Triple-digit conversion lift: It’s possible with new merchant data

Bank marketers today face a lot of challenges in the B2B space. How do you know you’re targeting the right businesses? Do they need your products? If so, will they qualify? What is their true lifetime value? Are they still open?

Historically, the type of data that could answer these questions has been tough to acquire because the sources are so fragmented. But now, thanks to a partnership between Deluxe and a leading business data transaction provider it’s a new day in bank marketing.

It started with a question

The Deluxe B2B data ecosystem represents one of the deepest and widest data lakes for B2B marketing in the U.S. When the Deluxe Data-Driven Marketing team assessed their volume of B2B data – which reflects the accrual and synthetization of data on a groundbreaking scale from hundreds of sources – they saw a gap and an opportunity. If they could access cash-in data on merchants to complement existing, third-party revenue information, they could help banks access a higher-def picture of a merchant’s financial situation and outlook. In turn, this would empower bank marketers with vital details and insights needed to fine-tune campaign segmentation and personalization.

To achieve this level of visibility, they needed a partner that was on the front lines of credit data for businesses.

Our new business transaction data provider

Our company's partner provides fresh data on the financial health of small and medium businesses, a group that represents the vast majority of all businesses in the U.S. They ingest hundreds of online and offline data sources to generate an accurate, reliable view of the transactions, revenue, growth and risk profile for SMBs, so financial institutions can understand how each business is performing and how it’s trending. 

What makes them different?

Their intelligence offers visibility to how many credit card transactions an individual SMB has daily, the stability of transactions coming in, the revenue growth rate, locations where they experience heightened payment processing volume, online versus offline payments and more. Plus, all data is pre-permissioned, which means it’s actionable for virtually any marketing use case – from prospecting and cross-selling to onboarding, credit risk monitoring, underwriting and prequalification campaigns.

The dynamic duo

By pairing Deluxe’s database of over 25 million active U.S. businesses with this provider's cash-in information on merchants, financial institutions can now have a clearer, more complete understanding of how SMBs are doing. In turn, they’re equipped to develop highly effective, highly targeted marketing campaigns that deliver personalized messaging to the right SMBs.

The proof is in the testing

While the convergence of Deluxe’s data ecosystem with this cash-in merchant data sounded promising, the teams knew they needed to test whether bank marketers could boost campaign ROI by more precisely segmenting and targeting businesses based on revenues and processing volumes. To that end, they ran three A/B tests with regional and super-regional banks, comparing campaign results using targeting solely based on traditional data versus campaigns powered by traditional data merged with this provider's cash-in data.

Case study #1: Merchant services

The objective: Acquire new merchant services relationships

The data deployed:

• Identified businesses already processing cards
• Logged the number of transactions
• Differentiated e-commerce versus in-person volume

The results: Conversion rates for campaigns with the added benefit of new data generated a 160%-295% lift over those using traditional SMB data sources alone.

Case study #2: Business lending

The objective: Acquire new business lending relationships

The data deployed:

• Assessed revenue stability
• Measured ability to pay
• Evaluated existing debt load

The results: Three banks realized a 75-90% lift, and two banks logged a 290-380% lift by using financial health data.

Case study #3: New business acquisition

The objective: Acquire new-to-bank business relationships

The data deployed:

• Validated business activity
• Cross-verified revenue assumptions
• Calibrated profitability potential

The results: This campaign targeted business owners and executives with a message around migrating their entire relationship to the new bank, for all their cash flow needs. Across regional and super-regional banks, the campaigns with the added benefit of data realized a 45-55% lift.

Build a better B2B banking campaign

Multi-sourced B2B data synthesized with card transaction data helps bank marketers understand merchant cash flow and, in turn, helps them gain a significant competitive edge by designing smarter, stronger marketing campaigns.