Rajat Mehta is the Country Head- Brand & Retail Marketing, YES BANK. He has extensive experience across Marketin, Branding and Communication. He has been a part of the core teams with hands-on experience in building and managing the brand of two start-up financial brands- YES BANK and FirstRand Bank. His responsibilities include strategy & positioning, advertising, product marketing, digital & social media marketing, visual merchandising, activation, research and communications.

Rajat Mehta, joined YES BANK during 2004 in Marketing and Communication and moved on to become the Senior Vice-President, Marketing and Communication before moving on to FirstRand Bank Ltd. India as Head Marketing and Communication/Product Development. He came back to YES BANK in December 2012.

In an exclusive interaction with India Digital Review, Rajat talks about the importance of the digital medium in YES BANK’s brand building plan and mobile as a medium of brand communication. 

How does the digital medium - both internet and mobile figure in YES Bank’s plans to reach out to consumers? 

Since inception, YES BANK has been built on the backbone of superior technology and customer centricity. We have constantly invested in various new age technologies and mediums to deliver a superior service experience to our stakeholders.

In parallel, smart phone influx and improved connectivity is a game changer for brand building in the digital space and this medium has emerged as the key area of focus for even mature industries like banking & financial services.

YES BANK has used the digital medium- both internet & mobile for extensive -

• - Brand Building
• - Information Sharing
• - Lead Generation
• - Customer Feedback/Grievances

Our website not only serves as an informational tool for interacting with all our key stakeholders like customers, prospects, investors, shareholders etc but also serves as an important lead generation tool with a 50 per cent y-o-y increase in our lead count.

In-order to reach out to people, support favorable brand building and make online medium an important acquisition tool for all key bank products and services, we have aggressively used search engine marketing, display advertising, affiliate advertising, emailers, mobile search, mobile display advertising for generating leads for both Indian & overseas market.

We also have our own mobile app compatible with Android, Blackberry and iPhone which can be used for banking transactions by our existing customers while they are ‘on the move’. This helps increase usage of alternate channels.

Search engine optimization (SEO) has helped us gain a monumental increase in our website traffic, unique visitors, page views etc. We are currently amongst the top 5 rankings with respect to search engine optimization for most of our key product proposition like savings a/c, NRI accounts, fixed deposit etc.

Social media too has been used as an innovative tool to engage with our stakeholders- customers and prospects.

How do you see your brand leveraging display advertisements on internet? 

Display advertising definitely helps in creating greater brand awareness and brand recall. Contextual targeting, re-marketing etc have helped further segmentation and eventually helped in generating quality leads. However, search (search engine optimization and search engine marketing) dominates the market when it comes to leads.

YES Bank has engaged users on social media with Facebook and Twitter presence. What scope do you see in the social media space? 

YES BANK has used social media as an innovative and interactive communication tool to engage with our key stakeholders - existing as well as potential.

For YES BANK, social media serves multiple objectives of:

• - Increasing brand awareness & credibility: Promote our superior 7 per cent interest rate on saving accounts and other products/offering and highlight institutional achievements & key milestones of YES BANK

• - Generating traffic to the website and thereby get leads for various products

The bank uses social media to provide various touch points to customers to engage with the brand at their convenience. We also provide our customers with a rich offering of value-added content, key product information, contests and also utilize this platform to increase financial literacy.

Social media has also played a significant role in managing our online reputation. This involves monitoring and generating online feedback and reviews, responding to customer complaints, resolving queries, taking corrective action on incorrect information and using online feedback to guide improvements in product development for enhancing customer experience.  In fact, Social Samosa, one of India’s leading authorities on social media, has rated YES BANK as No. 1, in terms of least time taken to reply to queries. This instant platform is extremely beneficial as the bank takes less than 15 minutes to reply to more than 50 per cent of the queries.

The insights that we have gathered from consumers about our products and services have helped us in improving customer satisfaction. We have also increased positive perceptions of the brand by creating opportunities to listen to and engage with customers.

Various social media platforms not only allow us to connect with customers but also help customers to interact amongst themselves, thereby creating opportunities for an engaged community. Our presence on social media has helped improve brand saliency and affinity amongst the younger age group. This can be validated by the fact that 45 per cent of our audience base on Facebook is between the age group of 25 to 35 years.

In the context of BFSI, both online and offline transactions take place. But there is a perception that people research and compare products online and buy them offline. What do you think of this perception? Is it likely to change anytime soon? 

We look at online to be a major contributor to sale and not just information sharing. In case of our NRI business, remittance business etc online is a major source of revenue. Also we launched end-to end account opening application which has helped customers to open account from the comfort of your home. This has helped to reach small cities where we don’t have branches.

We believe that both offline & online go hand in hand and the perception has already started changing.

What are YES Bank’s current digital spends? How do you see them move in terms of growth and focus in near future?

We have increased our spends on the digital medium by as much as 100 per cent compared to last year. It is evident that with more and more consumers spending time online, marketers will have to include digital in their marketing mix.

Digital is an extremely critical component of our marketing mix and has seen a multifold increase in outlays. We already see it getting 15-20 per cent of our overall spends.

How do you see your marketing objectives aligning with what the online medium offers two years down the line?

We have always believed that all content on digital has to be specially created or adapted and should not be a copy of the conventional medium. We are already designing several campaigns specifically for the digital medium. We have used digital to leverage our highly unique YES COMMUNITY program that we conduct in all our branches. In one such initiative, we have used the digital medium for both outreach as well as for getting people to sign against food wastage.

Which according to you have been some of the most exciting online campaigns that the company has initiated for its brand so far?

Some of the exciting online campaigns that have seen strong positive response include-

Campaign for YES Remit – online remittance platform to India

Results: In a short span of one year of launch

• - The registration count increased by 85 per cent
• - The transaction count as well as transaction value increased by 100 per cent
• - 95 per cent increase in lead count
• - Cost per lead reduced by 20 per cent
• - Click to Lead ratio saw an increase of 107 per cent

 Campaign for YES Insta – instant account opening from the comfort of home

Results: 100 per cent increase in leads with 30 per cent reduction in cost per lead in span of one year

The ‘Magic of 7’ campaign & IPL campaign on the social media were a natural extension for creating greater awareness of our 7 per cent offering on savings account. These resulted in not just making YES BANK the fastest growing bank on Facebook but also the Most followed bank on twitter.

Tell us about the uptake of YES Bank’s mobile app.

The app was launched in Aug’12 for existing customers to transact while they are on the move. They no longer need to visit branches for their banking transaction. Our Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) platform has indeed taken mobile transactions to the next level with transactions happening even on a bank and public holidays.

People are speaking about mobile being a great medium for brand communication, but still the spend on the medium is minimal. What is your take on this?

Mobile is definitely the future for all marketers, who shall not be able to ignore mobile marketing be it search or display. Even apps will act as a major source of lead generation in future. Mobile will help location based segmentation and help in targeted marketing.

This trend on greater focus on mobile has arrived internationally in a big way and we will soon see its impact in India.

What answers do you seek from your digital advertising agencies and digital media partners while promoting your brand on internet? 

In addition to seeking help from our partners in achieving our goals both at brand as well as product level, we look for valuable insights in terms of which markets are performing better internationally for our international business. We also expect tracking of general industry trends and competition mapping, besides exploring new avenues of online marketing.