To the Moon! How Financial Services Should Market to Gen Z and Millennial Investors

There's a new dawn in the age of investing, where Millennials and Gen Z (aka Zoomers) will be making their presence known. 

Over the past 18 months, pandemic ramifications have created a perfect storm for young investors to start shaking up the market. With more time spent at home, digital acceleration, and easy access to informational content, new traders are entering the market quickly. JMP estimates the brokerage industry added more than ten million new accounts in 2020, with Robinhood alone likely representing about six million. The rising interest from these young investors can be tied to viral phenomenons from TikTok hashtags such as #FinTok and #StockTok (totaling 7.5 billion views between the two) to the rise of retail investing, as seen with GameStop's notorious short squeeze. Currently, Gen Z and Millennials are now leading the ‘retail investing’ trend, which owns up to 25% of the stock market. 

The point is, Millennials and Gen Z are both paying attention and are well-equipped to make an impact. For new investors, opportunities to jump into the market have never been easier with mobile apps that make trading simple to understand and easy to start. Mobile apps have the added benefit of notifications, allowing traders to quickly receive updates. For financial services marketers, it’s time to start meeting these new users where they are and learn how to effectively grab their attention. According to Nasdaq, one out of two customers is not satisfied with the information they are receiving to inform their trading strategy and decision-making. This lack of satisfaction signals that financial services still have a ways to go when creating experiences that resonate. 

There’s no time to waste. Marketers need to communicate with their younger customers in ways that meet their financial literacy and on the channels they prefer. This blog will help uncover how financial services brands can avoid the cheugy tactics (uncool, for my fellow non-Gen Z compatriots) and stick with the trending ones using cross-channel personalization that set up new investors for long-term loyalty.

New Investors Want to Visualize their Portfolios.

For new investors just starting, it’s vital to create easy-to-understand and actionable content. Financial brands can lean into personalization to transform their data into easily digestible and informative imagery that inspires action. Nasdaq recently found that ​​connectivity, news, and visualization are the highest rank categories for desired brokerage services. To respond, data visualizations of investor portfolios and performance can powerfully display a new user's relationship with their investments and encourage continued investing and engagement.

Education is Important for Both the Brand and the User

According to Jarad Fisher, the founder of the fintech banking app Dave, "The real challenge...is to deliver content and messages in ways that are easy to understand, intuitive, and don't require a tremendous amount of work." The first step towards creating content that quickly clicks with new users requires learning more about their initial needs and simplifying messaging based on their financial literacy. Utilizing zero-party data to personalize beyond investment history can help clarify why new users are investing in the first place.  

The two Inkredible Financial examples below do a great job of illustrating these main points. The first highlights educational material from a professional resource with a clear and thoughtful recommendation that recipients so clearly crave.

The second image shows both how first-party customer data allows investors to visualize their portfolio performance and how they interact with the market. WIth 1:1 statistics displayed in a clear, cohesive way, the campaign also requests zero-party data through polling to ensure that follow-up information can be tailored to each recipient in a way that resonates.

Everything for Millennials and Gen Z is Mobile

For companies such as Robinhood and E*Trade, emphasizing mobile trading to engage Gen Z and Millennials has taken the intimidation out of trading and made it simple. For financial services brands looking to keep up with new mobile standards, cross-channel personalization will be the lifeblood to engaging new users effectively. As seen in Inkredible Financial, the messaging highlights the customer’s "Investment Experience," with first-party data that was initially collected at the point of acquisition. Based on their experience level and data on file, marketers can tailor mobile messages with personalized product offerings as new investors continue along their journey. 

Moving forward it’s clear that Millennials and Gen Z will have an outsized impact on the future of investing. It’s time for financial brands to consider how these generations will need to be treated differently. By implementing highly personalized, cross-channel marketing campaigns, financial brands can position themselves and their investors for success.