Marketing & Acquisition

A false decline is a legitimate transaction that is not completed due to suspected fraud or the friction that occurs during verification. Read more.

Learn four best practices for improving consumer engagement while furthering your financial inclusion efforts. Read more!

Discover the dos and don’ts when it comes to implementing a successful strategy for income and employment verification for mortgage. Read more!

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

“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

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

These days, the call for financial inclusion is being answered by a disruptive force of new financial products and services. Read more!

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.

Learn how you can use credit attributes to identify qualified prospects, set initial limits, manage credit lines and limit credit losses.

We are thrilled to introduce a new quarterly series, Automotive Consumer Trends & Analysis. For years, Experian has been delivering automotive insights in our State of the Automotive Finance Market and Automotive Market and Registration Trends quarterly presentations. We are now bringing similar insights and analyses to the automotive consumer market. At Experian, we understand that marketers need to have a deep understanding of consumers in order to develop targeted, effective marketing strategies. Whether you are an OEM marketer, an agency or large dealer group our presentations will transform complex market data into actionable insights that you can begin using immediately. Learn more about vehicle segments and consumers Would you like to understand which people are buying what vehicles with a clear view of what these consumers look like? The Automotive Consumer Trends & Analysis presentations will provide updated quarterly insights on specific vehicle segments and the associated consumers within that segment. We’ll answer questions like: How many vehicles are on the road? Where are they located? How have recent 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? We’ll also cover industry news and provide a special market analysis Inaugural Presentation! Release Date: June 23rd Segment: Crossover Utility Vehicles (CUV) You’ll leave the presentation with insights you need to make more strategic marketing decisions and better connect with consumers. Register now for the Automotive Consumer Trends & Analysis quarterly series. Once you register, you’ll receive an email when the presentation has been released.

Today’s OEM marketers, agencies and large dealer groups are under tremendous pressure to connect with consumers across multiple marketing channels. Finding a wide variety of relevant audiences is critical to campaign success. Because May is National Hamburger Month (yep, it’s a real thing), I will compare building the perfect burger to building the ideal automotive audience. Here we go. First, imagine your favorite burger joint (or gourmet burger eatery). You start by opening the menu and likely seeing some of the house “standards.” These are the traditional favorites available “off the menu” with little fuss. Burger with American cheese, Burger with lettuce, onion and tomato. Easy peasy. These types of offerings are similar to what we call our Syndicated audiences. Experian has more than 600 syndicated audiences that are readily available and on the shelf of most trusted platforms. More Choices and Options After that, things get interesting with lots of options to make your burger exactly how you want it. Do you want beef, veggie, portobello mushroom or maybe even bison as your “burger” choice? Cheese? Sure, but what kind? American, cheddar, swiss, blue, pepper jack? And what about toppings? Fried onion strings, raw, cooked? Mushrooms? Jalapenos? Ketchup, mustard, hot sauce, chipotle? Don’t even get me started about your bun choices! You see where I am going with this. With Experian’s Audiences, we have four more levels after our Syndicated Audiences that can help you create the targeted audiences you need based on your specific strategy. From Syndicated to Premium to Custom: Build the Perfect Audience For example, do you need to target in-market customers for a new or used vehicle?  Equity positioning? End of term? Alternate fuels? A specific make and/or model? Do you need to target consumers by a particular price range? We can also build custom audiences based on your first-party data coupled with our data resources to help with vehicle launches, services campaigns and any unique audience need you have. We don’t expect you to understand all of this in a short blog, so we’ve written a complimentary resource, Automotive Audience Choices are Key to Ever-Changing Strategies, explaining each of the five categories of audiences. Download it to learn how to build the perfect burger—I mean audience. By the way, as a Midwestern girl, my favorite burger is a traditional cheeseburger with all the fixins—so bring on the sharp cheddar, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles and fried onions. What’s yours? Feel free to email me about burgers or audiences! Audiences 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.

As card issuers go head-to-head in the battle to reach and connect with new consumers, they must implement more inclusive lending strategies.

With used vehicle sales up 13% from 2020 to 2021, and auction volumes at historic lows, obtaining vehicles directly from consumers offers an opportunity for dealers to maintain a profitable sales pipeline. The key for dealers is to understand how their sales stack up against other local dealers — and more specifically, what types of vehicles those competitive dealers are selling. Dealers should take advantage of market visibility Experian’s marketing solution, the Automotive Intelligence Engine (AIE), offers dealers market visibility of pre-owned sales trends and recommends marketing strategies to help acquire used vehicle inventory. AIE provides specific strategies to help dealers acquire the most desired units and reach/resonate with consumers who are most likely to bring those units in on trade. Dealers can view: Who owns desirable vehicles the dealer would like to purchase Strategies to acquire and sell used units Sales trends such as segment, class, model, make and model Financing trends such as credit score, term, and lender Audience makeup: demographic and psychographic characteristics, who owns what type of vehicle, and where they live. By understanding the used owner, dealers can use messaging that resonates to help upsell them into a newer vehicle they desire—helping dealers stay competitive in today’s market. Dealers should also look at lending trends Exploring the world of used vehicle sales should also extend into lending trends. Since used vehicles are not included in OEM lending incentives, understanding trends helps dealers make more informed decisions. Used vehicles can qualify for special OEM sponsored CPO financing. With AIE, dealers have visibility into the amount financeable percentages, APR trends, terms, and tiers for lenders within their market. This benefits dealers to know which lenders are covering more significant percentages like 140% of NADA and what lenders are covering lower credit tiers. Knowing options on the lending side of the transaction empowers dealers to expand their financing options to work with lenders who facilitate lower credit scores or cover higher percentages. Learn how Experian’s Automotive Intelligence Engine can help you make more informed decisions about used car inventory acquisition. You may also be interested in reading more about audience segmentation and AIE in our blog, Data-Driven Audience Segmentation Empowers More Effective Omnichannel Marketing. 1US Used Car Market Finishes Strong in 2021: What's Up for 2022? | Nasdaq

As I reflect on the past two years and think about how the pandemic impacted the automotive industry, I realized that although it was a crazy ride, I believe there was a silver lining – at least for marketers at OEMs, agencies, and large dealer groups, who are tasked with advertising to consumers. I’ll explain more in a minute. First, let’s very briefly recap some trends we’ve recently experienced: Auto dealerships shut down showrooms to in-person shoppers Chip shortages paralyzed new vehicle manufacturing (and are ongoing) Shoppers rapidly shifted to online car shopping (and buying) Pre-owned vehicle sales went through the roof (and remain high) Streaming services went wild, and consumers continue to devour content Marketers shifted focus to more digital marketing to meet consumer demand So, the silver lining? Auto marketers certainly had to take a crash course in the new consumer buying journey. One result was an appreciation for the complexities of digital experiences and a new understanding of unique consumer behaviors and preferences. Here are a few things marketers learned: Consumers want to feel connected to their preferred brand(s) They want to be in charge of their shopping and buying journey Consumers want transparency and honesty from their brand (and dealer) They want the information they are looking for to be both instantly available and on their preferred devices Consumers want time to make a decision Before the pandemic, research revealed that about 88% of prospective car buyers researched options online before stepping into a dealership, and 60% of shoppers spent six or more months on their search, with up to 24 marketing touchpoints along the way.1 So, how do marketers ensure their advertising appears, front and center, for all these touchpoints? Today, the challenge for auto marketers is to stay on top of the consumer’s needs and be there when they are “looking or hearing” their message. This includes creating relevant messages across all media, including social, email, text, web, direct mail, Connected TV, linear, and Addressable TV channels. And don’t forget, consumers have multiple devices now, so it’s even harder for your message to “find them.” During their auto buying journey, consumers are a moving target! To succeed in today’s new world, auto marketers need to rely heavily on data insights that enable them to send targeted, relevant messages exactly where the consumer wants them. Is this even possible? In a word, yes. We’ve published a resource for auto marketers To help marketers stay on top of the latest data science trends and the insights this data produces, we’ve written, Using Data Insights to Drive Measurable OEM Marketing Strategies. We discuss the new consumer buying journey, the explosion of personal devices, the latest in data-driven insights, the increase in media channels, and how to best target, activate, and measure marketing campaigns while optimizing spend. We cover five areas that we believe auto marketers need to focus on to be successful: Identity: Learn the importance of linking fragmented data across channels, platforms, and devices to build unified customer profiles that enable a multi-channel customer experience. Insights: Understand how applying data insights can help make more strategic and effective marketing decisions regarding your audiences, channels, messaging, and goals. Audiences: Read about the value of leveraging automotive, predictive, and lifestyle data to build precisely segmented audiences for every marketing campaign. Activation: Learn how you can leverage our relationship with more than 100 media partners and digital platforms to launch and optimize your marketing campaigns across all channels. Measurement: Read about the importance of accurate measurement and determining the ROI of your online and offline campaigns to gain actionable insights for future campaigns. Get started by reading a complimentary copy of Using Data Insights to Drive Measurable OEM Marketing Strategies. Learn more about Experian's OEM marketing solutions. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2020/09/10/why-automotive-marketing-is-changing-and-how-to-meet-the-demand/?sh=16d583c9a3dd

Experian recently announced Experian Identity and published an advertorial in American Banker outlining the integrated approach to identity that recognizes the full breadth of the company’s authoritative data solutions that help businesses better connect with their consumers in more personalized, meaningful and secure ways. The efforts address the rapidly changing definition and landscape of identity and take on the importance and needs for identity which span across the entire customer journey. From marketing to a specific consumer’s needs, to facilitating a friction-right customer experience, to protecting personal information. As such, there’s a gap for single-partner providers to help businesses navigate this change, while also putting the needs of the consumer first. “Identity data sets are constantly growing with inputs from new interactions. Many future sources of data have yet to be even conceived or developed,” said Kathleen Peters, Chief Innovation Officer, Experian Decision Analytics. “Staying ahead of the identity market curve is vital, and it requires building and continually evolving an enterprise-scale identity solution that interconnects with your own unique data and systems to create attribute-rich profiles of your customers that work across any identity application. That’s Experian Identity.” Experian Identity underscores the need businesses have to respond to increasing identity needs with interconnected, scalable technology, products and services that optimize the consumer experience.       While the integrated approach announcement is new, the capability is not. Experian has been trusted for decades to secure individuals’ identity around the most important decisions in their lives – think purchasing a car or home, being identified at the doctor’s office, and more. As such, consumers remain at the center of every action. Experian Identity offers identity resolution, verification, authentication and protection, and fraud management solutions that include first- and third-party fraud, account takeover, credit card verification, identity resolution and restoration, risk-based authentication, synthetic identity protection and more. Additionally, we’ve included a special blog post introducing Experian’s identity capabilities from Kathleen Peters on the Experian Global News Blog and additional coverage. Stay tuned for more updates. Experian Global News Blog - Making Identities Personal: Experian Helps Businesses Build Consumer Trust American Banker – Making Identities Personal: Building Trust and Differentiating Your Brand Experian White Paper - Making Identities Personal For more information about Experian Identity, visit www.experian.com/identity-solutions.