Research conducted by the chief marketing officer (CMO) council suggests that young Australian bank customers want greater personalisation in their communication, as well as value added services, greater efficiency and precision.

The research was commissioned by Computershare and high-volume full-colour inkjet  printer developer Infoprint Solutions, and initially presented to a group of leading journalists by Lee Gallagher, director of precision marketing and sales at Infoprint, and Ross Ingleton, sales director of Computershare, with the event hosted by Rene Kisselbach, country manager Australia, InfoPrint Solutions.

Gallagher says, “The focus of the marketing departments within Australian banks on line growth is not necessarily in line with the expectations of their customers, which is more focused on costs, service and clear communication.”

The bulk of the respondents to the survey were aged 18-35, with Gallagher commenting that as soon as those surveyed had big ticket loans, for cars and houses,  as well as pensions, they wanted paper statements.

Ingleton says, “The findings of the report suggest that there are three challenges facing bank marketers today; gaining a deeper understanding of customer needs; then making better use of that customer knowledge, and finally communicating in a way that is personal and profitable.

“The CMO research reminds us once again of the value businesses can extract when marketing teams work with sales functions to translate customer knowledge into well crafted sales messages that resonate with customers, rather than the one size fits all approach."

Infoprint supplies one of the new generation of transactional and promotion (transpromo) document printing systems, with the InfoPrint 5000, two of which have just gone into Computershare, one each in Sydney and Melbourne. Ross Ingleton says, “The response from the market has been simply astounding. Customers are queuing up to get their work on the Infoprint systems, they want to incorporate colour with variable data.”

Computershare’s Communication business has more than 10,000 clients, uses 1.5 billion images a year, and sends out 500 million mailpacks per annum.