Automating the customer relationship for fun and profit

Someone somewhere clicks an ad for your brokerage and goes to your site. They read a few bullets of key selling points and decide to sign up for a demo of the trading platform. The trader executes a few trades and decides to look at it again later. Crickets.

So your sales people call them a few days later to discuss opening an account but “this is not a good time” and the trader hardly remembers signing up in the first place. Opportunity lost.

So what went wrong? Is this just a bad lead or could the broker have done better? With automation comes the potential for Just in Time Communication. Imagine the same scenario but with the benefits of automation:

The trader clicks on an ad and signs up for a demo. He logs in and starts using the platform, and immediately your sales people get offered the lead. A little window pops up, the sales person asks via chat how everything is going, and if they need any help. The user asks a few questions about opening and closing trades and all is clear, so the trader opens a few FX trades in EURUSD. They close the platform to look at it again later.

A few hours later, an email goes out with an analysts view on EURUSD and an automated note from the sales person they spoke with via chat saying ‘Since you opened some EURUSD trades, you might find this interesting’. The trader reads it the next day and the sales person gets a ping on their computer.

He calls the trader right away and discusses the procedure for account opening. An email goes out at the same time with the link to the account opening form and the needed documents. The trader looks at the account opening form on the website that evening and while he does, the sales person initiates a chat window to see if all is clear. It is, and the trader opens an account. And everyone is happy.

Of course this is just one scenario, imagine what you could do with Just in Time Communication when it comes to customer support and getting them to trade more. How you could adjust your marketing by taking into account lead/customer quality and not just discreet numbers.

How you could optimize your sales peoples’ time by only giving them the right lead at the right moment. The possibilities are endless. In the end, such systems come down to the right communication at the right time and empowering your sales people to use their time in the most effective way possible. Call this lead first, then this client, discuss the following.

What brokers need is a good modern CRM system such as Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics and a marketing automation tool such as Eloqua or Marketo. With these and additional tools (and the staffing to support it) earnings and conversion rates will shoot up, and that’s just what we need at a time when acquisition becomes more and more expensive.

Got any good examples of Just in Time Communication? Leave a comment below.