Profiled By Bill Klump | Daily Disruption | December 15th, 2011
In the past year, the number of bank customers who prefer to bank online has jumped sharply, according to a survey conducted in August by the American Bankers Association. Sixty-two percent of bank customers said they prefer banking online to all other methods, up from 36% in 2010. Only 20% of customers said they preferred using a branch, down from 25% last year. It might surprise you that the trend isn’t limited to only younger consumers. Fifty-seven percent of bank customers age 55 and older said they prefer banking online to all other methods, up from 20% last year.
The historically important branch employee is becoming less significant and the customer relationship is disappearing due to the increase in online banking. How are Financial Institutions maintaining their customer relationships and competitive edge?
The solution – our “Disruptor of the Day” Segmint: Through the Segmint system, each transaction a customer makes is anonymously analyzed to determine his or her hobbies, activities, or life events. These transactions are given tags that Segmint calls Key Lifestyle Indicators or KLIs. Based on the unique blend of KLIs assigned, each customer is presented a mix of Financial Institution and third-party offers, specific to his or her needs and interests.
Key Lifestyle Indicators (KLIs) are what sets Segmint apart from the competition. KLIs allow the Segmint software to organize Financial Institution data in a way that benefits both Financial Institutions and their customers.
The Segmint system is fed by a Financial Institution’s transaction systems. Credit and debit card transactions as well as ACH deposits and withdrawals and online bill payments are all received by the Segmint system, and sorted into groups no smaller than 1000 according to interests, activities, and events. Customers can be placed in one or more of hundreds of unique KLIs. By categorizing customers in this way, Segmint is able to deliver targeted, relevant, and timely offers to a Financial Institution’s most desirable customers.
KLIs can fall into one of two distinct categories: “activity-based” and “event-based”. Activity-based KLIs describe a customer’s interests and activities (e.g.: golfer, movie goer, etc.) while event-based KLIs represent life transitions (e.g.: graduation, marriage, etc.).
You may be asking your self, “what about privacy”? Good question, and the short answer is the team at Segmint is passionate about privacy! Segmint requires that a Financial Institution assign a unique, anonymous identification number to every customer before running any of the data through the Segmint system. The Segmint system is designed so that it never receives or contains a customer’s name, street address, social security number, account number(s) or any other identifier that could be used to link a piece of data to a customer. In other words, an example Financial Institution customer “John Smith” becomes “Customer 123456” before the data is fed into the Segmint system. The Segmint system performs all of its data analysis using only the customer identification number and returns results like “The following customers should be shown a Financial Institution home equity loan banner: 123456, 234567, etc.”. The customer’s actual identity does not exist in the Segmint system.
Another unique component of this Disruptive company is that Segmint believes a bank’s most successful “branch” of the future is Facebook.
With 800 million active users spending 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook, banks must step up their game and utilize this medium, and other emerging networks to build their brands and connect with their customers.
SegmintSocialTM is a groundbreaking technology that gives banks the power to precisely identify their customers on Facebook and engage them in real-time, personalized dialogue. This new technology elevates a bank’s level of digital engagement with customers to meet the growing demand for a personalized experience and superior service. Reaching this new level of client interaction allows banks to become socially actionable and converse with customers in their channel of choice. Customers benefit by having their specific needs addressed and will feel good with their decision to bank with an innovative financial institution.
The team at Segmint is led by co-founder & CEO Rob Heiser – Heiser is also founder and president of WiredViews Inc., a web application company that develops and hosts customized business applications supporting marketing, sales, accounting and operations for large and mid-size companies. Since WiredView’s inception in 2003, the company has doubled the employee base and more than quadrupled annual revenue. Previously, Heiser was chief technology officer of SupplierInsight (acquired by Procuri), where he led the application and product development of the first commercially available Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) application. Heiser was also manager of internet applications and one of the founding employees of Xtrasource, Inc. (acquired by Sento in 2003). Heiser’s experience as a serial entrepreneur and his expertise in the field of online media and digital marketing technologies have allowed him superior success in developing, launching and growing seven start-up businesses. His deep industry knowledge and experience also allows him to serve as an authoritative source regarding the current and emerging trends impacting the constantly evolving digital marketplace.
To learn more about our “Disruptor of the Day”, please visit their website at www.segmint.com
