By Mark Gibson
The most recent American Bankers Association survey on bank marketing sales and technology, including artificial intelligence, revealed important trends. Respondents shared what they have found most valuable about each technology. Importantly, nearly half of responding institutions have deployed some type of marketing or sales technology, but many are not yet taking full advantage of its capabilities. Regarding artificial intelligence, this decade’s hottest buzzword, the majority of bank marketers see several ways in which AI will positively impact marketing effectiveness.
This article explores which marketing technology tools, including AI, are most used today, what they are being used for and what technologies will be added in the next 24 months. It also sheds insight into how many institutions are using customer analytics to identify marketing opportunities.
Which tools are most commonly used?
Bank adoption of sales and marketing technology has continued to increase over the past few years. Not surprisingly, CRM is by far the most used technology tool, driven by several sales, customer service and marketing use cases. Nearly half of all respondents stated their institution is currently utilizing a CRM. Next is marketing automation platforms at 35 percent, followed by data management platforms at 32 percent.
An important finding with regard to CRM is that, for institutions who have it, 48 percent agree strongly or somewhat strongly that “there is not widespread adoption, and the platform is not communicated or understood,” compared to only 23 percent who felt that the organization “knows all features and functionality, and all parties use it.” This suggests that, for most institutions, there remains untapped potential from a revenue and customer experience standpoint.
Marketing automation is being used by more than one-third of institutions and is overwhelmingly being used for email marketing today. However, two-thirds of respondents also rely on automation technology for analytics and reporting.
Importantly, many institutions have plans to ramp up the usage of marketing automation for customer segmentation and personalization, analytics and reporting, and lead generation and nurturing. This bodes well for marketing to enhance its productivity and effectiveness, focusing on revenue-producing use cases.
Customer analytics remains elusive
Speaking of analytics, more than half the respondents say they do not currently analyze customer data to identify opportunities. This is a surprising finding and points to a future performance improvement opportunity for bank marketers. It will be interesting in future surveys to explore why this is the case. The bank ‘owns’ its customer data, so the only expense is having an internal or external resource to analyze the data to identify relationship-deepening opportunities. This use case has proven to have an extremely high ROI and can also improve customer satisfaction and retention.
Marketing AI quickly evolves from hype to reality
This year’s survey findings indicate that AI tools have already penetrated bank marketers’ tool chests, and that the situation is evolving quickly. Currently, 17 percent of institutions are already using AI powered marketing tools, while 23 percent plan to begin using these tools in the next 12 months.
Respondents also agree that AI tools are going to make a big impact on their organizations. Forty-four percent stated that the use of marketing technology, analytics and AI will “significantly enhance marketing effectiveness,” 26 percent agreed that these tools will “lead to moderate improvements,” while only 8 percent said that the tools will “have minimal impact” and are “more hype than substance.”
When asked about the specific applications for AI-powered marketing tools, respondents see a wide variety of use cases for AI, including personalized recommendations, automated customer service, content creation and automated social media management. However, the two highest-ranked use cases were: “ad targeting and optimization” and “risk assessment and fraud protection.”
The third inning of sales and marketing automation
According to this latest survey, the banking industry is early in the process of harnessing technology to enhance sales and marketing effectiveness.
These results suggest that, while a minority of institutions have successfully deployed these tools and are reaping the rewards in terms of additional revenue and improved customer satisfaction, a large opportunity for productivity and efficiency improvements remain at a significant majority of institutions.
This survey provides a roadmap for institutions to make the most of sales and marketing technologies, whether they have already invested and are expanding usage, or are currently determining how to best proceed in leveraging these potentially powerful tools.
Mark Gibson is the 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.
