I’m thrilled to board a plane next week to visit with clients and peers in the Fintech space at the LendIt conference in New York City from May 25–27. Even with the significant financial challenges impacting the world at present, there’s a tremendous amount of opportunity available in this sector, provided brands have the right fintech marketing strategy in place.
LendIt Conference Provides a Look Into the Ever-Changing Fintech Market
This will be my seventh time attending the LendIt conference. The personal lending space has experienced significant growth, technology investments, and transformation during that time. I’m eager to see the evolution of the attendees and exhibitors this year. Lenders have faced marketplace uncertainty, an unstable job market, and unpredictable supply chain. At IWCO Direct, we’ve seen firsthand the challenges our fintech clients have faced—leveraging historical targeting while trying to absorb significant cost increases. The direct mail marketing channel has been hit from all sides—paper shortages and cost increases, limited freight, fuel prices that won’t quit, a tightened labor market, and, to top it off, double digit increases from the USPS. It’s putting marketers to the test to determine how to best utilize their budgets and drive projected growth.
Mail Less, Acquire More
But it’s not all doom and gloom. We’ve helped many clients reevaluate their fintech marketing strategies, including utilizing personalization and truly optimizing their programs to mail less, but acquire more. IWCO Direct supports these efforts with the largest digital production platform in the direct mail industry and the dynamic content solutions to deliver it. It’s more critical than ever to target the right person, at the right time, with the right offer. A hassle-free, quick, and personalized experience is now table stakes for participating in personal lending.
Organizations like LendingClub, Prosper, Best Egg, SoFi, Upstart, and Marcus set the bar on next-day funding, and most traditional banking institutions have now caught up. It’s been fascinating to watch the players evolve their product offerings to include credit card, home, student, and auto loans, in addition to personal loans. A few have begun to dip their toes in the water of multi-lingual offers.
Opportunities for the Future
Tailoring direct mail offers to individuals and leveraging persona and trigger-based data to aid the approach is largely an untapped opportunity in this market. As American budgets face greater challenges with rising inflation, there’s an even greater opportunity now than in the past to support individuals and families looking for a line of credit. This is the moment for small business lenders to help support some of the businesses that have struggled through a tough economy brought on by the pandemic.
Ultimately, we see the future of personal lending where no two offers are the same. With the right direct marketing strategy in place, the ability to leverage credit triggers, combined with your unique offer, in the right language, at the right time will have a significant impact. It will be fascinating to learn how much of the content discussed at this year’s LendIt conference is targeted to the time and financial circumstances we’re facing as individuals and businesses.
We hope to see you at the conference in person! Stop by and reconnect with us at booth #415.
