How Affiliate Marketing Can Help Financial Advertisers Overcome Key Challenges

According to Deloitte, 35% of customers have increased their online banking usage during the pandemic. Interestingly, a high proportion of this growth has come from seniors and boomers who have historically been slower to adopt digital channels.

To take advance of this rapid growth, financial advertisers need to shake up their marketing strategies. Consumers are increasingly looking online for the benefits and comparison of financial products, making having a strong presence on these sites a crucial part of any online marketing programme. The affiliate channel can therefore excel in helping financial brands reach potential customers through new and innovative publishers.

In this edition of our finance focused blog series, Rakuten Advertising’s Senior Client Development Manager for Financial Services, Harry Johns, explains the barriers that finance companies face and how the affiliate channel can help overcome them:

Compliance

In the financial sector, FCA regulations and company compliance requirements need to be managed effectively to ensure publishers and their communication of offers are compliant. To do this, you need a partner who can support you and give you peace of mind by ensuring new publishers meet and adhere to regulatory requirements.

Rakuten Advertising’s blend of artificial intelligence, human interaction and new technology tools have resulted in the leading compliance solution on the market globally. The key features include:

• Real-time monitoring to ensure potentially fraudulent activity is identified immediately
• Content monitoring to ensure messaging is aligned on publisher sites to business requirements
• Social listening to track brand sentiment and monitor reach
• Real-time updates to ensure there are no marketing errors preventing issues before they occur

These features allow financial advertisers to work with publishers more confidently and ensure activity is aligned to compliance requirements and regulatory standards set by the FCA.

Measurement

To build a successful affiliate programme, financial advertisers need to understand the success of both short and long-tail publishers. We do this through our attributed measurement capabilities which help advertisers understand publishers’ true value throughout the consumer journey. This insight can then be used to drive more tactical publisher recruitment.

For example, when looking at credit card applications, it’s crucial to identify if the consumer that applied via an affiliate link uses the credit card and pays their bills on time. By providing your feed, we can uncover which publishers are driving high-value customers. With this data-led approach, you can reward the publishers that drive specific customers to increase the quality of applications aligned to strategic objectives.

It is important to ensure budgets are allocated to attract the right consumers, and brands can cross-sell to those consumers with the right product. Leveraging a full-funnel publisher approach is the key to driving scale in a way cost-effective and profitable way. At Rakuten Advertising, our dedicated financial services team holds relationships to help financial advertisers access valuable publisher partners. Our compliance monitoring and bespoke support provide the confidence to work effectively with these publishers and optimise performance to drive success.