The Digital Transformation Summit is a place where we share our and our clients’ experiences and at the same time live one of our values, “I share”. Ondřej Ševeček, Head of CRM at Equa banka, talked with Jakub Lysáček about the first implementation of Salesforce Marketing Cloud in a banking environment in the Czech Republic.
How did Equa Bank transition from an on-premise solution to the cloud, what were their reasons for doing so, and what challenges did they face during implementation? Get inspired in the interview.
Ondřej, can you introduce yourself to us?
I would like to introduce our department more than myself. We chinese overseas europe database have had a CRM team at Equa Bank for a relatively short time. Previously, our agenda fell under the product department, but to better manage the increasing volume of work, a CRM team was created. We currently cover all communications and all campaigns, not only for existing clients, but also for potential ones and, last but not least, for leads and pending applications.
The spectrum of activities is wide. We focus on the bank’s cross-product offerings. The number of channels we use is also diverse, both for sales support – that’s the more fun and creative part, and for less creative regulatory or service campaigns.
Let’s go back about two years to when you started thinking about changing and shifting your marketing. What was Equa Bank’s situation at the time and why did you decide to change the current solution?
There were several motivations. First and foremost, we wanted to support the business. To move it all the way forward. We also felt the need to digitize, not to rest on our laurels and not to be overtaken by the competition.
The challenge was to maintain the advantage we saw in the original solution, which was to maintain a significant degree of flexibility in the solution.
Ondřej, can you yourself to us?
We also focused on data integration, so another reason for the change was to integrate individual, previously fragmented, communication channels into one platform. We had previously used multi-channel communication to create campaigns, but setting up the entire process consistently was more challenging.
In the original solution, you were not satisfied with the use of multi-channel communication, because you did not have individual communication channels integrated into one platform. It was all the more difficult to create campaigns that map the customer journey, communicate uniformly, and allow, for example, to schedule the sending of an SMS message after sending an email. How did you approach the solution?
In the original solution, we had non-integrated channels – we used them rather individually. We sent an email in one campaign and a follow-up SMS message in another. This was followed by another campaign, for example a call. It was challenging and thanks to Marketing Cloud we made a huge leap forward.
There’s been a lot of talk about multichannel and customer journeys, and micro influencers and influencers: which one should i use in my marketing strategy? we all live by them in the virtual world. However, putting them into practice in our bank was much more difficult.
We now enjoy the opportunity to combine different channels even more. Whether it’s email, push notifications to the app (sales or non-sales), as well as calls (whether to the call center or branch network) – we are able to capture all of these channels in one customer journey. We conveniently plan this in advance together with our colleagues from product and marketing.
Example of a one-time campaign using SMS and email communication in various variants
Ondra, what would you describe as the most difficult challenge you faced during implementation? What was actually the most difficult?
It was definitely data. To come up with a solution that would preserve the existing flexibility and allow us to meet all legal requirements. After all, we are a bank. Another major challenge was the regime in which we made the changes. We decided that we would implement the new system during normal operations. We didn’t want anyone to know that the project was running, that we were “replacing the box”. All channels were in operation and we turned them on gradually in predetermined interactions. The changes introduced had no effect on production or on the ongoing campaigns, of which we launch dozens a day.