April 15, 2019
Data to Inform the Future
Here at PartnerCentric, we utilize data on a daily basis in our BI department to ensure that we are constantly identifying underlying market trends, better understanding unique opportunities for our clients and closely tracking the value of our products and services. A recent example of this is a Q4 analysis we performed to guide our actions and strategies for our clients in Q1. The Client Services team has been establishing and developing strong “Beyond Borders” relationships with new partners and the following analysis showcases the success of these relationships within our Financial Services vertical.
One of the key areas of focus in 2018 and now in 2019 has been in further cultivating not only the quality of partnerships, but also the quantity of these strong relationships. Our analysis revealed a considerable growth of partnerships in strategic publisher categories. The below visual demonstrates our team’s success in building these types of relationships. The growth in these categories has successfully decreased reliance on both Discount and Loyalty sites by establishing a strategically diversified mix of partners within our clients’ programs, resulting in a decreased risk associated with being too reliant on any one publisher type.
This visual is broken out by publisher category, highlighting those with the strongest growth by number of relationships cultivated from 2017 to 2018.
The key to our success, however, is in ensuring that these new partnerships are also meaningful and adding real value to our clients’ programs. That’s why the team has also worked tirelessly to not only build the number of partnerships but also to optimize these relationships. The below visual shows how meaningful and productive these partnerships have been for our clients. This also shows that healthy program growth is very much attainable after reducing dependency on Loyalty and Discount sites.
The above graph depicts the growth in revenue by publisher category from 2017 to 2018.
Additionally, the average revenue for our clients in the Financial Services vertical is up 21% from the prior year as a result of our efforts. Other market variables that have also contributed to this growth in 2018 were rising interest rates, tax reform and increased borrowing, to name a few (Deloitte, 2018). These variables had an impact on the Financial Services industry as a whole, and our clients within this vertical were impacted as well.
The above graph shows the year over year average revenue for our clients in the Financial Services vertical. Revealing the increased performance and revenue growth in 2018.
There are a number of trends that we anticipate will influence performance in Financial Services for the rest of this year and beyond. One in particular is open banking. It has the potential to increase the number of integrative solutions developed for end users within this segment, through greater transparency and data accessibility (Marous, 2018). This is likely to impact numerous sub-segments of the Financial Services industry, not just banking. It is very uncertain, however, as it conflicts directly with recent data protection regulations, like GDPR. Along with end customer demand, open banking has the potential to increase technological implementations we see in the future, and, in particular, an increased prevalence of integrated mobile solutions.
These analyses and data have informed our decisions regarding strategy for 2019. The data has also streamlined implementation of our strategies. Specifically, reviewing trends in our data allows us to identify the types of publishers that will be well positioned for the current and future state of Financial Services. With this information we can then reference our external data systems to home in on the next top performing publishers for our clients. Ultimately using our data as a predictive guide for recruitment. We have also broadened the use of our targeted and personalized outreach efforts, and focused the outreach on publishers within categories that further diversify our publisher mix, and those at the forefront of technology and mobile solutions. Through regular data refreshes and reporting we are able to ensure that the strategies implemented are subsequently driving key campaign metrics and growth.
Industry Report Referenced: Deloitte (2018). 2019 Banking and Capital Markets Reimagining Transformation.