Working in the financial services industry, you’re all about numbers. What is a company’s liquidity ratio? What kind of profit margins can you expect next year? Most importantly – what is my ROI on different investments?
Lucky for you, marketing has evolved in recent years to become much more analytically and statistically focused. In other words, marketing has become a numbers game. Using analytics tools, marketers are able to track every digital marketing campaign.
There is an analytics tool for everything:
- Website – Google Analytics
- Email – Marketo
- SEO Rankings – Moz
Email Open / Click-Through Rate
Email may have been around for a while now, but it is anything but old-fashioned. It is a mainstay of the top marketers in the financial service industry – and every other industry, for that matter. It is essential to have top-notch email campaigns in place.
When doing this, there are two KPIs you need to track:
- Open Rate
- Click-Through Rate
Open rate is the number of sent emails that recipients have opened – no surprise there. This is a good statistic to use when determining your subjects, because it’s the main driver of open rates. If your subject line interests the recipient, then they are more likely to click on it. Find what your list prefers and then cater to it.
Click-through rate is a bit more complicated, as it can vary depending on the software you are using. There are two ways it is calculated:
# recipients sent email / # recipients who clicked on a link = CTR
or
# recipients who opened email / # recipients who clicked on a link = CTR
However you decide to calculate CTR, stay consistent. The ideal CTR can vary as well. On a very large list, a 1% CTR is a good rate. That being said, if you have a 500 subscriber list, you may want to aim for something closer to 15-20%.
SEO Rankings
SEO rankings are key for potential customers to find your financial services company. When someone has a problem, the first place they will go is to a search engine. You need to be there, ready to solve their problem. Not only do you need to be on page one, you need to be at the top of that page. As your site falls in rankings, the number of people who will click on it falls as well.
From SearchEngineWatch.com
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”
– Peter Drucker
Luckily, SEO rankings can be tracked. Tools like RankTrackr and Moz allow you to see where you rank in search engines, search volume, and more. Spend some time each week working to get your keywords to rank as high as possible. Use a combination of content creation, technical SEO, and backlinks to get your website found. As your rankings increase, you will see your traffic rise.
Tip: If you are having trouble ranking for a few keywords and want your traffic to rise sooner, use paid search as a temporary fix. Pay for two months of PPC to give yourself time to rank organically.
These are just three of the many KPIs you need to track when it comes to your marketing. Review your progress on the KPIs you are tracking to determine if what you are doing is working. Try out different techniques and find what works for you and your business.
This can all be very difficult which is why many businesses decide to partner with SEO experts. New North is such an expert. We handle SEO for many different companies and have gotten many companies’ keywords to #1 in Google. We can do the same for your financial services company, so give us a call and let’s get you ranking.
