It’s that time of year again. No matter where you turn, it’s all about March Madness.

Which got us to thinking: The NCAA Basketball Tournament could point the way toward the future of financial marketing.

The NCAA Championships are all about the survival of the fittest. You start out with a roster of teams, and game after game, the weaker team is eliminated and the stronger one moves ahead. And in the end, the strongest team of all is identified and crowned the winner.

And isn’t that exactly how metrics-based marketing should work?

Similar to the NCAA brackets, every campaign should start out with a list of tactics, messages and media options aligned with helping you achieve your marketing goals. Then over time, you track the effectiveness of each, eliminating the ones that are underperforming and putting more money into the ones that are successful.

That’s how marketing should work, but so rarely does.

If only marketing was more like basketball! But it can be.

In this example, we’ve set up a series of A / B tests around different financial marketing messages. We monitored click rates for each message. In each case we eliminated underperforming messages and moved ahead with successful ones, putting more money behind them. In the end, our “Saving” message proved to be our most successful… In other words, it’s the Duke of our marketing campaign.

This approach can be applied to virtually any aspect of any marketing you do. You can A / B test almost anything, including:

• Channel versus channel (for example, email versus social or Facebook versus Twitter)
• Image versus image
• Offer versus offer
• Campaign versus campaign.

If you’re interested in taking your marketing to championship levels, an agency experienced in data driven marketing could help. We’ll coach you on how you can get the numbers you need to determine whether your marketing is working. Then we’ll work with you to optimize your campaigns so you can beat your competitors and become the champion of the financial marketing game. Contact us today to learn more.