2022 Gold Email

Agency: Havas CX helia and Stick & Twist

Client: Lloyds Banking Group

Campaign Name: On the Money

Campaign Overview

Halifax has ambitions to move from a product-centric to a customer-focused approach. The brief was to build customer engagement beyond functional product relationships.

Strategy

Faced with the shocking fact that 47% of UK adults lack confidence in managing their money, the team planned an integrated comms experience around the key moments in customers' financial lives.

The campaign applied insight and personalisation to make every communication helpful, informative and inspirational: ‘On the Money.’

A multi-dimensional customer strategy and joined-up, multichannel communications journeys were based on key themes, segmented by customer life-stage and behavioural triggers, to bring brand promises to life at an individual level. This was intended to improve engagement across the entire journey and increase customer intent.

A key component of the strategy was to address the natural reset points when customers would be more receptive to prompts to change their behaviour; at an everyday level like payday, and at more significant moments in their lives like the house-buying process.

Creativity

All communications were designed to be down-to-earth, straight-talking and confidence-building with a fresh look and feel to distinguish them from conversion comms.

‘Payday Eve’ was based on the idea that your bank is best placed to help with personal finances, as it has a view of individual behaviour and the credibility and expertise to advise. Comms would be sent at the best time of the month for customers to implement new habits.

A bespoke template and creative wrapper under the banner 'In the Know' helped customers become familiar with the new communication series, and start to look out for its helpful summaries and advice. Another example, ’Credit Worthiness’ targeted customers with low credit scores. A new Credit Score tool gave Halifax the ability to target these people, giving them access to the right insight and advice to improve it.

The team used customer data to vary the content and determine what would be most helpful and relevant, ensuring any advice was pitched at the right level.

Results

The goal of customer engagement activity was to increase the number of quality interactions with customers.

For Lloyds Banking Group, the CTD benchmark is 0.45%. 'On the Money' emails achieved an average CTD of 1.75%, with Payday Eve hitting 2.79%. Average customer dwell time post-click was 02:16, more than double the Lloyds Banking Group benchmark of 01:04.

Customers have made meaningful actions after receiving communications, with more than taking at least one relevant action from a Payday Eve email; from reviewing their spending to amending their contactless limit.

The Team

Havas CX helia - Ben Knight, Executive Creative Director - Claire Hutchinson, Account Director - Jon McWee, Experience Lead - Laura Burnell, Senior Account Manager - Nadia Mkinsi, Senior Planner - Tim Bax, Head of Copy - James Casey, Client Partner - Ashley Kursey, Midweight Designer - Alex Barnett, Midweight Designer - Rosalind Hadley, Midweight Copywriter - Tony Wellor, Senior Copywriter - Lynne Smith, Senior Copywriter - Josh Suntharasivam

Lloyds Bank Group - Sarah Betteridge, Senior Marketing Manager - Libby Anderson, Assistant Content Manager - Harriet Saralis, Content Manager - Alana Abrahams, Assistant Content Manager - Chris Davis-Coward, Head of Engagement, Value Generation & Consumer Relationships - Carly Sullivan, Planning Manager - Dan Mogg, Senior Marketing Manager - Jas Kaur, Content Manager Lloyds Banking Group Sophie Perkins, Assistant Content Manager - Ellie Johnson, Assistant Content Manager - Alex Collyer, Planning Manager - Sam Bennet, Assistant Content Manager - Holly Vallerius, Assistant Planning Manager - Yasmin Carpenter, Assistant Content Manager

Stick & Twist - Nick Baker, Lead Strategist - Anna Laird, Strategy Partner