Email Automation for Fintech and B2B Services: From Client Acquisition to Retention

A new client completes registration for a trading platform, passes identification and transfers money into the account. From the acquisition team’s perspective, the campaign worked. Yet several weeks later the account is still barely being used. The company has already paid to acquire the client and successfully moved them through onboarding; the problem now lies somewhere between access to the product and finding enough value in it to keep using it.

That part of the relationship receives less marketing attention than acquisition at many companies. Paid search, SEO, advertising, events and lead generation are closely managed because their costs are visible. Once a prospect becomes a client, communication often falls back on newsletters, product announcements and campaign lists even though the company now has much better information available: which steps the client completed, what they use, how frequently they return and where activity begins to fall.

For fintech firms, trading platforms and B2B software providers, those signals give email automation a different role from conventional promotional email. Switzerland alone had approximately 500 fintech companies at the end of 2024, spread across banking, wealth management, digital assets, lending, payments and other financial services. Many compete for clients whose relationship with a provider continues long after registration, so the commercial problem is not simply generating another lead. The company has to move the client towards regular use and retain enough of that business to justify what acquisition cost.

Acquisition data should continue into onboarding

Consider what happens after someone responds to a campaign for an investment or trading product. Registration produces one conversion number, identification another, account funding another and first use another. Looking only at the first number makes it difficult to see whether marketing is bringing in unsuitable leads, onboarding is losing interested prospects or clients are reaching the product and then failing to use it.

Swiss banking provides a good comparison because digital journeys have been measured in considerable detail. Deloitte’s 2024 Digital Banking Maturity study examined 349 banks in 44 countries, including 12 Swiss retail banks representing more than 80% of the Swiss market. Switzerland scored 39 on the study’s digital maturity index, below the global average of 41 and well behind the Digital Champions at 60 or above. Switzerland ranked 27th among the 44 markets examined.

Digital account opening itself was one of the stronger areas for Swiss banks, which makes what happens afterwards especially interesting. A company can remove friction from registration without necessarily creating an active relationship. A fintech provider facing that situation needs to know how many verified clients fund their accounts, how long funding takes, what percentage reach the first meaningful product action and what proportion remain active after one, three or six months.

Software companies have equivalent milestones even if the terminology changes. Signing the contract may be followed by configuration, integration, invitations to colleagues, first use of the main feature and adoption across the team. A ten-seat account with two active users three months after implementation tells the provider something that an email open rate cannot.

Marketing data therefore need to survive the handover from acquisition into the product. If campaign reporting ends at the registration form while usage data remain somewhere else, the business loses sight of the period in which a new client either becomes valuable or quietly disengages.

Email content changes when product activity is available

A generic client database might separate prospects from clients, German-speaking Switzerland from French-speaking Switzerland or private clients from businesses. Product data add another layer. An investment platform knows whether a client has completed onboarding, transferred assets, logged in recently or used a particular service. A SaaS provider can see whether implementation finished, which functions are being used and how adoption is developing across an account.

Imagine that a software provider notices that clients who connect the platform to their accounting system during the first month renew at a much higher rate than those who never complete the integration. The email programme now has a concrete job. Instead of sending every new client a sequence describing the full product, the company can concentrate communication and support around completing the integration.

The same analysis may show that email is not the answer. If clients repeatedly begin an important setup process and abandon it at the same screen, the product team needs to inspect the screen. If large accounts begin with strong adoption and usage then falls sharply after the internal project leader leaves, an account manager may need to intervene. Automation works poorly when companies use it to compensate for problems elsewhere in the client experience.

Swiss banks are dealing with a related question around digital client engagement. Deloitte’s 2025 study of 1,250 Swiss retail- and private-banking clients found that more than half regarded easy digital investing as important to a positive banking experience, yet only 22% of women and 31% of men surveyed were using the investment services available through their retail bank.

Email activity alone cannot explain the gap. Some clients may not want to invest, others may use another provider, dislike the available product, lack confidence or find the process difficult. Login and click data reveal behaviour, not motive. Questions asked during onboarding, preference settings, support requests, surveys and conversations with relationship managers can supply information that behavioural tracking cannot.

A client who has explicitly selected long-term investing as an interest gives the company a firmer basis for relevant communication than someone who happened to open an article about markets. With B2B software, stated objectives can be even more informative. If the client bought a platform to automate regulatory reporting, the first months of communication should help them achieve that objective rather than showcase whichever new feature marketing happens to be promoting that week.

Falling usage deserves attention before renewal

Retention problems often become visible before a client formally leaves. Twenty employees may use a B2B platform during implementation, followed by 16 after two months, eleven after four and six by month six. Waiting until the contract approaches renewal leaves the provider trying to repair a relationship after much of the product has already fallen out of daily use.

Trading and investment platforms see different patterns. A previously active client may stop logging in altogether, gradually reduce activity or continue using the platform while withdrawing assets. None of those behaviours proves why the relationship changed, but each gives the company a reason to investigate.

The response does not always belong in an automated email. A small account that has not completed one onboarding step may need a reminder or short tutorial. Falling activity at an important corporate account is more likely to justify contact from the account manager. Companies need thresholds for that handover so valuable accounts do not remain inside automated re-engagement sequences while the commercial relationship deteriorates.

There is also a limit to how much communication clients want. BearingPoint’s 2025 Digital Client Interaction Survey covered 1,045 people in Switzerland and found high overall satisfaction with digital banking services alongside signs of declining engagement and digital fatigue among younger clients. The study also recorded growing demand for relevance, personalisation, security and trust in digital interactions.

That argues against treating inactivity as permission to send more. A client already receiving account notifications, market information, product updates, sales invitations and regulatory messages does not experience those communications according to the company’s organisational chart. Four systems can each follow their own perfectly sensible schedule and still produce an excessive number of emails.

Frequency rules therefore need visibility across CRM, marketing, sales and service communication. A security notification should outrank a promotional campaign. An account manager beginning a renewal conversation may want automated sales messages paused. Clients who have stopped engaging with general marketing should not remain on the same frequency simply because they have not unsubscribed.

Personalisation needs a reason

Much of what is sold as personalisation remains superficial. Names, locations and job titles can change the appearance of an email without changing its relevance.

Financial and software businesses have access to richer signals, but more data do not automatically justify more targeting. The information should alter the communication in a way that makes sense within the relationship. A newly onboarded investment client may need help understanding the available research tools. An experienced user already working with them does not. A software administrator and an occasional end user within the same corporate account may both receive emails from the provider, but they do not need the same product information.

There are commercial reasons to get this right beyond clicks. Deloitte’s 2025 Swiss banking research found generally low recommendation levels despite broad satisfaction with the services clients already used. Only one bank in the study, a neobank, achieved a Net Promoter Score above 50, reaching 64. The strongest traditional bank scored 39 and the weakest 11. Personal recommendations nevertheless remained the most frequently cited factor in choosing a bank, mentioned by 50% of retail-banking clients and 55% of private-banking clients surveyed.

A marketing programme that repeatedly demonstrates that the provider understands what the client uses, needs and has already done contributes to that wider experience. An email recommending a service the client already bought, asking them to repeat information already supplied or promoting functionality irrelevant to their business does the opposite.

Opens and clicks cannot carry the business case

Email platforms naturally give marketing teams campaign metrics because they are easy to produce. Management needs another layer.

A trading platform can follow the proportion of acquired leads that become verified clients, the share that fund accounts, the percentage becoming active and revenue generated by different cohorts. SaaS providers may track completed implementation, active seats, adoption of functions associated with retention, expansion and renewal. Subscription businesses can also examine net revenue retention to see whether revenue from existing clients is growing or contracting after churn and expansion are taken into account.

Connecting those measures to marketing requires care. A client who receives an onboarding email and activates the next day did not necessarily activate because of the email. Comparing cohorts before and after a change gives better evidence, while companies with enough volume can hold back part of an audience and compare outcomes against a control group.

The exercise sometimes produces uncomfortable answers. A beautifully designed sequence may increase clicks without changing activation. A plain reminder sent at the point where clients commonly abandon onboarding may do more for revenue. Marketing teams need the commercial data to know which is which.

Swiss consent rules also affect how the system is built

Automation depends on having permission to communicate. Under Swiss rules, advertising by email generally requires prior consent, with an exception that allows companies to market similar products and services to existing clients under specified conditions. Recipients must be able to opt out easily.

For an automated programme, compliance is partly a data-management problem. The company needs to know how an address entered the CRM, what permission was given and whether the client later withdrew it. An unsubscribe stored only in one email application is of little help when another sales or marketing system continues sending messages.

Fintech and financial-services providers also hold information that clients may regard as particularly sensitive. Knowing that a client invests, transfers money or uses a certain financial product does not mean every piece of that information belongs in promotional targeting. Decisions about which account and behavioural data marketing may use should be made before individual campaign managers start experimenting with what the technology allows.

Where to start

For a company that already has a CRM and an email automation platform, the next step is not to design twenty new workflows. Pull the client journey into one view and put numbers against it.

Map the commercial stages. Define the events that move a prospect towards revenue and retention. For a trading platform these may include registration, verification, funding, first trade and sustained activity. A software provider may use completed implementation, integration, active users, adoption of a core feature and renewal.

Find the largest losses between stages. If 80% of registrations complete verification but only 25% of verified accounts become active, work on the second gap first. A campaign calendar should not decide the priority.

Check what is already known about those clients. Combine product activity with CRM history, stated interests, sales notes and service interactions where the data can legitimately be used. Separate what the company knows from what it is merely inferring.

Choose the response after identifying the problem. Email may be appropriate, but so might a product change, tutorial, call from an account manager or improvement to onboarding. Do not automate a communication simply because the automation tool can trigger it.

Set a point for human intervention. Revenue, account value, duration of inactivity, falling adoption or an approaching renewal can determine when automated communication stops and a relationship manager takes over.

Measure movement, not just engagement. After introducing the workflow, compare verification, activation, usage, renewal or another commercial measure with the previous performance. Where volumes allow, use a control group.

Check total contact frequency. Review what marketing, sales, product and service teams send to the same client. Priority rules and suppression should work across those systems.

The work is less about writing more emails than deciding which client behaviour deserves a response. A business that can see where clients stop, connect that behaviour with revenue and choose between automated communication and human contact has a much stronger retention system than one optimising campaigns inside the email platform alone.