Financial Services AdvisorTM Weekly financial services insights from Compete

WHICH FINANCIAL SERVICES INSTITUTIONS ARE MOST ATTRACTIVE TO HISPANICS?

By: Karen Marchione

March 31, 2008


Much has been said about the influence of the Hispanic vote in the contentious presidential primaries. However, battling for Hispanics is nothing new to financial services marketers; they’ve been vying for the attention and a larger share of wallet from this important segment for a long time.

Percentage of online shoppers that are Hispanic*

Most major brands offer bilingual websites, for example GEICO and Bank of America, as well as specialized products and services, some of which have become controversial. But which marketers are best at bringing Hispanics to their company’s website to shop for new products – regardless of whether those products are credit cards, auto insurance policies, or home equity loans? 

* This graph charts the percentage of a site’s online shoppers (it excludes people logging into their accounts and just looks at people shopping for a new product) that are Hispanic. Included in this chart are only the top performing sites.  

Based on this data, there are a few observations and questions for the readers of this newsletter: 

  • According to eMarketer, between 9.5% and 9.9% of the internet population is Hispanic. However, between 15% and 20% of the shoppers to the top sites in our graph is Hispanic – more than twice what you would expect to find. 


  • Seven of the top ten sites feature auto insurance as their primary product – what is it either about that product or auto insurance marketing that attracts such a high percentage of Hispanics?


  • There is no doubt that demand for the Hispanic segment will only grow as this important segment becomes even more influential online. Understanding where the Hispanic segment spends their time online will help FS marketers capture this growing segment for years to come. 

A QUICK LOOK AT TAX SEASON ...
Unique visitors to IRS.gov
Every year in which I have prepared my own tax return I’ve filed them the weekend before they were due. However, after examining traffic to IRS.gov for the past few years, it looks like my tax filing behavior may not be the norm upon first glance:

  • Traffic to IRS.gov peaks in February each year (and not in April), which means that people are either potentially filing or simply doing research online.


  • After several, mostly flat years, more people are visiting IRS.gov this year. However, some of this increase was likely driven by people curious about the Economic Stimulus Payments. 


  • Compared to February ‘07, traffic is up 27% this year. According to Compete data, the 24.4 million unique visitors in Feb ‘08 was also the biggest month ever for IRS.gov (data goes back to 2001).


    • Compete.com did an informal poll recently on Compete.com to see when people are filing this year. It seems as though more than half of taxpayers file in March and April. This does not include those that choose to file an extension. So it looks like my behavior is indeed the norm.

For more information about Compete’s financial services practice please contact Karen Marchione at kmarchione@compete.com

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.