Summary
Everything on EMI Kotak Bank launched the ‘Everything on EMI' campaign to build awareness of our Smart EMI offerings and drive category familiarity in an engaging manner. An integrated campaign utilising a mix of traditional channels, social media and data-driven digital targeting we built visibility and recall across relevant customer touch-points. The campaign proved to be immensely successful not just in driving engagement, but also led to notable business growth, both online and in-store.
Challenge
Increasing levels of digitalisation and access to credit have revolutionised not just the consumer's purchasing behaviour, it's also added to their buying power. Nowadays, consumers are splurging on a wider variety of goods and services, many of which aren't at a price-point that would have been traditionally accessible to them. Keeping in tune with these evolving needs and wants Kotak Bank also expanded its Smart EMI offering to cover a wider range of popular categories such as furniture, fashion, ed-tech, etc. Through in-depth market surveys and consumer immersions, we also realised that barring the well-heeled, urbane shopper, many consumers had a hard time differentiating amongst the EMI options available to them, consequently remaining apprehensive them. Our challenge wasn't just limited to building awareness of Kotak Smart EMI's expanded ambit, we also had to raise the overall level of consumer understanding, comfort and trust for the entire category.
Objective
Unlike most other financial services, the target group for something as innocuous as EMI, is essentially everyone with a debit card, irrespective of whether they patronised Kotak or not. There was a clear need, to not only inform consumers about the widespread availability and ease of use of Kotak's Smart EMI offering, but to also focus on the bigger picture, educating them about the varied nuances of this category.
Strategy
We already knew that customers had apprehensions around EMIs in general, but as we delved deeper, Kotak Bank realised that most customers, particularly from Tier II & III cities were also confused by terms like Instant in-store EMI, Debit Card EMI, Credit Card EMI & Smart EMI Card. This lack of understanding hampered not only their purchasing ability but also led to a reduced quality of life in the long run. With this in mind, we worked towards developing a message that would resonate with audiences far and wide while simultaneously encapsulating the host of benefits available to them on Kotak's Smart EMI schemes.
Data
To tackle their apprehensions in an effective manner, we had to design universally accessible and easy to understand communication around the category and developed multiple concepts to be tested across geographies and languages. Through a series of surveys, and in-depth interviews we also identified the most pressing and common pain points associated with EMIs as a whole and utilised this knowledge to identify and optimise consumer triggers, communication hooks and channels for greater relevancy. Over rounds of testing, one communication concept that truly stood out was ‘Everything on EMI', not just for its ability to encapsulate Kotak Bank's range of Smart EMI offerings but also because of the instant connection and resonance it generated amongst people from all walks of life.
Solution
To create widespread awareness and buzz, we launched our ‘Everything on EMI' campaign with 2 light-hearted digital films showcasing the simplicity and ease of using Kotak's Smart EMI to purchase their dream products and services across a diverse range of storefronts. Starring some of India's most well-known and beloved influencers like Vrajesh Hirjee, Delnaaz Irani & Hetal Puniwala, the films were an instant hit across social media, quickly grossing over 600,000 views each. Now that we had built interest in Kotak's Smart EMI offerings through these films, the logical next step was to direct the consumer to places that they could avail of this facility. To achieve this we rolled out ‘Everything on EMI' themed branding and merchandise in not just our 14,000+ partner stores across 25+ cities, but also across 200+ e-commerce partner sites to highlight its wide availability and reduce consumer hesitancy. Since a good chunk of our audience also comprised of tech-savvy, digital-first shoppers, we went beyond these traditional channels to adopt a data-led, hyper-targeted approach which enabled us to deliver highly personalised communication to over 20 distinct audience micro-segments, each with their a uniquely shared set of needs, interests and budgets. Each micro-segmented communication piece was subjected to a vast multitude of A/B tests, resulting in over 750 subject lines in 6 different languages to deliver offer and occasion-based messaging tailored to that segment's interests. Taking this digital-first approach further, we also partnered with Google to deploy geo-targeted GDN ads which used ALE (Affiliate local extension) to help pre-approved Kotak customers determine availability of Kotak Smart EMI across the multitude of stores in their vicinity. Staying true to its long-standing commitment towards guiding responsible financial habits, Kotak Bank also created wide-ranging digital education programs like MythBusters and Smart Take in partnership with popular bloggers.
Results
Kotak Bank's ‘Everything on EMI' campaign proved to be a rip-roaring success that received positive coverage across India's most popular newspapers. On social media alone, our content garnered over 35 Lakh impressions and resonated with 2L+ unique Kotak customers who had been pre-approved for Smart EMI services. Our hyper-segmented communication also proved to be a great hit amongst audiences with a 45% + email open rate, which led to over 10,000 unique click-throughs to the Smart EMI micro-site in a matter of days. Through its wide-ranging appeal and reach, the ‘Everything on EMI' campaign encouraged a vast section of our audience to avail Smart EMI schemes from Kotak Bank, resulting in a notable 3.68x jump in our online business and a 2x jump in our offline business.
