Bank marketing and AI: Here today, gone tomorrow?

By Mark Gibson

The ABA’s most recent survey on sales and marketing technology drills into the topic of artificial intelligence, exploring current and future usage. While most banks have yet to deploy AI-powered marketing technologies, bank marketers emphasized the primary use cases for AI are numerous, and identified which will have the most impact on their banks. Finally, they spoke about the biggest barriers to adoption.

In short, while marketing AI is ‘gone today’ for most banks, this survey suggests it will absolutely be ‘here tomorrow,’ and making a significant impact on efficiency, productivity and customer satisfaction.

Current usage of AI in bank marketing

Bank adoption of AI-powered marketing tools is low at 17 percent. However, 23 percent plan to begin using these tools within the next 12 months. Current usage is evenly split between creating content for internal and external audiences.

Lack of understanding or familiarity with the technology appears to be a key driver of current low utilization. When asked what the main challenges or limitations were to using marketing AI, ‘lack of understanding or expertise’ was cited by 61 percent of respondents, while 66 percent felt that ‘data privacy and ethical concerns’ were inhibiting adoption.

The future for marketing and AI

This year’s survey findings indicate that AI tools have the potential to make a significant impact soon. Forty-four percent stated that the use of marketing technology, analytics and AI will “significantly enhance marketing effectiveness,” while 26 percent agreed that these tools will “lead to moderate improvements,” while only 8 percent replied that the tools will “have minimal impact” and are “more hype than substance.”

Bank marketers see AI delivering the most value in terms of gaining efficiency and enhancing the customer experience. Automation of repetitive tasks was ranked as the most important use case by 66 percent of the bankers, indicating a significant opportunity to create content and automate customer journeys and campaigns. Not far behind was ‘data analysis and insights,’ which can be interpreted from both a customer experience and relationship deepening perspective. Finally, half the respondents specifically mentioned that AI is going to enable ‘personalized customer experiences,’ which should provide both customer satisfaction and retention benefits.

Finally, when asked which AI use cases would have the biggest impact on their banks in the future, the marketers ranked ‘ad targeting and optimization’ and ‘risk assessment and fraud prevention’ at the top of the list, followed by social media management and content creation.

Early in the AI game

The survey responses suggest that it is early days in terms of bank marketers adopting AI. However, the responses also suggest that bank marketers are beginning to educate themselves as to the possible uses and benefits, as well as risks and challenges to its adoption.

Bank marketers believe that, if risks can be managed and privacy concerns assuaged, AI promises to significantly improve the customer experience and provide customized advice that leads to deeper wallet share, all while increasing efficiency.

Bank marketers, and bankers in general, will be closely monitoring this rapidly changing landscape, identifying and testing use cases while thoughtfully mitigating risk. Artificial intelligence promises to have a seismic impact on the banking industry, much like it has on the retail and automotive industries.

Mark Gibson is the sales and marketing practice leader at Capital Performance Group, a strategic consulting firm that assists banks in improving the return on their marketing investment. He can also be reached on LinkedIn.