For banks, lenders, insurers, and other financial services providers, offering a great brand experience is a must for long-term success. When money’s on the line, customers want to work with providers known for security and compliance. With a thoughtful brand experience, you signal to customers that their finances are in good hands.
Bitly helps financial services providers build memorable brand interactions by seamlessly connecting your marketing channels. Internally, you can also use Bitly to track asset performance and fine-tune your marketing strategy. Here, we’ll explore ways financial services providers can use Bitly to build a cohesive customer experience.
Note: The brands and examples discussed below were found during our online research for this article.
The high-stakes world of financial brand experience
In the financial services industry, customer touchpoints are subject to intense scrutiny. And that’s not just by regulatory bodies: 61% of U.S. consumers say that security is the most important factor for them when choosing a financial institution.
Whether it’s online or at a brick-and-mortar branch, a poor experience could damage trust in your brand. In some cases, it can even create compliance concerns, opening your brand up to added scrutiny or penalties from regulators.
Trust, compliance, and digital engagement demands
Modern financial institutions need to find a balance between user-friendliness and security when building their brand experiences. Consumers expect the same fast, convenient access to their accounts that they get from other brands, but they also expect ironclad security and compliance practices. Sometimes, these two expectations are at odds with each other.
When your customer communications and services are not secure enough, they could put your customers at risk for phishing scams and other cyber attacks. A lack of security may also open your organization up to inquiries from financial regulatory bodies, such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
On the other hand, if you focus entirely on security and forget about user-friendliness, it could lead to fragmented brand experiences across different marketing campaigns or branches of your organization. This could negatively affect your reputation and even prompt customers to switch to your competitors.
Why every link matters in financial comms
Whether it’s in a digital bank statement, email newsletter, or SMS message, links are valuable brand opportunities for financial organizations. Every link is an opportunity for your audience to interact more closely with your brand.
It’s essential that every link sends users right to the correct destination, whether that’s a branded landing page or a secure account dashboard. If links are mishandled, you could end up with confused or frustrated customers, which reduces trust and reflects negatively on your brand identity.
But beyond just link accuracy, you also have to consider your links as part of your overall brand image. A branded link can give your consumer-facing materials that extra layer of professionalism, trust, and confidence that helps you outshine your competitors.
The case for branded links in finance
Branded short links are a powerful touch that can build trust with your audience and make your marketing communications look more cohesive. With the right tools, they’re also secure and trackable, which is essential for brand marketing in financial services organizations.
Some platforms offer analytics tools as well, which can help finance teams track click volume and other key metrics in real time, providing valuable insights into how audiences interact with your content.
Bitly’s URL shortener lets you turn long, complex URLs into custom short links that fit neatly into your materials, and you can also use custom domains and back halves (slugs) to make every link look polished and professional.
Reinforcing brand integrity via domains
With a paid Bitly plan, you can create a custom short domain, such as go.yourbank.com, rather than using the generic bit.ly domain. This small but effective shift helps your brand build credibility across your SMS, email, and web marketing strategies.
Customers can see at a glance that the link is legitimate, so there’s no confusion about potential third-party sites or scams. And every time audiences see your brand name, it reinforces brand awareness and recognition.
Earning trust with clear, predictable destinations
You can also customize the back half of your short links with descriptive slugs that tell the end user exactly where the link will take them. This is particularly helpful for financial services organizations, where clarity and transparency are so valuable to audiences.
For example, you could use the back half /spring-promo for a landing page with information about a seasonal account sign-up promotion. With customized links, you bring clarity and predictability to the customer journey to help your users feel at ease. It’s these small professional touches that help reduce customer drop-off, especially in risk-sensitive transactions.
Bitly also allows you to redirect URLs as needed, letting you repurpose existing links for new campaigns or forward users to a new destination when a promotion ends.
Where branded links can improve touchpoints
From your customer onboarding messages to your social media posts and daily balance alerts, you’re probably already using dozens or even hundreds of links to connect your digital marketing touchpoints.
By switching to branded links, you can elevate these touchpoints across the entire customer lifecycle, while also making them more consistent. Here’s where to start:
Account activation and onboarding flows
When activating a new bank account or credit card, customers don’t want to spend hours getting things set up. In fact, over 76% of consumers think that opening a bank account should take less than an hour from start to finish.
Strategically placed branded links help the onboarding process flow smoothly from one component to the next. A memorable link like your.bank/apply on signage or mailers makes it easy to get started, while a your.bank/activate short link in an SMS message gives customers quick access to mobile card activation.
You can also include branded links in email activation messages. In many cases, new customers will need to use multi-factor authentication to log in, and branded messages can help this process run more smoothly.
With Bitly’s URL shortener, you can transform long URLs into branded links with just a few clicks, making it easy to streamline your onboarding process at every step.
Loan and insurance application emails
The process of applying for a loan or an insurance policy takes longer than opening a bank account, but you’ll still need to keep your customers updated throughout. Branded links add trust and professionalism to your emails and make it easy to connect applicants with online portals or application status updates.
Applicants can stay up to date on their pending applications with just a click, creating a better customer experience while also reducing customer service inquiries and support tickets for your teams.
Statements and transaction alerts
To lower paper usage and improve the user experience, many financial services institutions now offer digital account statements sent via email. These statements often include links to an online banking portal where customers can review their transactions, make payments, or even apply for new financial products.
Using branded links in your digital statements is an easy way to maintain your branding across documents. You can also use these links to track click-through rates from your bank statement to your website.
Another place where you can use branded links is in transaction alerts. Many banks now send alerts to their customers when transactions are processed on their accounts.
Banks usually send these alerts via SMS or push notifications, both of which have limited space for links. Branded short links fit neatly into these mediums, making it easy for your customers to stay on top of their finances with every transaction.
Customer support and chatbot links
Reliable customer service is essential for any business, but it’s particularly important in financial services, where trust is paramount. That’s why one popular use case for branded links is customer support communications. Having the right links in the right places ensures that your customers can find the information they’re looking for when they need it most.
When your customer service team is sending emails, they can use short links to connect users with your online knowledge base or digital forms. This way, customers don’t need to dig through your website to find these resources on their own.
If your organization has online customer service chatbots, you can also use short links to connect customers with the chatbot page. Chatbots are a valuable tool for customer service teams, as they can answer FAQs and guide customers to the right resources, which helps save your team time.
Tips to enhance financial services experiences A/B testing
A/B testing helps marketing and operations teams assess what works and what doesn’t when it comes to customer engagement. Also called split testing, it involves directly comparing two different campaign elements, such as web copy, email layouts, or color schemes, to see which one resonates more with your audience.
The great thing about A/B testing is that it doesn’t require a complex marketing tech stack. With Bitly’s link management tools, you can use custom links to compare different elements of your marketing strategy in one user-friendly dashboard.
Testing headlines, bodies, images, CTAs via split links
One of the simplest ways to use A/B testing is to create two slightly different email campaigns and include custom links in each of them. Then you can track the link clicks for each message to determine which one has generated more engagement.
Say you’re launching an email campaign for a new investment product, but you’re torn between two headlines, graphics, or sets of copy. Decide which element you’d like to A/B test and create two versions of the email that are identical except for that element.
Next, generate a custom engagement link for each email—you can tag the links with “version A” and “version B” in the Bitly Connections Platform to keep them separate. Then send each version out to a portion of your email subscribers and track the results.
If one version generates significantly more clicks, you’ll know it resonated more with your audience, and you can use this information to refine future campaigns.
Optimizing timing and delivery platform
One big challenge for marketers at financial services organizations is figuring out what communication method customers prefer—email or SMS messages—and what time of day to send them for maximum engagement.
Fortunately, you can pair Bitly with other analytics tools to conduct A/B testing on different delivery methods. For example, you could send the same message via SMS and email, using unique links for each, then track the links to see which one gets more engagement.
Bitly also tracks clicks over time, and if you want to get even more granular, you can pair it with another email or SMS marketing tool to see specific engagement times throughout the day. You might find that your links get more clicks during lunchtime or just after work, informing future strategies.
Voice banking via links on receipts/phones
Voice banking services are a helpful option for customers who may not have access to a computer or an email address. With voice banking, customers can check their balance, make payments, or activate cards by making a phone call.
These systems are automated, so they’re easy for banks to operate without having to hire additional customer service support. Bank of America is leading the way with Erica, a complete virtual assistant that helps customers with a variety of financial tasks.
You can use Bitly links and QR Codes to promote your voice banking services. One way to do this is by printing QR Codes on paper receipts at bank branches or including them in snail mail marketing. You can also include Bitly links in SMS messages that customers can click to access voice banking.
To A/B test these strategies, create a unique link and QR Code for each communication method. Then you can track clicks and scans over time to see which options lead to more voice banking engagement.
QR Codes for kiosks or in-branch navigation
QR Codes for financial services are an equally invaluable way to connect your brand’s in-person and online offerings. Customers can scan QR Codes on signs, flyers, or even billboards to access your online banking portal, new product sign-ups, or customer support resources.
And with Bitly, you can use QR Codes to A/B test your physical marketing materials and gain performance insights from them as well. For example, you can create two near-identical flyers with unique QR Codes to test different sign-up offers and distribute each design to half of your branch locations or ATM kiosks.
Place the materials strategically throughout to generate engagement, then use Bitly Analytics to monitor scan volume for each QR Code. If one code gets significantly more scans than the other, you’ll know which offer your audience prefers and can adjust your strategy accordingly.
Ideas for meeting compliance or security mandates
Meeting regulatory compliance standards is essential for financial services brands. Marketing teams have to prioritize compliance and digital security across all digital touchpoints to maintain customer trust.
Exact compliance needs will vary by organization and location, but there are some best practices that any organization should use when creating short links and QR Codes for finance. Here are some basic tips to help keep your branding strategy aligned with your compliance needs.
Audit trails for link edits and performance
For financial services organizations, tracking who creates, edits, and shares customer-facing assets is best practice. Use this approach when managing short links to support your internal oversight efforts and maintain transparency for every campaign.
With Bitly, you can see when links were created and monitor basic engagement metrics over time. For more detailed compliance reports, try pairing Bitly with a more advanced corporate governance platform to create an audit log. This way, you can track edit history and other changes to ensure nothing slips through the cracks.
Governance on who can create and edit links
Accuracy and consistency are essential when creating links for the financial services industry, as even a small mistake could have compliance implications.
To reduce the risk of error, marketing and operations teams should limit who can and can’t create short links and QR Codes. Creation and editing permissions should only be given to team members who have a deep understanding of your brand and your compliance needs.
Brand-safe link naming conventions
Before you start creating short links for your brand, have a meeting with your team to establish some basic naming conventions. This will ensure that your domains, slugs, and campaign tags remain consistent across different campaigns and departments.
Establishing link naming conventions helps prevent confusion among your internal team and your customers, but it also supports consistent branding and can make link performance reporting much easier.
Governance documentation templates
For large organizations, consistent internal documentation is essential for keeping all marketing assets aligned with your brand and reducing the risk of accidental compliance violations.
So have your marketing team create an internal handbook specifying how links and QR Codes should be managed, with standards for creation, updates, and reporting. You can even create visual templates for QR Codes to ensure each one enforces your brand image.
Internal documentation is a simple way to answer your team’s questions, maintain accountability, and prevent errors when building a marketing strategy.
Scaling across lines of business: What to consider
Bitly is a flexible marketing tool that supports operations across your business. It’s not just for your central corporate teams—it also scales for distributed branch marketing and diverse digital campaigns.
Corporate vs. local brand needs
With Bitly, you can support both national and local marketing teams, using campaign tags to keep everything organized. Your branch marketing teams can develop their own assets, maintain individual branding, and manage analytics separately from your primary corporate office.
Multi-brand ecosystem support
Many financial institutions manage multiple brands or subsidiaries under one corporate umbrella. If this is the case for your organization, you can use Bitly to support marketing campaigns across multiple brands.
With Bitly, you can create a unique shortened domain for each brand and use campaign tags to keep brand identities separate. All Bitly plans allow you to tag and filter your links to keep them organized. Premium accounts also have access to Bitly Campaigns, which allow you to create and track links across a wide range of marketing channels and create links in bulk.
How to measure campaign performance and brand impact with data
With Bitly Analytics, financial services teams can measure click and scan engagement to support detailed campaign reports and optimize future performance. Bitly also offers a large library of integrations with other analytics tools for even more valuable insights.
Gather insights from total click data
Bitly Analytics helps you track total click volume for each of your short links, as well as clicks by location (city/country), clicks over time, and referral source. You can also pair Bitly Analytics with Google Analytics and other marketing tools for more granular data.
With Bitly, your teams can identify valuable engagement patterns in real time for faster insights. Variations in click or scan volume could help you identify and fix technical problems in your marketing strategy or capitalize further on marketing assets that are performing well. This powerful data helps marketing teams be more adaptable and maximize ROI.
Location tracking is particularly helpful for national bank chains with branches across the country. Region-specific data can highlight where your bank marketing tactics are effectively reaching customers, and if your organization operates internationally, you can even create cross-border QR Codes to support global operations.
Segment campaigns with UTMs and tags
Bitly also makes it simple for teams to add campaign tags to links and QR Codes to keep marketing assets organized, prevent errors, and make it easier to view analytics for specific campaigns.
But another way to both organize campaigns and gather insights is to add UTM parameters to your short links. Adding unique UTM parameters helps you identify where a link click came from, whether that’s a specific email campaign, website, or social media post.
You can create UTM links directly in Bitly for easy traffic attribution, and the tracking results will automatically populate into Google Analytics.
Correlate link clicks with NPS and CSAT scores
Customer satisfaction surveys are essential for financial services teams aiming to refine customer experiences and improve service delivery. While Bitly doesn’t collect CSAT or NPS scores directly, it plays a critical role in facilitating engagement with these surveys.
By pairing Bitly with survey platforms, teams can create branded short links and QR Codes that route customers to feedback forms—whether online or embedded in physical materials like printed financial statements. Bitly then tracks how and where those links and codes are engaged with, providing visibility into which customer touchpoints (such as emails, statements, or SMS campaigns) are generating the most traffic to feedback surveys.
These engagement metrics serve as a powerful complement to satisfaction data collected in platforms dedicated to CSAT and NPS. For example, if a high number of customers scan a QR Code on a mailed statement and proceed to complete a survey, teams can correlate that scan data with satisfaction scores to understand which interactions drive the most customer response—whether positive or negative.
Report on shareable dashboards for your team
Bitly Analytics uses dynamic, sharable dashboards to display click metrics, so stakeholders across your organization can log in to see performance at a glance. This reduces the need to create static PDFs or pull new data every time someone needs it.
Plus, team members can create personalized dashboards to get the data they’re most interested in front and center.
Build links your audience can trust with Bitly
Trust and convenience are everything when marketing financial services. Branded links and QR Codes help you create that seamless, confident customer experience with more cohesive marketing strategies and friction-free touchpoints.
Whether it leads to a new product offer, account activation, or customer support, Bitly helps financial teams make every link count.
With a suite of customization options, user-friendly link management, and built-in analytics, Bitly lets you create connections that reinforce brand consistency and build trust with your audience across each interaction.
Sign up for Bitly today to generate brand awareness and valuable insights with every click.
