AXA Bank Goes Mobile Enhancing Customer Loyalty & Improving Open & Conversion Rates

Neolane Helps AXA Bank Go Interactive
and Mobile To Enhance Customer Loyalty
Customer name: AXA BankIndustry: Financial ServicesLeading online bank moves away from 'spray and pray' approach to targeted Business Need: Expand from traditional marketing channelsinteractions with customers; sees conversion rates of 5-10 percent to email and mobileTechnology environment: Oracle,Forte, Vignette Web services
The banking industry has made a rapid By 2002, ready for a more sophisticated "If we are conducting atransition to online-centric services in the approach, the bank sought to personal- phone campaign on a newpast few years. Encouraged by lowered ize and expand its online marketing tocosts, banking customers are gaining con- improve effectiveness savings account, we canfidence in conducting important financial By 2002, AXA Bank realized that email now follow-up with emailtransactions online. and text messaging were becoming mass for contacts that haveIndeed, some banks, such as AXA Group communication channels. By then, almost opted in to that channel.subsidiary AXA Bank, operate primarily 85 percent of its customers had an email We've found we can dou-in a virtual environment, offering services address, providing a new and inexpensivethat traditional brick-and-mortar institu- marketing communications channel. And ble our conversion ratestions cannot. But AXA Bank aims to make the vast majority also had mobile phones, when we prospect viaone thing clear to customers: "We're a creating an opportunity to begin using multiple channels."multi-channel bank."AXA Bank sells its SMS.services directly over the Web, through Cyril Moiroud,The bank also wanted to begin personaliz-retail storefronts and via a network of Marketing Manager, ing its online marketing. The multi-channel AXA Bank5,300 agents, in addition to offering a concept started to come into clear focus:24-hour call center for customers. "Operational Marketing had the task ofFor this reason, careful customer relation- finding a solution to enable us to do with OBJECTIVESship management (CRM) is a priority for email and mobile channels what we werethe bank. Its sophisticated CRM system already capable of doing via direct mail Manage all email and mobilewas historically based on custom, internal and the telephone," explains Cyril Moiroud, SMS communications withindevelopments, operating in conjunction marketing manager at AXA Bank. one system with industry-standard back-office software "We needed to roll out targeted, real-timeand with trading and mortgage manage- and reactive communications to the entire Develop a consistent andment applications. customer base," says Moiroud. "Importantly, cohesive multi-channel we also needed to be able to fine-tune cus- communications effortAXA Bank started out with bulk email tomer and prospect marketing messages,in the late 1990s Leverage transactional reaching out to select audiences with per-The late 1990s marked AXA Bank's foray messaging to upsell and sonalized, relevant offers via both emerginginto email marketing. For the first phase cross-sell and traditional channels." of this project, AXA Bank managementdecided to use a bulk email tool to push The bank's first objective was to gain the RESULTSWeb content to customers. However, this ability to plan and execute campaigns Conversion rates of 5-10 percenttool rapidly showed its limitations in terms for two lines of business from a singleof scalability and functionality. No person- platform: all outbound email, including Email open rates of 60-80 alization, tracking or reporting functionality personalized e-newsletters, for prospecting percent was available, and many operations (such plus loyalty and account alerts via emailas list management) had to be performed and text messaging. ROI in 14 monthsoutside the tool, by hand. Marketing teams AXA Bank requested proposals from aalso required constant IT support, especially number of international campaign man-as email volumes increased. agement vendors and integrators. After anextensive evaluation, AXA Bank selectedNeolane."Our loyalty emails are opened by 60-80 percent of our customersand from this we achieve a five to 10 percent conversion rate."
Neolane stands apart for proven conducting a phone campaign on a newability to handle emerging channels savings account, we can now follow-upincluding mobile with email to contacts that have opted in toNeolane stood apart from the competition th... [download for more]