How Nippon India Mutual Fund gets more Indians excited about investing with a digital strategy built around the “3Fs”

Young digital-savvy consumers are reshaping how all companies need to reach them and get their attention. They’ve grown up relying on digital tools and want to buy products, sign up for services, and access content in a digital-first environment. They expect simple, highly personalized interactions that allow them to find essential information and complete everything online in seconds.

Nippon India Mutual Fund (NIMF) is bringing a more ubiquitous, personalized digital engagement strategy to its everyday customer interactions, helping reshape some financial services — mutual funds — not normally associated with young consumers.

“Savings and finances aren’t necessarily top of mind for young people,” says Arpanarghya Saha, chief digital officer at NIMF. “But there are 1.3 billion people in India, and around 70 percent are under the age of 40. Every business in India needs to understand how to engage younger audiences.”

NIMF works with Adobe Experience Cloud applications, including Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, and Adobe Campaign, to create cross-channel experiences that wow Indian youth and get them excited about saving, investing, and building new wealth. Together with partners DWAO and Hansa Cequity, NIMF builds its digital strategy around the 3Fs — the belief that all digital experiences must be Friendly, Frictionless, and Futuristic.

1. Making complex financial services FRIENDLY for consumers

Mutual funds, stock exchanges, and retirement plans can be complicated and intimidating for people looking to invest for the first time. NIMF aims to eliminate intimidation by making every customer experience as friendly as possible. The company promotes systematic investment plans (SIPs) that make it easy to start investing through regular, small investments into a fund. SIP plans are often the first step to getting customers interested in investing and seeing their money grow.

DWAO uses Adobe Analytics to identify customer conversion funnels and discover real-time insights into what customers want — what content they like, what type of investor they are, and whether they prefer contact by email, SMS, or mobile app. NIMF then takes these insights to find the best ways to connect with customers. While one customer might want to start investing with as few clicks as possible, another customer might want to learn everything she can about how a fund works.

“Our competition isn’t necessarily other banks or financial institutions,” says Saha. “We view ourselves as an e-commerce player trying to deliver the best online product for a consumer. We’re going to get ahead in the digital world by offering a friendly experience that responds quickly to each customer’s needs.”

2. Creating fast, easy FRICTIONLESS experiences

As part of its customer-focused strategy, NIMF believes in experimenting, learning, and failing fast. By staying nimble, NIMF can find pain points and work on ways to make digital experiences as frictionless as possible.

Adobe Target is the main application that DWAO uses to test and optimize digital experiences. That might mean adding a pop-up window on the website to raise awareness of SIP investments or encourage long-time SIP customers to increase their investments and boost returns. When insights gained through Adobe Analytics indicated high drop-off rates for new investors, NIMF theorized that some people might be unsure about taking the first steps into investing. NIMF started directing new customers to the risk analyzer tool, so that they could learn how to analyze their needs and find funds better suited their financial goals.

“Adobe Target helps us experiment with customer interactions and find new ways to improve customer experiences,” says Saha. “We discovered that it’s not just about SIP investment. Encouraging customers to interact with an online calculator or redirecting their interests to a different type of investment fund can lead to more active investors and happy customers.”

3. Building for long-term results with FUTURISTIC innovation

NIMF strongly believes that innovation is the key to standing out for young, digital-native audiences. That’s why the company uses technologies that don’t just solve current problems but set the foundation to address future needs.

Partner Hansa Cequity takes advantage of the advanced automation in Adobe Campaign to build highly personalized, cross-channel campaigns aimed at winning back the business of customers who let their SIP investments expire. The SIP Win-Back campaign is hyper-personalized, involving up to 28 personalized elements per email based on the individual customer’s interests and investments. The campaign has been highly successful, with twice the conversion rate compared to similar campaigns.

The SIP Win-Back campaigns stands out even more because it requires no manual intervention. Everything is automated — from deciding who needs to receive emails, to choosing the correct templates and adding engaging personalization.

Beyond automation, NIMF is looking into advanced audience modeling to predict customer behaviors and add even better targeting, real-time personalization, and more trigger-based campaigns.

“Savings and finances aren’t always top of mind for young people,” says Saha. “That’s why we need to make our products and services easy to understand and relate to — similar to approaches taken at more traditional e-commerce companies. Today we are one of the fastest-growing assets management company in India with more than 9.9 million folios. By staying on the forefront of digital innovation, we can provide wealth creation opportunities for millions more.”

Read more about how NIMF and its partners are using Adobe Experience Cloud to drive more engagement in financial services across India.