Today, the Chief Marketing Officer’s (CMO) role has never been more expansive, prominent, or central to a company’s success. Since its inception, the Chief Marketing Officer’s scope has expanded dramatically. While in the 1950s, the CMO’s influence was limited to “creating TV and print advertising to sell products to consumers,” today’s CMOs are responsible for the company’s overall growth. According to the Harvard Business Review, “CMOs [today] are expected to creatively apply insights to business challenges, validate decisions with data, create seamless customer experiences across media and revenue channels, and lead efforts to put the customer at the center throughout the organization.” On any given day, a typical CMO may report directly to the CEO on the results of the latest advertisement campaign, suggest a new pricing model to the product team, spearhead a social media campaign, and oversee a company’s public relations strategy. As the Chief Marketing Officer’s roles and responsibilities have grown exponentially, the metrics used to measure their success have also changed. For instance, in digital businesses, the modern CMO is measured not by the number of new eyes they get on a landing page but by how many customers they succeed in onboarding. To meet the moment and lead the way, many CMOs are turning to the latest in phone-centric technology to accelerate onboarding and drive sales.

Today, the typical CMO has more responsibilities and influence than ever before. In her article “The five roles of the CMO: The multiple roles of the 21st-century chief marketing officer,” Jennifer Veenstra of Deloitte describes the many hats a modern CMO wears: “If CMO roles as we’ve defined them have required proficiency not only in marketing but across multiple business functions, the job has expanded even further in complexity to include sustainable growth, highly personalized customer experiences, and advanced marketing innovation.” In the digital age, reinventing a customer’s onboarding experience is often the most powerful way to promote a company’s sustainable growth, provide every customer with a personalized experience, and embrace the latest marketing innovations. To improve the consumer onboarding experience, it’s critical that CMOs implement new techniques to decrease customer abandonment while preventing fraud.

Although critical to increasing sales and improving customer experience, leveling up the onboarding flow can be daunting for even the most seasoned CMO because it requires finding a balance between competing interests. A great onboarding flow must first and foremost capture the customer data necessary to conduct business while also requiring as little customer time and attention as possible to cut down on customer drop-offs. Last but not least, an effective onboarding flow must also prevent fraudsters from creating synthetic accounts or conducting account takeovers. CMOs eager to strike this elusive balance should keep an eye out for three major trends: 

1. Forms auto-filled with verified information make onboarding a breeze for customers: These solutions fetch PII data (with the consumer’s consent, of course) from trusted sources to auto-fill onboarding forms. This reduces manual errors and speeds up the process, cutting down on manual reviews. Take Synchrony, for instance. This leading consumer financial services company designed a digital process flow where applicants enter the last four digits of their social security number into the digital form and verify the auto-filled personal information fetched from authorized sources based on explicit consumer consent. This resulted in an incredible 80% reduction in the number of fields a customer needs to complete.
2. Use phone-centric intelligence to verify identity: Verified and trusted phone data is one of the most dependable information sources about a consumer. Unfortunately, legacy data sources provide static data that fraudsters can use to create synthetic identities, putting consumers at risk. Today, modern platforms for data sourcing have replaced the national identity numbers with a better identifier—the consumer’s phone number. The utility of a user’s phone number and its linkage to several other authoritative data sources—both public and private—has made it a vital key in resolving trusted PII data.
3. Replace time-consuming & conversion-killing authentication methods with passive authentication: Network and phone number-based intelligence can be used to passively validate possession, while behavioral biometrics can establish identity using motion analysis. Companies can authenticate users in the background with these technologies, stopping fraudsters while adding no friction to legitimate users. Talk about a win-win!

Marketers interested in incorporating these three trends into their onboarding solution should consider Prove Pre-Fill™. Because Prove Pre-Fill auto-fills online applications with bank-grade data from authoritative sources, it’s fast becoming the go-to digital solution for CMOs eager to stand out from the crowd by boosting companywide revenue.

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To learn more about Prove’s identity solutions and how to accelerate revenue while mitigating fraud, schedule a demo today.