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Maybank on justifying a move to digital

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The banking sector spends little of its IT budget in engaging the consumer, but this needs to change, said group chief marketing officer of Maybank Mohammad Adam Wee Abdullah.While thinking digital is a challenge across the board for many Asia Pacific firms, the banking industry regulation-heavy nature makes the move even more challenging.Where digital marketing is concerned, it also usually gets the least attention.Speaking at Adobe’s Digital Marketing Symposium, Wee said: “In the banking sector we spend a lot of our IT investment in the mid and back office, and not enough in the front office where customer engagement happens. This less than 50% investment in IT also includes running branch systems and ATMs. The banking sector rarely invests in IT to generate demand.” He added that the industry largely relies on product and distribution to grow the business.The reliance on product often leads to a fight on pricing at the cost of margins, putting further strain on how the bank is operated.This was when Maybank decided to place its bets on exploring digital for customer engagement – in terms of its site and social media.“It wasn’t just about investing in technology, but we had to change policies and put in place new guidelines,” he said.For example, for Maybank’s step into social - In Asia Pacific, social media plays a key part in influencing consumer decision, said Wee.Maybank adopted what it calls a “social strategy maturity” model – first giving its employees a framework for reputation management, before moving into the marketing and promotions aspect. From there, it could work on customer loyalty and customer service, then eventually social commerce.  “If we got it (social) wrong, it could have gone badly,” said Wee.His take on handling disgruntled customers on Maybank’s social media assets was that it is better to have customers complaining on platforms it could control then on ones it could not. As a result, more customers came on board when they knew Maybank was listening on social media, added Wee.Next was to revamp its website. While Wee said that the Maybank site had high traffic, its content architecture was extremely cluttered – it had a total of 347 pages on its site, but only 10% of these got most of the page views.Streamlining its site, it decided to revamp its private wealth site, tailoring it for each individual and making it mobile and tablet-accessible. View the site here.This resulted in a 317% increase in time spent on the site, and the bank reported 166 leads generated as a result of the move. The site was done by XM Asia Pacific.

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