CSTMR

CSTMR Fintech Marketing Announced as a 2021 Local Excellence Award Winner by UpCity!

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We are ecstatic to announce that the CSTMR Fintech Marketing & Design team has been recognized as one of the top B2B service providers of 2021 in the Austin area by UpCity! 

For more than a decade, UpCity’s mission has been—and continues to be—to help businesses find B2B service providers they can trust. The UpCity Recommendability Rating was developed to determine a service provider’s credibility and recommendability, giving UpCity the confidence to recommend them to the more than 1.5 million businesses that visit their site. 

Each year, UpCity analyzes and scores more than 70,000 service providers based on their UpCity Recommendability Rating and acknowledges the top national and local providers with an UpCity Excellence Award. The results are in, and CSTMR won!

With deep insights into both fintech and the financial services industry at large,

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2021 Fintech Marketing Priority 2: Multichannel Marketing

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Multichannel Marketing for Fintech Brands

There’s a reason you operate an online-only bank, an enterprise-level SaaS, or a digital lending platform and not an in-person financial services business. And I’m willing to guess your decision had a lot to do with changing consumer preferences.

Because despite the changes happening around us, as business leaders, it’s our responsibility to ensure an intuitive, enjoyable, and seamless experience for our customers. 

Which is why I’m so passionate about our second fintech marketing priority: multichannel marketing. 

Psst. If you missed the first two articles in this series, we’ve got you covered:

What is Multichannel Marketing?

To put it simply,

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2021 Fintech Marketing Priority 1: Artificial Intelligence in Advertising & Acquisition

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Artificial Intelligence in Advertising

This time last year has been on my mind a lot lately. 

As we wrap up the final weeks of 2020 and attempt to plan, project, and predict what the new year will hold—it’s hard not to feel wary. While no one knows what the next four quarters have in store for your business (or mine for that matter), there are things that you can do to help boost acquisition and minimize risk throughout 2021. 

The last time you heard from me, I shared an overview of the top fintech marketing priorities for 2021. I’m calling these “priorities” and not “trends,” because they aren’t short-lived strategies. And while it’s difficult to predict the impact of a global pandemic on your business, these priorities can help insulate it from risk. 

Today, I’m going to talk about the first “thing” on my list of fintech marketing priorities: how to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) in advertising,

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3 Marketing Priorities for Fintech and Financial Brands in 2021

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When industry experts were writing future trends articles in late 2019 (ourselves included), no one could have predicted that a pandemic would throw a wrench into all of our plans. 

Despite everything our world has been through, I believe we can learn from this collective experience. For one thing, 2020 has taught us the importance of staying agile. We can use all of the industry data and expertise available to predict what’s coming next, but we can’t foresee something like a pandemic. This is why being able to quickly pivot strategies to match circumstances is so crucial for fintech companies.

In fact, Deloitte predicts that agility will be one of the top trends for marketers in the future, saying that it, “…encourages organizations to embrace immediate and novel ways of thinking while helping them restructure in a way that allows their brand to join conversations and moments organically.” 

Future success for fintechs will hinge on the ability to react quickly to emerging trends and events.

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How Fintechs Turned Crisis Into Innovation

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fintech lenders

While nobody enjoys a crisis, I’ve learned that hard times allow businesses to reflect, grow, and innovate. This has been especially true for fintech lenders during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many have had to innovate on the fly, adapt to the ever-changing market, and support the small businesses and customers in their communities.

In our recent Fintech Shares webinar, I talked to a few fintechs about how the COVID-19 pandemic sparked innovation and how they plan to move forward post-crisis. 

The Influx of PPP

The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is an SBA loan that helps businesses keep their workforce employed during the coronavirus crisis. And when these loans became available, the impact (and volume of applications) was massive and required lenders to adapt and innovate like never before. 

Community Reinvestment Fund (CRF) founded Connect2Capital—a marketplace that matches small business owners to CDFIs—and recently launched a new product called Spark.

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Lender helps save 500,000 jobs in underserved communities during COVID-19

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Owner of black-owned cafe smiling

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic recession weren’t what anyone saw coming at the start of 2020. But when it did hit, we weren’t surprised that some of the clients we partner with, like Connect2Capital (C2C), stepped up to help their communities in major ways. 

Powered by Community Reinvestment Fund, USA (CRF), Connect2Capital is a first-of-its-kind platform that connects mission-driven lenders with small businesses that are unable to secure traditional financing.

“Our team has been working around the clock, and we’ve brought on about 25 contract underwriters and loan ops personnel to keep up with demand,” said Patrick Davis, Vice President of Program Strategy and Development at CRF. 

Connect2Capital actively supports economic growth in underserved communities by matching loans for businesses that are often unable to qualify for traditional financing. They also provide resources,

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Why You Shouldn’t Cut Marketing During An Unpredictable (COVID-19) Economy [VIDEO]

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Marketing through unpredictable

During economic uncertainty, it’s essential that your fintech or financial services company continues marketing. Right now, your customers need your services more than ever. In an economy like this, people are worried about their jobs, savings, and the future.

They need a financial partner to reach out and guide them through this. They need you.

Many businesses pull back on marketing spend during an unpredictable economy to cut costs and depending on your unique circumstance, that may make sense for you, too. But let’s look at history. During past periods of uncertainty, brands that kept marketing saw increased sales and bounced back faster once the economy recovered. 

People may be buying less right now, but demand will return. This is why it’s more important than ever for you to continue communicating. You want to be top-of-mind for your customers when they’re ready to buy again. 

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Lending in the New, Wild World of COVID-19 and the CARES Act

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Over the past month, there have been numerous conversations about the impact of COVID-19 sending the global economy into a recession. As more and more “shelter in place” orders are issued across the country, small businesses (especially those in the hospitality industry), are struggling to stay afloat. 

According to a new Goldman Sachs survey, 96% of small businesses say that they have already been impacted by COVID-19. As an end to the shutdowns still remain unclear, many businesses are finding it difficult to pay their loans. 

As for the employees at these businesses, several have been laid off and are worried about how they’ll make it through these tough times. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.82 million people worked in the leisure and hospitality industry in January 2020. The Labor Department recently reported that more 6.6 million people filed new unemployment claims during the week of March 23,

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3 Fintech Marketing Trends to Watch in 2020

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Before exploring the 2020 marketing trends that we’re following in the new year, let’s take a quick walk down memory lane and our journey together through 2019. 

First, we recognized how the rules of fintech marketing have changed. Rather than rely on face-to-face interactions to establish trust, we’re faced with the challenge of building rapport with an online-only audience. This particular realization led us to what would become the two most important tenants to 2019 fintech marketing:

    1. Customer-centricity: Keeping the customer’s viewpoint and ultimate wellbeing at the center of everything a company does.
    2. Brand authenticity: How customers perceive a company to be faithful to itself, honest with its customers, caring and responsible, and able to support its customers so they can be true to themselves. 

Having defined and analyzed the concepts of customer-centricity and brand authenticity,

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Use CSR to Build Trust for Your Fintech & Financial Brand

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Corporate Social Responsibility

December is the official month of giving, and what better way to celebrate than to extend our generosity beyond the presents we wrap and place under the tree, and the donations of time and money that we place with our favorite personal charities.

That’s right, today we’re talking about the importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the impact it can have on your company and brand. If this term isn’t already part of your company-wide lexicon, it should be. Because while it may sound like a trendy buzzword, it’s anything but—especially for those operating in the fintech and financial services space. 

But first…what is corporate social responsibility?

Whether or not you’re familiar with the term, the definition of corporate social responsibility bears repeating. So here it is:

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a self-regulating business model that helps a company be socially accountable—to itself,

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