2011 Bronze Best data strategy

Client Lloyds TSB

What is wonderful about this work? A highly personal letter from the local branch with an invitation to call the branch manager, with a CTA directly referencing recent customer behaviour. This data strategy resulted in a tenfold improvement of lending ROI, from 45% to 444%. Subsequent fine-tuning of data selections and production has further increased lending ROI to 952%.

What details of the strategy make this a winning entry? Lloyds TSB was aware that of their best lending leads (identified by event-based triggers and sophisticated in-house propensity models), over 100,000 per month were unused. These should have been followed up centrally by telephone or locally by a branch. We decided to use the unused leads to drive highly personalised DM. We put the customer at the centre of our communications through targeted messaging, triggered by financial transaction information. Unlike 'business as usual' DM campaigns, the messaging is specific to customer circumstances (e.g. "you've been using your overdraft facility quite a bit") but not productspecific. So a call to action might be: "you could probably save money by organising your finances differently". We created a better customer experience, with relevant messaging and a CTA asking the customer to speak to their local branch. We increased timeliness of mailings with quick provision of data and next-day mailing. And we improved cost effectiveness by reducing our DM volume through more targeted messaging.

How did creativity bring the strategy to life? The creative platform focused on conveying a 'local branch' tone. Historically, customers have responded well when invited to visit their local branch by their bank manager. The letter and envelope were designed to deliver a straightforward personalised message from the customer's branch manager. The copy contained various branch details and a relevant branch frank on the outer envelope was a world first. Although the communication appeared simple, there were potentially thousands of permutations. Each event trigger was overlaid by the customer's credit profile, and which branch their account was linked to. Given the letter was from the branch manager, the copy was deliberately kept very simple and informal.

Results The number of branch contacts and product sales increased tenfold. Feedback from both branch managers and customers has been very positive. In the most recent three months, we mailed over 100,000 customers with clear, identifiable product needs, achieving a 6% appointment rate and 19% sales rate. The next stage is a fully automated workflow based on overnight data feeds offering almost unlimited potential messaging permutations and a near real-time response to our customers.

Team Mark Addleman, Sue Coburn, Rachael Dawson, Anna Hingston, Sarah Pickering, Barney Hosey, Peter Frings, Morgan Reavey, Stuart Plumley, Richard Cook.

Other contributor Brightsource - Production.