Deb Stambaugh, CMO at Quantcast
While many industries have been slow on the uptake of AI, banks and the broader financial services industry have seemingly embraced it with open arms. People have long been able to discuss common issues or get support with triage from artificial chatbots on banking websites, while AI’s reach is much stronger behind the scenes too.
In fact, The Economist Intelligence Unit’s data highlights that 85% of senior IT executives within banks have a “clear strategy” for adopting AI in the development of new services and products. Given that technology leads within the industry have clearly brought into AI, it’s maybe not surprising that its most common use is combating fraud and optimising IT operations. But what about its use outside of the IT function?
The same study highlights that 40% of the industry is currently utilising AI for sales and marketing optimisation, and just shy of 9% is not currently using it but plans on doing so in the next three years. That equates to more than half of financial institutions setting themselves up to fall behind the competition.
Modernising the marketing function
Let’s look at the facts. Modern marketing often relies on checking data and processing information from several different platforms. Equally, optimisation, or continuous learning, is a necessity in programmatic advertising. AI is perfectly positioned for these types of processes and can do them at a pace which is impossible for humans to compete with (nor do we really want to).
Due to AI being outcome-based, it also removes a lot of the complexity. This allows for increased productivity, an increase in outputs and work being completed quicker. Instead of getting bogged down in data, AI frees up the marketing team to focus on creativity, strategic direction, increased profitability and delivering measurable outcomes. All of which are key to the prolonged success of businesses within the sector.
AI supercharges advertising
One area in particular AI can drive clear ROI for financial services organisations is through programmatic advertising, which depends on enormous data and processing to understand target audiences and their behaviours and reach them in real time. More traditional approaches depend on stereotypes and outdated third-party cookies – this doesn’t cut it any more.
Take a wealth management firm for example, which will be proactively targeting HNWIs. The make-up of that cross-section of society is completely different from what it was even a decade ago, so assuming the majority all watch the same TV shows, or digest their news on the same websites, hinders results significantly. Instead, AI allows marketers to understand their audiences in real time, often expanding reach through more inclusion and improving overall business results.
American Express proves exactly that in The Netherlands. At a time when credit card adoption was only at 37% and debit cards were far more popular in the Dutch market, AmEx leveraged our AI to gain an in-depth view of potential customers based on current applicants, demographics and interests. These AI-powered insights allowed the company to activate a programmatic advertising campaign which reached the customers most likely to convert and outperformed legacy approaches within days.
With more data available than ever before, AI is the engine to engage audiences based on their real life interests, even as consumer behaviour shifts. Marketers are able to adjust their creative outputs to match with these changing interests. It also allows marketers to optimise towards specific KPIs, as pointing machine learning at an issue means it relentlessly optimises towards it.
Remain competitive
The truth is, AI can (and should) be the technology that helps you to reach the next level – delivering results you arguably didn’t have the time to even fathom previously. With the technology now available, the hours, days and even weeks of time spent every year in your marketing team lost in the weeds of data should be viewed as a missed opportunity. Even more importantly, it’s an opportunity the industry leaders won’t be passing up.
AI can be your support team right now, freeing up you and your colleagues to add value across the board. Deciding to ignore the technological advancements will set back marketers years, or even decades, compared to forward thinking teams that are already targeting their products and services at tailored audiences via AI-powered campaigns.
The time is now for the sector to engage with AI to supercharge marketing and gain a more accurate picture of your best audiences and how to effectively reach them. The era of guesswork is over, as technology levels the playing field for all marketers. AI can be a superpower and FS companies should be prepared to leverage and adopt it to get the best results possible – or prepare to see a negative impact on the bottom line.
