By Ehren Maedge Over the last year, mobile finance apps reached 4.3 billion downloads. With the world in varying stages of lockdown, consumers sought contact-free alternatives to the traditional way of banking and investing. The global health crisis, combined with more financial services choices than ever before, accelerated the adoption of new methods for investing and managing money. Now, marketers for fintech brands must have a strategy for keeping these new customers engaged and coming back.

It’s easy to see why banking and financial services apps are growing in popularity with today’s consumers. Raised on smart devices, Millennials and Gen Z do not hold the same distrust of online-only banks as older generations. Trust is important to these customers, but so are convenience and the ability to bank from anywhere, any time. But acquiring new customers with the promise of ease-of-use is no longer enough. To keep consumers coming back to fintech apps, the focus must be on engagement.

Marketers know that acquiring customers is not the same as keeping them. Once a new customer has opened an account and downloaded your app, then what? Financial services organizations only have a short window of opportunity to create a positive customer experience.

Engagement Requires Intimate Knowledge of Your Customer Just as retail consumers expect to receive highly personalized messages and offerings from their favorite stores, today’s fintech app user responds well to tailored messages and content that feels as though it’s just for them. Once customers have set up an account and downloaded a fintech app, personalized content becomes crucial, from the onboarding stage on through the entire customer journey.

For example, Current, a fast-growing digital banking startup that focuses on the unbanked consumer, created an uplifting series of videos to share with customers. The theme of the video series was “The Hustle,” and it showcased inspirational entrepreneurs, content creators, photographers, and visual artists from the Black community. Finding the right customers, leveraging authentic endorsements from community leaders and influencers, and consistent communication of brand value and purpose are the primary engagement drivers for Current. Launching and succeeding with these campaigns requires a deeper understanding of their core

audience: their needs and motivators. Then, it’s about offering the right content at the right time across the best-performing channels.

Mobile Banking Customers: Educate and Anticipate My Needs To effectively engage millennials and Gen-Z customers, banks are required to rethink the way they communicate with them across every channel, from fintech apps to emails to SMS messages. Each form of communication, whether it is a welcome message or a marketing email about a new service offering, needs to be mapped to the corresponding life event that the customer is likely to be planning for. Examples include paying off student loans, starting a new career, shopping for a car, and saving for their first home.

At the same time, banks need to continue their traditional role of educating customers. This is especially relevant for investment apps aimed at younger customers. Similar to the way that awareness precedes decision-making in modern marketing, banks must empower clients with insights that enable them to make informed decisions. Using data-driven insights, fintech companies can achieve this by getting a clear view of who the customer is, what is most valuable to them, and then anticipate what their needs will be in the future.

From mobile pay to alternative lending (buy now, pay later), mobile financial services play a large part in today’s economy, with healthy growth on the horizon. But acquiring and retaining new customers in this rapidly expanding market requires focus on developing targeted, personalized experiences and tailored messaging delivered at the right time. The technology to create authentic customer-centric experiences is there; now, all that is left is to use it.