Marketing and the Fraud Team: Destined to Be at Odds?

Let’s start with a simple truth, universally acknowledged: no one at a business – no matter what department they work in – wants to turn good customers away.

No fraud analyst shows up at work saying, “Today, let’s keep our sales down.” But sometimes the fraud and risk department ends up gaining a reputation for being the people who say no. That’s because, on the surface, they may seem to have completely different goals:

These different goals could lead to a couple of scenarios. Maybe the two teams wind up feeling at odds, like they’re each pulling at the opposite ends of a tug-of-war rope. Mutual feelings of distrust may develop.

Or, perhaps the two teams don’t even think about each other at all. While that situation may sound benign at first, just think: you effectively have two departments making both strategic and tactical decisions that impact each other . . . but no one is thinking about the consequences.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. At Sift Science, we’ve come up with a few best practices for how to work together:

Reach across the aisle

Your company may have the best intentions to work, think, and plan together as a giant hive mind of information sharing. But on a day-to-day basis, it’s easy to forget the small ways we contribute to a siloed culture. Start by challenging your assumptions about how the “other side” thinks. Instead, start a conversation and keep an open mind.

Align your goals

When we talk to our customers, we find that successful teams are working cross-functionally with the same high-level goal in mind. Because fraud prevention isn’t just about keeping bad users out. It’s also about increasing conversion, growing sales, and making customers happy. The two sides of the coin can – and should – be considered together strategically.

Be open to compromise

Working with the same high-level goal in mind doesn’t mean you’ll always agree. There will always be the trade-off between adding friction (which could lower conversion) and removing it (which could let some bad users through). You’ll have to work together to find the right balance.

Test together

No single team owns the customer experience (even if that team is, in fact, called “Customer Experience.”) If Fraud wants to add an additional form field to checkout, rope in Marketing to A/B test the change and evaluate the effect on conversions. Similarly, if Marketing wants to streamline the experience, chat with Fraud about how to test what the impact will be on metrics like the number of orders accepted, blocked, or reviewed.

Check in frequently

One thing that the Fraud and Marketing teams have in common is that they’re constantly tweaking, adjusting, and fine-tuning. That makes collaboration an ongoing conversation.

Do you have any tips for how Fraud and Marketing can work better together?