Marketing & Acquisition

Q&A: Macroeconomic Outlook and the Influence on Your Collections Strategy

Matthew Baltzer, Senior Director of Product Marketing, discusses challenges facing the debt collections industry and how to build a profitable portfolio.

November 30, 2022 by Laura Burrows
Make Smarter Decisions with Advanced Credit Attributes

Today’s changing economy is directly impacting consumers’ financial behaviors, with some individuals doing well and some showing signs of payment stress. And while these trends may pose challenges to financial institutions, such as how to expand their customer base without taking on additional risk, the right credit attributes can help them drive smarter and more profitable lending decisions. With Experian’s industry-leading credit attributes, organizations can develop precise and explainable acquisition models and strategies. As a result, they can: Expand into new segments: By gaining deeper insights into consumer trends and behaviors, organizations can better assess an individual’s creditworthiness and approve populations who might have been overlooked due to limited or no credit history. Improve the customer experience: Having a wider view of consumer credit behavior and patterns allows organizations to apply the best treatment at the right time based on each consumer’s specific needs. Save time and resources: With an ongoing managed set of base attributes, organizations don’t have to invest significant resources to develop the attributes themselves. Additionally, existing attributes are regularly updated and new attributes are added to keep pace with industry and regulatory changes. Case study: Enhance decision-making and segmentation strategies A large retail credit card issuer was looking to grow their portfolio by identifying and engaging more consumers who met their credit criteria. To do this, they needed to replace their existing custom acquisition model with one that provided a granular view of consumer behavior. By partnering with Experian, the company was able to implement an advanced custom acquisition model powered by our proprietary Trended 3DTM and Premier AttributesSM. Trended 3D analyzes consumers’ behavior patterns over time, while Premier Attributes aggregates and summarizes findings from credit report data, enabling the company to make faster and more strategic lending decisions. Validations of the new model showed up to 10 percent improvement in performance across all segments, helping the company design more effective segmentation strategies, lower their risk exposure and approve more accounts. To learn how Experian can help your organization make the best data-driven decisions, read the full case study or visit us. Download case study Visit us

November 14, 2022 by Theresa Nguyen
How Credit Unions Can Improve Financial Inclusion

Credit unions are working toward financial inclusion, but it's a process that requires establishing best practices, partnerships and engaging leadership.

October 20, 2022 by Corliss Hill
Developing an Effective Customer Targeting Strategy

With consumers having more credit options than ever before, it’s imperative for lenders to get their message in front of ideal customers at the right time and place. But without clear insights into their interests, credit behaviors or financial capacity, you may risk extending preapproved credit offers to individuals who are unqualified or have already committed to another lender. To increase response rates and reduce wasted marketing spend, you must develop an effective customer targeting strategy. What makes an effective customer targeting strategy? A customer targeting strategy is only as good as the data that informs it. To create a strategy that’s truly effective, you’ll need data that’s relevant, regularly updated, and comprehensive. Alternative data and credit-based attributes allow you to identify financially stressed consumers by providing insight into their ability to pay, whether their debt or spending has increased, and their propensity to transfer balances and consolidate loans. With a more granular view of consumers’ credit behaviors over time, you can avoid high-risk accounts and focus only on targeting individuals that meet your credit criteria. While leveraging additional data sources can help you better identify creditworthy consumers, how can you improve the chances of them converting? At the end of the day, it’s also the consumer that’s making the decision to engage, and if you aren’t sending the right offer at the precise moment of interest, you may lose high-value prospects to competitors who will. To effectively target consumers who are most likely to respond to your credit offers, you must take a customer-centric approach by learning about where they’ve been, what their goals are, and how to best cater to their needs and interests. Some types of data that can help make your targeting strategy more customer-centric include: Demographic data like age, gender, occupation and marital status, give you an idea of who your customers are as individuals, allowing you to enhance your segmentation strategies. Lifestyle and interest data allow you to create more personalized credit offers by providing insight into your consumers’ hobbies and pastimes. Life event data, such as new homeowners or new parents, helps you connect with consumers who have experienced a major life event and may be receptive to event-based marketing campaigns during these milestones. Channel preference data enables you to reach consumers with the right message at the right time on their preferred channel. Target high-potential, high-value prospects By using an effective customer targeting strategy, you can identify and engage creditworthy consumers with the greatest propensity to accept your credit offer. To see if your current strategy has what it takes and what Experian can do to help, view this interactive checklist or visit us today. Review your customer targeting strategy Visit us

October 10, 2022 by Theresa Nguyen
Creating More Equity in Energy

Learn how Experian can help the utility industy to create more equity in energy and better serve their customers. Read more!

October 5, 2022 by Kara Nieberlein
Six Fraud Trends to Look Out for During a Recession

As there is talk about the global economy potentially heading into a recession, it's important to be on the lookout for six fraud trends.

October 4, 2022 by Guest Contributor
Identifying Credit-Active Consumers with Prospect Triggers

With Experian’s Prospect Triggers, this credit union was able to pinpoint consumers that met their credit criteria & were likely to respond to their offers.

September 26, 2022 by Theresa Nguyen
New Q2 Automotive Consumer Trends Report: Electric Vehicles

Did you know that GenX had the most Hybrid owners migrate to Electric Vehicles in 2021? And believe it or not, the next group behind GenXers were Boomers! That’s right, not millennials or GenZ…Boomers! We have many more details to share on the Electric Vehicle segment and the consumers in that segment who buy them in our newly released Experian Automotive Consumer Trend Report: Q2 2022. Every quarter, Experian’s Automotive Consumer Trends Report provides insights into specific vehicle segments and the associated consumers within that segment. This quarter focuses on the Electric Vehicle (EV) market. The report answers these questions: How many EVs are on the road? Where are they located? How have recent EV registrations shifted the geographic distribution? Which manufacturers are selling those vehicles? Who is taking market share from whom? Who are the consumers who registered those vehicles? What are the demographic and psychographic insights for those consumers? There are two ways to receive the report information: Watch the on-demand presentation of the report while our analyst provides critical insight & analysis OR Download a PDF version of the report At Experian Automotive, we understand that marketers need to deeply understand consumers to develop targeted, effective marketing strategies. Whether you are an OEM marketer, an agency, or an auto dealer, our presentation will transform complex market data into actionable insights that you can begin using immediately.

September 23, 2022 by Kirsten Von Busch
Fraudsters Playing the Long Game with Synthetic Identity Fraud

Between social unrest across the globe, the lingering pandemic, and the digital transformation brought on by the health crisis, the fraud landscape has expanded dramatically for businesses and consumers alike. According to Experian’s latest global identity and fraud report, 93% of U.S. companies have mid-to-high concern for fraud, and 81% say that their worries about fraud have increased over the past 12 months. Monitoring unused or dormant accounts for fraud is often a warning directed at consumers. However, it’s now advice an increasing number of businesses are wishing they’d followed, as growing synthetic identity (SID) fraud is fueling a dramatic increase in losses—SID related charge-offs ballooned to $20 billion in 2021 alone, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. The threat of SIDs SIDs are made to look like an actual consumer, combining both real and fake data to form a new composite identity. They typically evolve using a combination of tactics that include: Identifying and creating relationships with businesses that have a high tolerance for identity discrepancies. These include businesses whose products expose the business to low fraud risk and/or products offered to market segments where identity verification is expected to be challenging. Either of these enable an SID to be planted among consumer data sources. Attaching the SID to existing accounts and relationships that belong to other consumers. Often these existing accounts were established by collusive criminals or by using other SIDs, but there are also ways for legitimate consumers to collect ‘rent’ in exchange for adding other consumers to existing accounts. Either approach improves the SID’s appearance of credit worthiness. Progressively building the SID’s independent ability to access larger and larger amounts of credit until they spend quickly and default on all obligations, leaving no one for the victimized businesses to pursue. “They’re difficult to identify because of the combination of real and fake data and because there’s no actual victim reporting an identity theft. As a result, businesses typically have trouble separating SID losses from credit losses,” said Chris Ryan, Experian’s go-to-market lead for fraud and identity. “SID fraud isn’t committed haphazardly.  It’s carefully planned and executed—and it adapts to policy changes. Some businesses change their underwriting policy or focus on early-lifecycle account activity like purchases, payments, and requests for additional credit to reduce SID losses that occur immediately after an account is opened. SIDs can adapt to this. If six months of responsible account behavior earns a credit line increase or the ability to spend large amounts in a single billing cycle, the perpetrators are willing to wait,” Ryan said. “It’s something businesses and lenders need to be on guard for, especially with the fast-paced holiday shopping season ahead,” he said. Addressing SIDs Solving the increasingly complex problem of SID fraud requires a thoughtful approach. The institutions seeing success at preventing multi-faceted fraud are using a layered approach to identifying and mitigating fraud. Here are three steps lenders can take today to prevent SID fraud across your portfolio: Use data and analytics that extend beyond credit to evaluate identities and their histories more completely. Apply those analytics across the lifecycle from marketing and origination to portfolio management recognizing that SID risk is not restricted to a single lifecycle stage. Have a rigorous verification process that escalates to document verification or the Social Security Administrations Electronic Consent Based SSN Verification (eCBSV) process For more information on how you can leverage a multi-layered approach to fraud in your business, visit our fraud and identity solutions hub or request a call to discuss customizing a solution for your company.

September 14, 2022 by Jesse Hoggard
What is People-Based Marketing?

People-based marketing connects businesses with real people, helping them understand who their customers are and how to engage them in more meaningful ways.

August 16, 2022 by Theresa Nguyen
How a Pandemic Further Impacted Financial Inclusion

With the pandemic waning, now is the time for financial institutions to take action on financial inclusion. Read on to learn more!

August 4, 2022 by Guest Contributor
Financial Services: How to Optimize Your Customer Acquisition Strategy

To drive growth and customer retention in today’s competitive landscape, financial services must optimize their customer acquistion strategies.

June 28, 2022 by Theresa Nguyen
The Rise of Data Portability Intensifies the Importance and Challenge of Digital Identity

“Businesses are managing vast and growing amounts of consumer data – all while ensuring consumers’ privacy and complying with complex government regulations.” This is one of the many reasons there’s an increasing need for innovative digital identity solutions, as explored in a in Axios in a new Experian advertorial. Experian Identity, an integrated suite of identity solutions, products, and services, solves for challenges presented by the continuing migration of consumers to the internet and the resulting growth of consumer data. Leveraging that data stemming from diverse sources and combining it with advanced technologies, is critical to better determining and understanding a company’s best marketing prospects, as well as making confident decisions that enhance and safeguard the consumer experience. How? By leveraging multidimensional data and adhering to all consumer protection laws and industry self-regulatory standards, businesses can best recognize and connect with their consumers in more personalized, meaningful and secure ways. The Axios article discusses the benefits of Experian Identity, including strengthening fraud detection, solving for identity resolution, and helping to uncover business opportunities through segmenting, targeting and engaging consumers. “While today’s consumers are intensely interested in protecting their personal data and identities, they also want to be recognized and understood by the companies they do business with,” said Kathleen Peters, Chief Innovation Officer of Experian Decision Analytics, in the article. Read more about how Experian’s identity solutions helps businesses stay relevant with audiences, create a positive consumer experience, and meet people’s desire to be recognized in Axios’ new article. AXIOS: Making identities personal Learn more about Experian Identity

June 27, 2022 by Stefani Wendel
Fintech Nexus USA 2022: Experian Perspectives on Fraud and BNPL

Experian recently attended Fintech Nexus USA, formally known as LendIT Fintech USA, to discuss fraud prevention and BNPL. Read more!

June 27, 2022 by Kara Nieberlein
Use Data Insights For an Eagle’s Eye Approach to Marketing

Last month my blog discussed how Building the Perfect Audience is Like Building the Perfect Burger! It was National Hamburger Month, so it seemed apropos! We offered marketers insight into building better audiences to help run more strategic marketing campaigns. This month, I am keeping with the monthly ‘holiday’ theme. June 20th was National American Eagle Day and being so close to our 4th of July holiday, I thought this was a perfect tie-in this month! You are probably wondering how I am going to tie in National American Eagle Day with another marketing strategy, but I promise you, I can! It’s all about having strategic insight into your customers and using an “eagle eye” to learn what you can about them to obtain better results from your marketing efforts. An eagle's-eye approach to finding and reaching the right consumers Here are a few fun facts about the great American Bald Eagle. Bald Eagles were placed at the center of the Great Seal of the United States in 1782! “Bald” in Bald Eagle refers to an old English word that means “white-headed.” We’ve all heard people talk about having an “eagle eye.” It’s true—this comes from the eagle’s astonishing eyesight. Eagles can see clearly and about eight times as far as humans can, allowing them to spot and focus on a rabbit or other prey at a distance of about two miles. Can you imagine? They can also look ahead and to the side simultaneously with a 340-degree visual field! Imagine if you had an eagle-eye, 340-degree view of your customers or prospects before running a marketing campaign. Well, you can. Experian data insights offers an eagle-eye approach to finding and reaching the right consumers at the right time in the buying journey to help you eliminate marketing waste and deliver a more significant return on your marketing spend. Understanding your customers is key With Experian’s Insights solution, as part of our comprehensive Experian Marketing Engine, we offer OEM marketers, agencies, and larger dealer groups access to multiple Insight categories to learn more about your customers. Understanding your current customers or the segment of prospects you would like to target allows for a more strategic approach to marketing campaigns. Our brand, model, registration, title, finance, market analysis, lifestyle, and household insights can help you take a 360-degree view of your customer (that's right, 360 degrees, 20 degrees more than an eagles eye!) There’s a lot of discuss here, so we’ve put together a complimentary resource, Understand Your Customer Before Choosing Your Audience that explains all the ways you can use Insights to learn more about your customers. What is the Experian Marketing Engine? Insights is part of the Experian Marketing Engine marketing solution that helps automotive marketers, manufacturers, advertisers, agencies, and platforms identify the right audience, uncover the most appropriate communication channels, develop messages that resonate, and measure the effectiveness of marketing activities.

June 21, 2022 by Kirsten Von Busch

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