From clicks to conversions: How Axis Bank mastered digital customer activation
Overview
- Axis Bank acquired Citibank’s consumer business and needed to integrate millions of new customers while maintaining digital engagement.
- Axis Bank had limited visibility into campaign effectiveness, and were unable to attribute conversions to specific channels and post-install user actions, which slowed their scaling efforts.
- By implementing AppsFlyer’s attribution and deep linking solutions, they gained end-to-end visibility into their user journeys. These insights led to data-driven optimization across all marketing channels, contributing to 25% incremental app downloads month over month.
Background
Axis Bank is India’s third-largest private sector bank and has been a pioneer in digital banking since its inception in 1994. With a robust network of over 5,377 branches and 16,026 ATMs, Axis Bank serves millions of customers including large corporations, MSMEs, agriculture, and retail segments across India. The bank’s unique selling proposition lies in its innovative digital solutions and customer-centric approach. Recently, Axis Bank acquired Citibank’s consumer business in India, significantly expanding its customer base and market presence.
In the rapidly evolving fintech landscape, Axis Bank prioritized the integration of Citibank’s customers with the hopes of enhancing digital adoption and optimizing customer engagement across channels.
Challenge
During their acquisition of Citibank’s consumer business in India, Axis Bank, a leader in digital banking innovation, faced the challenge of integrating millions of new customers while maintaining their high standards of digital engagement, privacy and service delivery.
The primary challenge was limited visibility into digital marketing campaign effectiveness, particularly for app adoption and usage. While Axis Bank tracked top-of-funnel metrics like SMS delivery rates and click-throughs, they couldn’t measure how these interactions converted into key actions like app registrations and customer onboarding.
This visibility gap was particularly critical given their app-centric strategy. With app users comprising over 85% of their customer base, ensuring new Citibank customers downloaded and actively used the Axis Bank app for essential services – including UPI enablement and bill payments – was crucial for a successful transition.
Despite significant investments across SMS, WhatsApp, email, and paid media channels like Google Ads and Meta, Axis Bank lacked end-to-end attribution capabilities. This gap prevented them from effectively allocating their budget based on channel performance, making it difficult to optimize marketing spend and maximize return on investment.
Their paid campaigns focused primarily on app installs without insight into post-install actions, leaving them unable to track and ensure continued user engagement and activity after download.
Solution
To address the Citibank migration challenges and enhance digital marketing effectiveness, Axis Bank implemented AppsFlyer’s customer experience and deep linking suite, powered by proprietary OneLink technology.
End-to-end visibility:
By integrating AppsFlyer’s SDK into their mobile app and implementing event monitoring, Axis Bank gained visibility into the complete user journey – from initial campaign interaction through app installation and key in-app events like registration completion and product engagement.
Multi-channel attribution:
AppsFlyer’s deep linking technology, implemented across all activation and registration campaigns, enabled precise attribution of conversions across SMS, WhatsApp, email, and paid media channels. This provided clear insights into each channel’s performance.
Granular insights:
Custom event tracking within the app monitored crucial user actions including mobile verification, MPIN confirmation, and engagement with specific products like savings accounts, credit cards, and personal loans. This detailed monitoring delivered deeper understanding of post-install user behavior.
Campaign optimization:
The ability to send postbacks to advertising platforms like Google Ads and Meta allowed Axis Bank to evolve their campaign objectives beyond app installs to focus on meaningful in-app actions. This enabled smarter budget allocation and optimization based on actual user engagement.
Unified reporting:
AppsFlyer’s dashboard consolidated all attribution data across Axis Bank’s digital marketing efforts, providing centralized visibility that simplified leadership reporting and supported data-driven decisions across product teams and business units.
Through this comprehensive solution implementation, Axis Bank gained the capabilities to effectively measure, attribute, and optimize their digital marketing efforts throughout the Citibank customer migration and beyond for ongoing customer acquisition and engagement.
Results
After implementing AppsFlyer’s solutions, Axis Bank achieved comprehensive visibility into their customer journey, with particular focus on the Citibank customer migration campaign. The bank moved beyond basic metrics like SMS delivery stats and click rates to measure critical conversion points including app registrations and successful customer onboarding.
This enhanced visibility enabled Axis Bank to:
- Accurately attribute conversions to specific marketing channels
- Optimize budget allocation across SMS, WhatsApp, email, and paid media platforms
- Shift focus from basic app downloads to meaningful in-app actions, including registration completion and product engagement
- Drive a 25% month-over-month increase in app downloads through improved campaign optimization and postback capabilities
The AppsFlyer dashboard served as a unified platform for all marketing campaigns, streamlining leadership reporting and enabling data-driven decision-making across teams.
The AppsFlyer dashboard has become our go-to platform for all attribution data, helping us make data-driven decisions across various teams and business units at Axis Bank.
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