One phrase we hear often from our customers is that many financial institution’s marketing departments are always pulled between multiple initiatives. Data supports this as well; in our 2016 Survey of Financial Services Marketers, 48% of marketers surveyed report having “too many initiatives” as the biggest marketing challenge they face.

If you’re looking for a way to optimize your institutional marketing this year, below are our three best suggestions for ways to streamline and simplify.

Marketing Automation

In another marketing survey (the Adobe study of Financial Services marketers) targeting, personalization, and customer journey management ranked as the highest priorities for respondents. Additionally, 70% of survey responders rated content consistency as a “very important” initiative. Marketing automation is one of the only ways to achieve both personalization and content consistency.

This is because marketing automation allows for drip campaigns, lead scoring, lead profiling, segmentation, and campaign specific landing pages, all of which can be used to target highly qualified leads on a schedule, which means less heavy lifting for the team overall, with more strategic results.

Data Analysis

While analyzing ROI for marketing campaigns often requires a time investment on the front end, diving into data will save a marketing team time and effort later on. Once your team has an idea of what’s working from a marketing perspective (and what doesn’t work), they’ll be able to focus their energies and attentions on what truly “moves the needle” for your institution.

Automate Brand Consistency

Using technology to make marketing easier doesn’t stop at marketing automation and big data; there are new technology platforms designed to ease all aspects of a financial institution’s marketing process including print marketing materials and branded items.

BRAD (which stands for Brand Resources and Distribution) is an example of this technology. It’s a new way to order and distribute branded marketing materials via a customized online portal designed to house all the specifications of your financial institution, allowing marketing team members in branch or corporate headquarters to order the personalized materials with ease and efficiency.

Not only does this technology decrease ordering time associated with print materials, it also ensures brand compliance across multiple locations, achieving both brand consistency and cost effectiveness.

If you’re among the 78% of financial services marketers that desire to optimize the customer experience this year, don’t neglect the impact print materials can have on account holders.