— First off, how did your bank get started? How does it differ from traditional banks?
In March 2014, the OTP Group Board of Directors made the decision to create an online bank in Russia. Thus Touch Bank, with a brand new financial product and approach to customers, appeared. The bank has no branches – we are 100% digital. We do all our business online, and all communication takes place in our online bank, mobile app, and our call center.
The main element of our product is the combination bank card, which can serve as a debit card or credit card based on the client’s settings. The client can set their credit and cash withdrawal limit, and add other options like bonus programs and cash back. This product is unique in our individual approach with each customer and the flexibility we offer them in managing their finances.
— What kind of goals did you set for yourselves?
Ambitious ones! Basically, our goals included introducing a new way of managing personal finances to the Russian market using a complex product from an unknown brand. To do this, we needed to understand our target audience, occupy our niche in the market, and distinguish ourselves from our competitors. Preliminary estimates of our target audience set the number at about nine million people – urban, internet-friendly, with average to above average incomes.
To issue the number of cards we set as part of our goals, we had to develop a customer attraction funnel while also providing cross-channel support. On top of that, we needed to be able to provide solutions for clients’ issues in real time, and instantly process all transactions.
— What kind of difficulties did you encounter? How did you overcome them?
We dove into an already competitive industry with a unique product for which there simply could not be a preexisting market so the onus was on us to create demand. Our product is sophisticated, so we needed to tell our clients how to use their combination card, how online banking works, and convince them that it is convenient and safe.
We also encountered problems arising from the fact that most people do not see a difference between debit cards and combination cards, which can serve as both a debit and a credit card. We always draw clients’ attention to the type of card they apply for in ads, forms, and during conversations with the call center.
— How did you develop your conversion funnel?
Our landing pages are adapted to specific search queries and user interests, so you could say that our work with site traffic begins before the user even comes to our site. The conversion funnel for debit cards consists of five steps: form completion, order placement, card delivery and contract signing, card activation, and the first transaction. Cards with a credit limit include a credit check as an additional step. The credit check takes place in real time and is completed immediately, so that a personal offer is ready by the time the client finishes filling out the form.
The main conversion on our site takes place when a customer orders a card. Transaction activity data, however, also helps us to assess the quality of the customers we attract, so it’s important to us that each potential client understands the features of our product before they apply for a card.
— What Yandex advertising products did you choose for the promotion of your new brand and product?
We use all sorts of advertising available in Yandex.Direct: search, ad networks, and retargeting. We also serve SERP banners. Yandex.Direct makes up roughly 70% of our paid search budget – I think that number speaks for itself.
— How did you configure your Yandex.Direct campaigns? What features of the banking segment did you need to take into account?
We came to Yandex.Direct in April of 2015. We originally managed our campaigns ourselves, but now work with the Medianation agency. We divided our campaigns into two types: the first – high-conversion, and the second — campaigns with test keywords and experiments. If the results of an experiment are good, we transfer it into the main account.
First, we tested Yandex.Direct in several cities: Rostov-on-Don, Samara, Nizhny Novgorod, and Volgograd. We checked our keywords to figure out which of them would bring the most conversions. Ads for queries like [electronic wallet] and [link card] told users about using a Touch Bank card to top up their electronic wallets without paying commission. The traffic from these queries ended up converting quite well because these users already know something about managing their finances online.
It was more difficult with deposits — queries like [bank deposits] or [deposit with capitalization calculator] turned out to be ineffective for an online bank, due to clients’ relatively conservative approach to choosing a bank to keep their money in.
Our regional experiments with Yandex.Direct provided us with valuable insight concerning what exactly our audience is seeking.
— What kind of messages work well with your audience? What was most important for you to keep in mind?
Having a high CTR was never our main goal. An ad’s text is just a tool to find your audience; what is far more important is your clients’ post-click behavior. In our search ad texts we try to emphasize the key advantages of our product.
In retargeting ad texts, we mention special promotions and projects that our bank is involved in, as well as concrete product features a user either paid specific attention to or perhaps completely missed. Then we analyze their reactions.
— How else did you use retargeting?
We combined two data slices — site visit period and behavior on the site — to create retargeting lists in Yandex.Direct.
This gives us the chance to react quickly to short-term spikes in traffic brought about by other advertising activities. We don’t show retargeting ads to users who clicked on a banner two or more days ago because we know that such large-scale campaigns are oriented toward increasing brand awareness, and do not bring high conversion rates. We increase the bids for retargeting ads aimed at users who recently landed on our site from sources with known high conversion rates.
— You really know your audience well. Aside from retargeting, how else do you apply this knowledge to your ads?
We enhance our customer profile with each new campaign launched. We also analyze conversion data from Yandex.Metrica. So when we understood, for example, that men aged 25-40 order our cards more than other demographic segments, we set additional adjustments for our Yandex.Direct bids based on demographic characteristics.
— So you launched Yandex.Direct campaigns across Russia after all of these experiments?
Yes, once we’d seen the success of our campaigns in smaller cities, we began gradually copying and launching them in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
— In the end, what sort of results were you able to achieve?
Our main result was the stable volume of cards issued. From April 2015 to September 2016, we attracted 80,000 clients, 35% of which came to Touch Bank through Yandex.Direct. Today, the average growth rate for our client base is around 10,000 clients a month.