by Ally Akins
In the latest ABA survey of bank marketers on tools and technology, the use of all marketing technology tools has significantly increased since 2024. Marketing automation platforms, or MAPs, were selected as the technology that added the most value to their organization and were second to CRMs in utilization. One-hundred-and-thirty respondents participated in the survey, conducted in March. In this article, we compare results to last year’s survey on the same topic, conducted in January 2024.
In addition to utilizing MAPs more frequently than ever, Bank marketers are also becoming more comfortable with them. Of all the tools surveyed, MAPs were the technologies that respondents felt the most comfortable with, and this was also the case in 2024. This suggests that the automation tools being embedded within marketing technology platforms and mediums are somewhat user-friendly and well-documented, a welcome change from tools and technologies of the past!
Bank marketers also rated marketing automation platforms the highest in terms of their value, with 25.4% selecting it as the most impactful. These platforms provide efficiency and time savings, reduce manual workload, enable small teams to manage higher-volume campaigns, deliver personalized customer journeys and manage multiple channels simultaneously. Clearly, many marketers have recognized how those benefits are adding value to their organization.
Bank marketing use cases for automation
Email marketing continues to dominate bank marketers’ use cases for automation tools. In 2025, 94% of those using marketing automation said they used it for email marketing tools. Marketing automation and custom journeys are beginning to become embedded into almost every email platform. Automation platforms can create streamlined processes for creating, sending and managing email campaigns, which allow for a more accurate and personalized experience.
Second to email marketing for utilization were analytics, reporting and social media marketing. Automation can be a strategic assistant for measuring, reporting and optimizing campaigns or tactics. Creating and sharing automated views of campaigns can keep all teams informed about the status of initiatives.
Automation can also assist bank marketers with lead analysis, scoring and pipeline reporting when built into a bank’s CRM or automation platform. Bank marketers and sales teams can create custom criteria that automatically rank and score potential leads generated from campaigns. Once a lead has been qualified, the platform can also create custom journeys for nurturing or sales team follow-up based on the lead’s qualification score or primary product interests.
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Automation can also help with audience segmentation and targeting, using digital platforms to segment audiences by demographics, interests and behaviors to understand your audience better.
Automation is now utilized for social listening and brand monitoring – detecting shifts in perception, identifying customer trends and collecting customer feedback. It can also be used to respond to customers and direct them to resolution paths automatically.
Marketing automation for the future
Marketers are excited about deploying a wide variety of automation use cases in the future, as indicated by the fact that more than 50% of marketers using automation selected every one of the seven suggested use cases, signifying the broad range of potential benefits that automation can provide.
Unsurprisingly, personalization is still a primary goal of bank marketers. More than 80% of bank marketers using automation selected personalization as a way they hope to use the tool in the next two years, more than double the 38% using it today.
Bank marketers have long focused on personalization. It allows for nuanced, targeted marketing that meets each customer where they are and does not treat all customers the same. This remains elusive for most bank marketers, requiring marketing technology and investments that most marketers simply cannot access. But more and more institutions are beginning to use automation and analytics to drive targeting.
Where will automation take bank marketers next?
As marketing automation continues to be used by more bank marketers, we expect that other tools will increase as well. As automation becomes embedded into AI marketing tools, CRMs, data analytics tools and others, more marketers will benefit.
Automation’s integration with AI can provide bank marketers with predictive insights, enabling them to anticipate customer needs and trends before they arise. This predictive power can help banks offer tailored products and services immediately, improving customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Additionally, integrations with CRMs can more effectively link marketing campaigns with sales follow-ups, create a more holistic view of the customer and relationship, and empower automated sales management practices to fuel campaign growth.
Combining automation with other advanced tools promises a future where bank marketers can work more efficiently, make smarter decisions and offer unparalleled customer experiences. The journey of where automation will take bank marketers next is just beginning, and the possibilities are endless.
Ally Akins is the co-lead of the sales and marketing practice at Capital Performance Group, a strategic consulting firm that assists banks in making the most of their customer data. She can also be reached on LinkedIn.
