three days later with testimonials from satisfied clients.
Impact: Automation ensures consistent engagement, reducing the chances of leads slipping through the cracks.
"If they proceed with the car loan, we can even introduce cross-promotions for related products or services, tailoring the experience further. This personalization extends seamlessly across email, website interactions, and beyond", says Erin Pearson, Senior Manager of Client Experience at Mole Street.
Imagine being able to spread all prospect interactions on a canvas, revealing patterns that highlight their interests, pain points, and decision-making stages. This is possible with HubSpot Marketing Hub. What’s more, this is done automatically for you.
For example, a finance firm can segment email lists by interests like retirement planning or investment strategies. Leads engaging with retirement content are automatically enrolled in tailored campaigns, ensuring every message is relevant and increases conversion potential.
Impact: Precise segmentation increases engagement rates and helps establish trust with prospects.
Content Hub was built with an emphasis on flexibility and power. Its purpose is to enable businesses to generate and convert leads as seamlessly as possible. As a result, the platform is built for easy adoption, which allows companies to monitor lifecycle marketing stages with minimal friction.
There are a number of different ways Content Hub allows you to attract, nurture, convert prospects, and foster them for long-term relationships.
Different types of website content will appeal to different prospects who are at specific stages in their journey. HubSpot will automatically display content based on a prospect’s lifecycle stage, list membership, or past behavior.
Let’s say you have a returning visitor who’s previously downloaded a guide on wealth management. This person revisits your website and they are shown personalized content based on their previous interactions, such as case studies on successful investment portfolios.
A CTA is displayed and changes dynamically depending on who is viewing the page, increasing relevance and engagement. With this approach, prospect interactions are facilitated through consistent and relevant content that pulls them deeper into the brand, enhancing the likelihood of a conversion happening.
Turning interested prospects into paying customers is a delicate process. It’s a crucial cross-section, where personalization is mandatory to give the final nudge. HubSpot Content Hub can optimize crucial touchpoints where customers make conversion decisions, such as landing pages and forms.
Should a financial advisory firm promote a retirement webinar, it can use Hubspot Content Hub to create an A/B-tested landing page with a personalized CTA. Using HubSpot's drag-and-drop editor, companies can design pages in a way that resonates with their customer, incorporating compelling visuals, and persuasive messaging.
What’s more, the platform will also capture important details and sync them with the CRM, consistently feeding actionable data into the system for tailored follow-ups.
Strong client relationships are the cornerstone of long-term success. Once converted, the ultimate goal is to enhance brand loyalty to maximize client retention, which increases a client’s lifetime value.
HubSpot Content Hub plays a crucial role here through its ability to feed current clients with a personalized experience that attends to their needs. If you’re a wealth management firm, you can create tailored client dashboards that provide clients with real-time updates on their investment performance.
Clients who frequently engage with the dashboard are automatically offered exclusive webinars or one-on-one strategy sessions, fostering deeper trust and ensuring their evolving needs are met.
The financial services industry has always been a high-stakes game. Dealing with people’s money inherently makes it a more personal niche. What’s striking about this is that clients are aware of this, and are actively demanding a more personalized experience.
Around 72% of clients believe product offers hold greater value when tailored to their personal needs, and 75% are willing to let banks use their data to provide more customized interactions (Forrester, 2023). Additionally, a study by McKinsey found that 76% of customers experience frustration when personalization is lacking (McKinsey, 2021).
Lifecycle marketing enables personalization, which instills trust, which then transforms prospects into clients. It’s a sequential process that generates additional revenue streams.
Ultimately, your tech is what powers lifecycle marketing strategies. Disjointed digital infrastructures leave critical gaps in the client’s journeys, providing an incomplete picture of the client’s journey.
Employees are then forced to manually piece together fragmented data, which drains capital and time, inevitably leading to errors that undermine the entire effort.
In contrast, HubSpot’s powerful ecosystem works in sync to consolidate these pieces into a single, unified platform, providing a complete and accurate view of the client’s journey in real time.
This opens doors to enhanced lifecycle marketing. Data analysis no longer becomes a chore. Now, businesses can embrace it, gaining an iron grip on their data to craft highly tailored marketing campaigns that maximize their growth potential.