Compliance regulations are the bedrock of the financial services market, and for good reason: They are the gateways to gaining customers’ trust. In today’s increasingly digital market, however, compliance comes with unique challenges. How can an institution position its brand honestly online?

How can it effectively engage with customers while still maintaining strict compliance standards? As financial institutions continue to adopt digital marketing strategies in a complex and shifting environment, they are beginning to run into even more compliance challenges.

Take J.P. Morgan Securities’ recent settlement over record-keeping violations, for example. U.S. regulators fined the company $200 million for failing to archive communications as employees conducted business over WhatsApp and other personal devices. The result was a significant penalty by the SEC and a reminder to digital marketers throughout the industry that compliance matters. As financial institutions dive deeper into social media marketing and become active on new platforms, teams need to be vigilant and nimble.

Two trends are essential to watch. First, the digital rules of the road are changing: Government agencies are modernizing their financial marketing oversight. Though it took six decades, the SEC gave its marketing regulations for financial advisors a much-needed overhaul in 2021. The updated SEC playbook dictates how advisors can advertise, and these new rules are under enforcement as of Nov. 4. In addition, the updated rules signal that regulators are evolving to meet the demands of the current digital landscape.

Disciplinary action is also on the rise. Existing rules are being enforced at a record pace as regulators “lace up their gloves.” For example, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority issued 60 percent more fines in 2021 than in 2020, despite fewer overall cases. FINRA’s increase in “supersized” penalties serves as a reminder that regulators won’t tolerate marketing and communications noncompliance.

Every financial institution is on a unique marketing path. Still, smart marketers are expanding their channel sets, increasing social media volumes, and growing the number of associates engaged in social selling. If your institution has not already, it is time to take a fresh look at compliance in the digital age.

To stay ahead of the regulatory curve, it is essential to create collaboration among relevant departments, adopt supportive technology, and bring your teams along with updated training. Here’s how to do it:

1. Open the lines of communication between marketing and compliance teams.

Digital channel expansion shows no signs of slowing down. Marketing and compliance teams must work together if they want to adopt new channels and marketing tools at the same rate. Though financial institutions cannot control the evolution of the digital landscape, both marketing and compliance can and should control how institutions navigate it.

Marketing and compliance teams should work together to find compliant approaches to new digital communications. There’s a lot to juggle in this process, including adapting to meet customer needs and expectations, keeping an eye on regulations and researching channels. Early and frequent communication is key.

One way to improve that communication is by offering ongoing compliance education to the team. The right technology can help compliance send that feedback to marketing as the teams compliantly adopt new modes of customer communication.

2. Adopt tech tools to help manage the change.

Marketing teams need the right tools to manage effective digital marketing strategies. Social selling, which leverages associates to build relationships on social media, is a perfect example. The strategy is a great way to build organic reach, but financial institutions need to closely monitor associate activity to ensure posts are on-brand and compliant. In other words, financial institutions must ensure that posts are vetted to protect the institution against risk—no matter who posts or where posts appear.

How can banks be certain that associates only post compliant marketing materials to their social media networks? Manual review is one way to monitor content, but it is inefficient and unscalable. Not to mention, it creates bottlenecks and delays in the review process. Smart software solutions can streamline content approvals and provide compliance protection at scale.

In an ideal state of omnichannel marketing, a financial institution is posting to brand pages, targeting paid social advertising, empowering producers to social sell, responding to direct messages, and employing many other tactics. To be scalable—and avoid drawing attention from regulators— institutions need to consider how all these tactics are reviewed, approved and archived.

3. Train associates to understand the part they play.

Education remains a powerful solution to preventing problems. One of the best ways financial marketers can set themselves up for success is by sharing that knowledge with their peers and co-workers.

Every associate needs to understand their unique role in digital marketing compliance. It’s a good practice to empower everyone through education on compliance-related topics, such as how to respond to direct messages, get approval for outgoing content and ensure all communications is archived.

No matter the author or channel, noncompliant marketing materials should not see the light of day. It was true for Facebook posts five years ago and it’s equally relevant for TikTok videos today. The digital landscape will continue to change, but this industry truth will remain steadfast. By opening up communication, adding the right tech to your tool belt and empowering associates, you can continue engaging with your customers online without compliance getting in the way.

*This article was originally published in ABA Bank Marketing Journal.

The past year highlighted the growing importance of digital customer experiences in the financial services industry as COVID-19 continued to accelerate the pace of digitization. Unable to connect in person, consumers turned to digital tools. One survey conducted between late March and early May 2020 reported that between 46% and 51% of adults in the United States increased social media use since the start of the pandemic. Facebook also reported in late March 2020 that total messaging had increased more than 50% in just a month.

While many organizations are welcoming clients back into the branch for in-person service and conversations, it will still be wise for financial institutions not to lose focus on the digital initiatives to put in place during the pandemic.

According to a recent McKinsey & Co. study, consumer trends toward more digital experiences aren’t likely to revert — so neither should your marketing and communications strategies. In fact, up to 20% of bank customers expect their use of digital channels will actually increase after the crisis. The point is, while the pandemic may subside, the digital transformation in financial services is no temporary adjustment. Quite the opposite: These trends in consumer behavior are defining the future of retail banking.

The future success of financial institutions will rely on reimagining digital strategies to focus on experiences rather than products alone. And remember, not all technology can be easily customized or implemented to meet federal requirements. Compliance is always a concern. Accommodating the increased emphasis on digital channels may also require some reorganization within marketing departments, which will take time to achieve.

Personalization and human connection will be key in the post-pandemic digital world

Relationships have always been a core aspect of success for banks. At first, this idea might seem at odds with digitization, as tech can seem largely impersonal. In the shift from product- to experience-based digital communication tactics, focus on personalization to make interactions feel genuinely helpful and relevant to each prospect.

Consumers today demand more personalization — nearly 80% of consumers in one survey agreed that they were more loyal to brands that used more personalization tactics. In fact, 81% of consumers even said they would be willing to share their basic personal data for more personalized experiences in return.

Personal digital experiences encompass the customer journey overall and include specific “routes” for specific target audiences. The journey starts when you get a customer’s attention on social media. This can happen via organic social posting, but because platforms have changed their algorithms to reduce brand visibility, paid advertising on social is often the more surefire way to land a post. When you can strategically distribute messages to the right people at the right time, you create a strong jumping-off point for a personalized journey that will lead your target audience to exactly what they need from you. It’s clear why optimizing your strategy with personalization can increase spend efficiency up to 30% and revenue up to 15%.

It’s also important to remember that prospects want to hear from and engage with real people, not brand names. Posting on your brand channels is important, but it’s just the baseline social strategy. Stepping it up a notch to expand reach and grow engagement requires having your employees share branded content on their own channels. In an age when 69% of consumers make efforts to avoid advertisements, you must foster true connections by putting friendly human faces behind your brand. A humanized approach can help build trust in your employees and the brand at large.

Balancing the personal touch with compliant messaging

Of course, encouraging employees to post branded messaging creates more opportunities for compliance missteps. Regulatory bodies monitor social media just as they do other electronic communications, and one rogue employee post could land the brand in hot water. What’s more, a promissory post that doesn’t deliver could do more than get the brand in regulatory trouble — it could erode trust with clients and prospects. Fortunately, the tools exist to help financial institution leaders safeguard branded messaging even when it’s being shared by many different employees. Software can help build an automated approval workflow, so no employee post goes live without the proper review and sign-off from financial institution marketing and compliance teams. Leaders can also create digital libraries of preapproved content, so employees have easy access to compliant posts to share.

Designing digital experiences for conversion

Think of building consumers’ digital experiences as leading them down a funnel. The top of that funnel is all about awareness. This is where you pique their interest with helpful and engaging social posts. Next, lead them to the middle of the funnel, which is all about consideration. This is where you show them more about what makes your brand in particular the best one to solve their problems.

A link to a landing page from an interest-piquing social post is a great way to take prospects from the top of the funnel to the middle (your website, where you can demonstrate your specific value.) Tailored landing pages for specific campaigns — for example, first-time homebuyers — put valuable, relevant information right in the hands of already interested prospects.

For example, a loan officer can bring prospects into the funnel by targeting a paid ad on social media to land with people looking to secure their first mortgages. That ad should include a link to a landing page on your website for more information. The landing page should include gated resources on the subject, and viewers can put their name and email into a form to receive the download.

When they submit their information, prospects move to the bottom of the funnel, where the sales team can continue to nurture them as leads to guide their decision-making. From landing page forms, sales teams get well-primed leads right in their hands for further conversation. They can craft engaging email drip campaigns or conduct sales calls to keep your brand top of mind for leads as they consider their options. Ultimately, the goal of building digital experiences is to lead prospects closer and closer to the bank’s ultimate sales goal: conversion.

Landing page best practices

When designing landing pages, a few best practices can increase the likelihood of visitors exchanging their information for your content. First, you want to make sure the content on the landing page is highly relevant and valuable to the reader. That means a broad, one-size-fits-all page won’t do. Create multiple landing pages to align with specific target audiences and goals.

Then, remember to keep posts as simple and direct as possible to ensure the specific value offering is clear. You want readers to see as soon as possible why they need the content behind your paywall. Filling a page with too many design elements, multiple offers, images, or other clutter can distract landing page visitors from that focus.

In today’s new digital environment, conversion is the No. 1 metric to track. Likes, comments, and retweets might be nice to have, but savvy financial institution leaders must understand precisely how social media and other personalized steps in the customer journey can help them convert prospects into clients. Even when in-person means of making connections are back on the table, customers will still want tailored digital experiences. As long as you continue putting the human element front and center, digital tools will remain valuable ways to build relationships well into the future.

This article was originally published on International Banker.

In order for bank social media marketing strategies to thrive, marketers and compliance teams must collaborate to create and distribute compliant and engaging content. But compliance and marketing teams are often working toward different goals: Marketers aim to promote, and compliance officers aim to protect.

Social distancing and widespread remote work have made this challenge even more pressing as collaboration is decentralized. Building consensus can be difficult in a virtual environment. What’s more, banks have had to update their strategies for reaching and engaging prospects and customers throughout the pandemic. Without face-to-face interaction, social media marketing has become a key method for banks to reach their audiences.

Having to contend with social media regulations, compliance teams are faced with an increased volume of work and unfamiliar tactics and strategies. Banks that just began social media marketing in the past year, for example, have had to establish new review and approval processes that look much different from traditional media approvals of the past.

Though they have different goals, marketers and compliance teams need each other. Marketers need to avoid regulatory hot water in their social media and other electronic messaging. Compliance teams, along with the rest of the institution, need engaging and effective marketing strategies to remain competitive and continue securing revenue.

It’s up to bank leaders to facilitate greater collaboration between compliance and marketing teams to ensure this success, but it doesn’t have to be an arduous process—even in a virtual environment. With the right tools and approach, any bank can create a compliant and effective social media marketing strategy. Start with the following steps:

Establish automated approval workflows

In the age of remote work, everyone is fielding more internal electronic communications. One study shows that employees sent more than 5 percent more emails in a day just eight weeks into the pandemic..

Attachments and never-ending email chains are recipes for missed information, confusion and error. Fortunately, software exists to automate approval workflows and ensure that the right people—from marketing supervisors to compliance leaders and more—receive every bank social media post and engagement for review, comment and approval. No piece of content goes live without the proper sign-off.

Build compliant content libraries

Social selling, in which employees post branded content to their own profiles, is a popular and lucrative social media strategy. However, it does present more room for social media regulation and compliance missteps as one unapproved employee post or comment could land the institution in regulatory trouble. To avoid such a mistake, marketers can keep employee content compliant and on-brand by building libraries of content that has already been approved by the compliance team.

This way, employees can simply go into the library and choose a pre-approved post to share. What’s more, marketing teams can save compliance officers’ time and energy in reviewing these posts by setting up software with filters to automatically tag potentially problematic keywords. For example, they could add the word “guarantee” as a filter to notify compliance any time this keyword shows up in a post to help catch any promissory language.

Automatically archive all content and engagement

In the digital age of today, most banks should have already moved on from using physical paperwork to record social media posts and engagement in case of an audit. Even still, manually entering all of your bank’s social media posts and correspondence into spreadsheets can be a cumbersome task.

The right software can automate that process and compile every single piece of social media engagement into an easily accessible and searchable archive. Be prepared if FINRA ever comes knocking at your door for a compliance audit, and save your teams time and potential cross-department hurdles in the process with technology that can do it for them.

It’s imperative that your marketing and compliance teams stay connected. The specific roles and responsibilities of these two departments are different, but ultimately they should be working together toward a goal of reaching prospects and customers with helpful, engaging and compliant content. Neither department can realize that goal without help from the other.

This article was originally published on ABA Bank Marketing.

In speaking with friends, co-workers and bankers, I have come across many reasons why more of us are not effectively using social media: not enough time, concerns about compliance and lack of knowledge top the list.

In banking, we are the relationship builders, the trusted sources and the personal interaction—whether in-person or via social, video, chat or other mediums. So how do we bridge the gap between in-person and digital interactions? How do we display our personality digitally while balancing compliance concerns? How do we personalize digital outreach and engagement through curated content and social media channels in order to educate customers and engage new prospects?

Banks’ retail customers and business clients expect personalized experiences. Using social media in a compliant way for bankers to engage with customers and differentiate themselves from the competition. According to Denim Social, ABA’s endorsed social media management platform, building a personalized and human digital experience is key, and the best place to start doing it is on social media. Informative and educational content is a fantastic entry point into a digital journey, as it starts by engaging prospects and building trust.

People trust people, and banks that have individual employees actively using social media on behalf of the bank’s brand are seeing results. Even when sharing the same content, on average employees see a click-through rate twice as high as their company’s own social channels see, according to LinkedIn. Two-thirds of consumers surveyed by the Harris Poll say they are likely to purchase an item or service they see on their social feeds.

Here’s a simple process to make social selling work in a bank context:

• Marketing teams easily curate and share educational, compliant content in a pre-approved digital library.
• Then employees access the approved content and share through their own, personal digital channels.
• Approval workflows and compliance checks along the way ensure the posts meet both the bank’s compliance and branding requirements.

Employee posts are a complement to, not a substitute for, paid social media, which enables marketers to create and target paid ads specific to demographics, geography and more. Imagine creating educational content for a demographic of first-time homebuyers. Your loan officer shares savings tips, homeownership information and educational content on their social channels, establishing expertise and developing relationships along the way. Paid ads ensure the right homebuyers see the content.

According to IBM, when a lead is generated through social selling or employee advocacy, that lead is seven times more likely to close compared to other lead gen tactics. Through this digital relationship, your loan officer has engaged in social selling and is reaching new markets—all without leaving the comfort of their home, their office or (these days) their home office.

This article was originally published by ABA Bank Marketing.

Lisa Gold Schier is an SVP at ABA, where she leads the ABA Endorsed Solutions team and business innovation.

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The insurance sales environment has been rocked by COVID-19. What was once an industry built on face-to-face relationships is now going through rapid digital transformation. In the absence of in-person meetings, social media is the best place for agents to build trust with current and prospective clients.

Trust is the No. 1 thing insurance companies sell, after all, and a recent Edelman report shows that consumers rank brand employees as more trustworthy than brand CEOs or spokespeople. When insurance agents get in front of customers on social media, they can sell trust more effectively than brands alone.

And customers are looking for authentic connections: One study shows that life insurance customers who connected with their insurers gave Net Promoter Scores 25 points higher than those who did not. With face-to-face meetings off the table, social media is the primary stand-in for forging those deep, connected relationships that build trust and drive referrals.

As more agents recognize this and flock online to bring in business and build their individual professional brands, insurance marketers are tasked with scaling oversight to ensure compliance and consistent brand messaging. Considering that marketers at large companies could be looking at social strategies of thousands of agents dispersed across markets nationwide, it’s easy to see how managing the creation and publishing of owned and paid content can be incredibly time-consuming and complex.

Despite these challenges, insurance marketers must manage social media well. So how can marketing departments handle the influx of responsibilities? Start by understanding the most common mistakes and how to avoid them:

1. Letting agents fly solo.

Agents are busy, especially at a time when insurance needs are changing constantly. What’s more, many agents are likely jumping into social media as a professional tool for the first time: More than three-quarters of property-casualty agents are over age 50. They likely have less experience on social than their digital-native counterparts and require more guidance from marketing teams. It’s the marketing team’s responsibility to encourage agents to get and stay active on social media by making this task as easy as possible for them.

The right social media management software will allow marketers to create content libraries filled with preapproved posts. Agents can simply log in, choose which preapproved post they’d like to share, and either post it right away or schedule it to be posted later. This makes it easy for agents to access and post valuable content for their readers, and marketers will know that agents’ posts aren’t risking compliance or brand reputation.

2. Kicking it old-school.

Posting content and managing engagement on each individual social media platform is simply not scalable for marketers or agents today. For your team to be successful on social media, you must modernize your tools. Multichannel publishing platforms can help you effectively and efficiently create, approve, and publish content — and then manage engagement for many accounts on various platforms at once. Marketers can create approval workflows, schedule out social posts, and manage comments and other engagements, all from one central location.

What’s more, social media management software can help ease the regulatory pressure that comes along with electronic communications. In order to prove compliance in the event of an audit, you must keep record of every branded post and engagement. If you have thousands of agents using social media on behalf of the brand, however, it’s simply impossible to keep track of it all manually. It’s time to retire the binders and invest in software that can automatically log all of your posts and replies — saving you time and keeping your team audit-ready.

3. Being intimidated by paid social advertising.

When brands first began using social media as a marketing tool, all it took to make a post go viral was high-quality content. While great content is certainly a necessary place to start today, platforms have since updated their algorithms to make branded content less visible overall. Despite all the work that agents and marketers put into organic social media strategies, the reach could be insignificant without the help of paid advertising.

Paid social media advertising is a low-cost, high-return investment that will ensure branded posts land with exactly the right audiences at the right time. One of our clients, a Fortune 200 insurance company, used paid social to create one campaign that delivered click-through rates 59% higher than the financial and insurance industry average for social media and mobile advertising. And the cost-per-click was 24% less than similar campaigns.

Yes, it’s true that managing paid campaigns can be a headache for marketers, especially if they’re dealing with multiple campaigns at the brand, agency, and agent levels. But social media management software can step in to help ease the burden, and the results are worth the investment.

It’s understandable that agents and marketers alike might feel they’ve been tossed into the deep end as insurance saw a 180-degree shift in sales strategies almost overnight. The good news, however, is that the right tools can help you get a handle on the new demands of today to build an even stronger sales strategy for tomorrow.

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The pandemic has been a catalyst for quick shifts in the financial services industry, and many of those changes have created more challenges when it comes to compliance. For one, a large portion of financial services workers have transitioned to working remotely, and this isn’t likely to change: Research from PwC shows that even after the pandemic, nearly 70 percent of financial services companies say the majority of their workforces will work from home at least once a week moving forward. For banks, accommodating this new work environment has meant updating digital tools and processes.

Remote work tools are not the only aspect of digital transformation that banks are taking on. In fact, the virtual shift was already well underway before COVID-19 as consumers sought more digital touchpoints. The pandemic just sped up the process.

Such fast–paced digital transformation has meant increased risk for missteps and errors that can trigger compliance concerns. As bank marketers look for more ways to make virtual connections, they should keep the following in mind when it comes to navigating increased compliance risks:

1. Employees are both your greatest asset and your greatest risk.

When loan officers, financial advisors, and other bank associates cannot meet with clients and prospects in person, social media can be an excellent tool for relationship-building. Employees can also significantly expand a brand’s reach on social. There are regulations to keep in mind around electronic communication, however. FINRA’s rules, for instance, prohibit misleading or promissory statements and claims as well as communication that predicts or projects performance.

When the world went digital, banks without proper approval processes already nailed down likely felt the crunch as employees began interacting more online. When employees and marketers can’t simply stop by a compliance officer’s desk to ask about social updates or blog post ideas, adjusting approval processes is a must. Banks need an approval framework to ensure that every brand-related social media post from every employee meets brand messaging and regulatory guidelines. The right social media management tools can automate that approval process so that employees can send posts or engagements to the right person with just a click of a button.

2. A hot mortgage market doesn’t make safety any less important.

The mortgage market is hotter than ever before as rates reach historic lows. Loan officers are busy helping more clients secure mortgages, and the savvy ones are also using social media to get in front of prospects and capture more business. As business increases, however, so should a bank’s attention on compliance.

Marketers can keep a close eye on electronic communication using software with keyword filtering capabilities. For example, marketers could flag the word “guarantee” so any social post with that word creates an alert, so no promissory posts go live. Automatic archiving is another excellent software capability when it comes to compliance. When each post and engagement is automatically saved and stored, it’s easy to prove compliance if auditors ever come knocking.

3. If your marketing department’s growth is limited, optimize your processes.

Digital transformation may be accelerating quickly in the financial services sphere, but that does not mean marketing or compliance teams are expanding alongside it. Many financial institutions currently lack the resources to expand staff as they navigate revenue-related challenges of the pandemic.

The roles of marketers and compliance teams, however, are indeed increasing in scope and importance as banks must continue connecting virtually with consumers to guide them through new, digital ways of doing business. The good news is that banks can expand their capabilities without expanding staff or making huge capital expenditures on sophisticated digital tools. Social media is a low-cost, high-ROI option, and there are affordable social media management tools that enable marketers to keep electronic communication within regulatory bounds at scale.

For institutions that aren’t planning to grow their budgets anytime soon, optimizing marketing and compliance processes is key to connecting digitally with customers while maintaining compliance. Tools that automatically bring red flags to marketers’ attention and make it easy for employees to post approved content will help marketers guide banks safely through this digital transformation and the next.

This article was originally published on ABA Bank Marketing.