From degrees to ‘I Do’: Tailor a bank marketing strategy to summer’s life milestones

Right now, the most renowned and well-resourced experts and analysts are struggling with forecasts (When will rates drop? Will consumer confidence last?) But here’s a forecast banks can count on: Summer is coming, and that brings an irrepressible stream of big milestones in your customers’ lives. High school and college graduations. Weddings. Summer vacations. Even home improvements that have been percolating in consumers’ minds all winter long.

These summer milestones present tremendous, largely rate-agnostic opportunities for banks to drive sustainable growth by winning customers for life. The recipe is pretty simple: Show up for your customers at the moments that matter most.

Why life milestones are banks’ golden opportunities

One of the common themes across banking is establishing customers for life. Banks want to nurture loyal relationships that bear long-term dividends. To do that, banks know they need to understand and support their customers’ life journeys.

Life milestones are the anchoring points for that life-centric approach to customer engagement. These are the transitional periods in customers’ lives when they are most looking for trusted financial guidance — the times when lasting loyalties are established, fostered and cemented.

Accenture echoed this idea in a 2023 global banking consumer study, where the company highlighted life milestones and urged banks to embrace “life centricity.” It called out the need to “play a more meaningful role in customers’ lives and help them achieve their life aspirations” as a critical strategy for creating solid customer relationships.

Life-centric engagement is an evergreen strategy — but it’s also uniquely suited for the macroeconomic moment. Life milestones naturally create new financial needs. And this organic, net-new demand is much more insulated from macroeconomic factors. Teenagers don’t wait for rates to fall before graduating high school. Getting a degree is a smart move in any economy. And getting married is (hopefully) never just a financial decision. This makes life-centric engagement an ideal rate-agnostic approach to revenue growth right now.

What does life-centric engagement look like?

Executing on this life-centric engagement is a two-pronged strategy. Banks need to engage around specific new needs, but also provide helpful guidance that goes beyond a transaction. Let’s look at how that plays out with two summer milestones:

• New graduates: Whether high school or college, graduation is a big step into adulthood, bringing several common needs: student loans and loan refinancing; first-time credit cards and auto loans; and career development loans, to name a few. But beyond products and services, new graduates are starting to build their own financial lives. They typically don’t have a go-to resource for financial literacy or financial advising. Banks need to be there at this moment to help them (and even their parents) navigate this transition into financial independence.

• Newlyweds: Weddings bring two financial lives together and stats show newlyweds commonly look for several financial products and services within months of tying the knot: joint accounts (savings and checking); new credit cards (joint or separate); first-time home loans and new auto loans; and, in some cases, long-term investment products ranging from CDs to retirement and 529 accounts. Moreover, whether young or old, the first time or the last time, getting married signals two customers entering a new phase in life — and often looking for guidance on other big life decisions, such as planning to start a family. Banks need to be there at this moment to establish themselves as the trusted financial advisors of the new household unit.

Figure out how to do it at scale

Life-centricity isn’t really a novel concept. Personal relationships were the basis of banking for most of history, and relationship selling is as old as time. The challenge today is doing it in a digital-first world — and doing it at scale.

Banks can’t wait for lagging indicators. To anticipate these life milestones, banks need to be using data analytics and tools that can proactively and predictively surface customer intelligence signals. But insight without action is worthless.

Banks need to connect that intelligence to a system of action. They need to be using automation to support their bankers — building out engagement journeys that make customers feel like they’re getting the fully personalized, one-to-one attention they crave.

Life-centricity is the smart path to growth in any economy

The notion of an interest rate-agnostic growth strategy is music to banks’ ears right now. But the truth is that, in any economic climate, banks spend millions trying to drum up new demand for products and services.

The life-centric approach offers a much easier path to growth: This summer, make sure you’re ready to show up for your customers at the moments when key life events naturally create new financial needs — before graduates toss their caps and newlyweds say, “I do.”

James White is General Manager of Banking at Total Expert.