Customer activation gets personal with data-driven engagement tools

The financial services landscape is more fragmented than ever. Consumers have multiple banking relationships, spanning traditional banks, fintechs and digital-first service providers across checking, debit and credit. For every type of transaction, every platform and every level of financial sophistication, there’s an industry player eager for a slice of the pie.

This competition and specialisation make it difficult for financial institutions to activate and engage customers across products and drive primacy. A customer can turn away at the first hint of dissatisfaction, letting their account go dormant — a problem that befalls one-third of newly acquired and activated banking customers, driving up acquisition and retention costs. Customer churn is costlier than ever—financial institutions now spend $200 to $450 to acquire each new account and carrying inactive accounts can nearly double those acquisition costs.[1]

Eighty per cent of consumers say they are more likely to do business with a company that offers personalised services. At the same time, 76% of business decision-makers report that they lack enough usable data to glean meaningful customer insights. To level up their offerings and satisfy increasingly demanding consumers, financial institutions must find a way to bridge this gap. 

That’s exactly why Mastercard created Engagement Intelligence — a suite of integrated services that translates raw transaction data from internal and external sources into actionable insights and meaningful engagement at every stage of the customer journey. While traditional approaches to engagement often rely on incomplete or siloed data, Mastercard leverages transaction-level data directly from financial institutions, its global payments network and Open Finance platform paired with tailored services that transform insights to game-changing results. By doing so, we help financial institutions deliver personalised offers and experiences, drive engagement and top-of-wallet behaviour and optimise and maximise marketing ROI.

Mastercard Engagement Intelligence combines three powerful components — Data Enrichment, Consumer Foresight and Mastercard Consulting & Marketing Services — creating an integrated system for engagement driven by actionable insights:

1. Connect and Enrich
   Data Enrichment uses proprietary AI to cleanse, categorise and enrich your customers’ transaction data across accounts (checking, savings, cards and more), transforming a mess of disorganised data into a structured foundation for insights. With standardised entities and descriptions, rich Retailer information, multi-level categorisation and a standardised data layer, you can make sense of messy transactions and unlock clearer insights.
   
   
2. Analyse and Predict
   Consumer Foresight surfaces insights from billions of anonymised transactions across Mastercard’s network, Open Finance Platform and beyond, accurately segmenting a consumer’s historical spending, delivering precise benchmarking at the individual level and helping to predict future spending to create a 360-degree view of the customer so you can anticipate needs and enable effective, personalised engagement.
   
   
3. Activate and Engage
   Expert Consulting & Marketing Services turn insights into action by building precise customer segmentation, uncovering behavioural trends and designing campaigns that drive engagement and top-of-wallet behaviour. These strategies are activated through targeted execution, personalised messaging and omnichannel delivery, paired with ongoing measurement and refinement to create measurable outcomes that help drive loyalty, increase revenue and grow retention.

Mastercard Engagement Intelligence combines proprietary network insights, artificial intelligence and specialised consulting expertise in one integrated solution that helps customers accelerate growth in a highly competitive landscape. Key differentiators include:

• AI-powered data enrichment: Network-trained AI transforms raw transactions into actionable signals — automatically parsing and classifying unstructured data, producing precision spend categories and fusing Retailer intelligence enhanced by the Mastercard network.  
• Proprietary network-level insights: Detailed Retailer profiles and location data from Mastercard’s global acceptance network, plus unique insights from billions of anonymised transactions — delivering visibility beyond your institution and enabling hyper relevant offers and campaigns. 
• Global consulting expertise: We design, execute and continuously optimise data driven campaigns — leveraging our global expertise — help to deliver measurable lifts in activation, conversion and share of wallet.

Engagement Intelligence empowers financial service providers to strengthen customer relationships and optimise marketing performance. By driving primacy and top-of-wallet behaviour, it deepens engagement while helping reduce churn through early identification of at-risk customers and timely interventions. With focused investment on high-value segments, it maximises marketing ROI—delivering the right message at the right time to help lift response and lower acquisition costs. For end-customers, it creates personalised experiences with relevant offers and advice based on real behaviours, helping to enable better financial outcomes and everyday savings through rewards and offers that reduce day-to-day costs.

The financial services market is increasingly complex, but your pathway to effective customer engagement doesn’t have to be. Learn more about Mastercard’s Engagement Intelligence Suite or contact us to get started today.