Maximizing Your Marketing ROI With Effective Testing

Jim Marous (00:08):

Welcome to another episode of Banking Transformed, the podcast that dives deep into the trends, innovations, and strategies shaping the future of banking. I'm your host, Jim Marous, owner and CEO of the Digital Banking Report and co-publisher of The Financial Brand.

Jim Marous (00:22):

In the rapidly evolving world of financial institution marketing, staying ahead of the curve requires a deep understanding of consumers preferences, marketing trends and the effectiveness of various strategies.

Jim Marous (00:36):

One of the most powerful tools in a financial institution marketers Arsenal is testing. A data-driven approach that enables banks and credit unions to optimize their marketing efforts and maximize results. But where do you start?

Jim Marous (00:50):

In this episode of Banking Transformed, we are excited to welcome Erin Allen, VP of Insurance Distribution and Market Strategy for Franklin Madison. Through real world examples and practical advice, Erin sheds a light on transformative power of testing and its potential to drive unparalleled marketing results for any sized organization.

Jim Marous (01:12):

A marketer's job doesn't end when the campaign goes live. The most important way to increase results for future initiatives is through testing. By leveraging advanced testing methodologies, banks and credit unions can gain invaluable insights in the performance of different channels, creative elements, offers and messaging, ultimately leading to more targeted and successful campaigns.

Jim Marous (01:36):

So, Erin, you're no newcomer to direct marketing, but before we dig into why testing is an important marketing imperative, can you share a little bit about your background and how Franklin Madison helps financial institutions generate better relationships and better revenue with partnering services?

Erin Allen (01:55):

Yeah. So, personally, I've been in the credit union and financial services world, I would say for over 25 years, both at a credit union and on the other side of the desk. So, I'm really happy to be here talking to you about marketing services.

Erin Allen (02:10):

Franklin Madison is in the financial services world, and we help financial institutions to offer protection programs and products into their client bases.

Jim Marous (02:21):

So, it's interesting, you're a direct firm in most cases where you help financial institutions improve the revenue in the relationships using all types of marketing components. What is interesting though, I'm a marketer by trade and then I've got into the direct marketing business myself.

Jim Marous (02:40):

One of the challenges as a marketer is, number one, how do you test things? And number two, how do you then get the results from that testing back in time to do it iteratively? Well, nowadays, compared to when I was doing this business it's a lot faster.

Jim Marous (02:55):

A lot more people have access to data and insights. But still testing, it is in some ways for some marketers felt to be a luxury as opposed to necessity. Why is testing such a critical element of successful financial institution marketing strategies?

Erin Allen (03:13):

I would say it's because the world is changing, and we need to change with it. What once resonated with your audience doesn't necessarily now, or your message might still be on point. The key is that you'd never know unless you continue to challenge the status quo, what you've always done. Whether that’s the group you’re targeting, the marketing message itself or the delivery method.

Erin Allen (03:35):

A 35-year-old today is different than one five years ago and much different than one 10 years ago. What's important to them, what drives their decisions, is shaped by their life history and the marketing message you're trying to convey needs to address their needs and goals now.

Jim Marous (03:50):

So, sometimes a company will find a winning marketing strategy and they love it and it's done well. However, they don't know really if it's optimized for today. You talked about everything changing around us. Consumers are changing and markets are changing in a way people respond to things change very quickly nowadays.

Jim Marous (04:10):

And any old theories around who responds to this channel versus who doesn't is really blown out of the water on a personalized basis. I know I don't respond the way my wife does, and we're exactly the same demographically except for our gender, and that usually isn't how people make decisions based on response rates.

Jim Marous (04:29):

So, what have you found when testing creative or anything else in marketing that has really been a really cool case study?

Erin Allen (04:38):

It's pretty amazing what a few words can do. For example, we at Franklin Madison, we've spent quite a bit of time and money to determine the best wording on the outside of the envelope. Yes, the actual envelope that contains the marketing message is that important.

Erin Allen (04:54):

Because if you can't capture their interest, you'll never have the opportunity to explain why your product or service meets their needs. You also want to create urgency around getting that mail piece opened. We've all sorted mail them to piles. What you have to open today and what can be opened later.

Erin Allen (05:11):

You don't want to be in that open later pile because you are not going to get the response. And ultimately that's the pile that ends up in the trash. So, we are working all the time to determine what is the best on the outside of the envelope to get it opened and to get it opened today.

Jim Marous (05:29):

That really applies to digital marketing as well, doesn't it? Where you want to get the ad opened, you want the person to feel urgency of response immediately as opposed to putting to the side. Because there are trash bids within the digital realm as well.

Jim Marous (05:44):

What do you find overall the difference between a way a consumer absorbs direct marketing versus digital marketing versus any other form?

Erin Allen (05:55):

I think what we find is that direct mail is still a big part of what we do on the marketing side. Even when we send email campaigns or we send direct mail, you have to have somewhere for them to go to learn more about that product and service.

Erin Allen (06:11):

So, with every direct mail campaign, I can tell you the majority still go to a website, still look this information up. And even if they have the ability to maybe take advantage of the product online, we still get a lot of those paper-based campaigns back.

Erin Allen (06:27):

So again, the key is that urgency. And what we find with working specifically with financial institutions is that affinity. They know that this is coming from their financial institution. They trust that their financial institution has vetted us, has vetted the product that they're receiving and then that's how we get that opened as well. Is through that relationship that that member, that customer has with their financial institution.

Jim Marous (06:52):

So, when you're doing testing, I mean, back in the day when I was working in direct mail firms, which was a long part of my career, a lot of what we did was testing and determining segments. But they were segments based on demographics, usually fairly large elements of demographics, age, income, maybe length of relationship.

Jim Marous (07:11):

What do you find now is the case when you're doing testing for your clients? How finite is that testing getting right now around who responds versus who doesn't? Do you still try to put them into segments, or do you really look at them as individuals who are responding?

Erin Allen (07:28):

I mean, everyone here at Franklin Madison would know, I talk a lot about marketing to an audience of one. Not where we're getting into privacy issues or over personalized, but really looking at the life stage of that individual.

Erin Allen (07:43):

So, if we have information on their product history, for example, we can pull that in to help with our models, but a lot of that is just around the life stage that they're in. And it isn't necessarily an age.

Erin Allen (07:57):

So, I have kids that go from 17 to 29, I still have them in the home, but my husband's retired. So, we're not going to fit any typical demographic profile. So, they need to look at what are we doing? How do we respond when they're sending offers to us?

Jim Marous (08:16):

And I found that it's not just the offer or the creative, it's also the channels the person prefers to use. My wife loves direct marketing. She loves paper. She lived by it, I think. I don't ever even open the mail. She does and she sends it to me. But the reality is I am much more likely to respond to an SMS text, an email, or a digital marketing initiative.

Jim Marous (08:42):

How important is that marketing mix and trying to test to see what the right mix is? As you follow me around, I always refer to my car buying experience as a way that manufacturers and dealers tend to follow you wherever you go.

Jim Marous (08:58):

But now we have options such as TV and other ways to directly market to consumers. As you're testing, is there one channel that works better than another on return on investment? Or is it really a marketing mix and a marketing sequence?

Erin Allen (09:13):

It's definitely a marketing sequence. What we try to do is look at how they've responded in the past. So, really look at how they've responded in the past to determine future buying habits. So, as we are collecting information from our financial institutions and then we have a database of 50 years of promotional history at Franklin Madison specific to insurance marketing.

Erin Allen (09:37):

So, as we're able to gather more information that helps us to refine how to market to which individual, so cost is always going to be forefront. So, we want to make sure that we're maximizing our marketing dollars. So, if we have a segment that responds very, very well to email, that's what you have to lead with. You want to get those early adopters; you want to have those coming in. It's quick. It's a great way to test. So, maybe those get fed an email first to see if they would respond via email.

Erin Allen (10:09):

For those that get direct mail, typically we have the follow ups, whether that would be something through a digital channel or if that would potentially be an email that drives them back to that direct mail piece. But it's really looking at how those segments respond and trying to find the most effective way to communicate to them.

Jim Marous (10:28):

So, can you share an example of how testing has led to really significant improvements in creative assets or messaging for a banker credit union’s marketing campaign?

Erin Allen (10:41):

I would say there's a couple things that we do, but the biggest thing about testing today is the speed at which we can do it. So, we have something that we call factorial analysis. I'm sure you've probably heard of it. Don't be scared, I know big words.

Erin Allen (10:54):

But it is really where you can take four different creatives. You can take three different data providers; you can take three different data models and you can test all of those different combinations with only eight pieces that go out.

Erin Allen (11:09):

So, what you try to do is you try to maximize the responses and then from those eight that you actually mail, you can then identify which of the 36 is most likely to draw the responses that you want.

Erin Allen (11:23):

So, we do that on a regular basis with our partners where we're actually going in, we're running these tests on their behalf. Most recently we had a partner that did this. It was great, we had really good results across a number of these.

Erin Allen (11:41):

But we had to go back and try to explain to them that the winning combination was not one that we mailed. So, we had to go back and say, "This is the winning combination, and this is why." And then we did a second test to validate those results. And from there we were able to show how successful that campaign was, and now we're working on a full year calendar with them.

Jim Marous (12:02):

So, it's interesting, if I go back, these people have heard this before on podcast done with Franklin Madison. But if you go back in my career, very early in my banking career, I was a customer of Franklin Madison. It was very interesting because I loved the way that you provided insights based on all the other customers you had.

Jim Marous (12:24):

So, I got my chops in marketing a lot of times at your expense or your benefit because you were able to come to me with things that works at other organizations that wasn't sharing secrets from any other organization.

Jim Marous (12:36):

Basically, you cut through the chase and said, "You know what? One thing we've seen, instead of mailing it to everybody, if you did this, this, and this, if you looked at this and this, you're going to get far better results."

Jim Marous (12:48):

And invariably you were always right in those cases because I was at the beginning of that testing period. But how do you use the results of other organizations' marketing campaigns for the benefit of let's say a brand-new customer?

Erin Allen (13:02):

That's a great question. As I mentioned, Franklin Madison has a promotional database that houses over 50 years of promotional history. So, we know who buys insurance. I don't want anyone to be scared. We're not attaching names to this. It's anonymized, so there's no names, there's no PII in this, it really is promotions that we've sent out.

Erin Allen (13:25):

Individuals are assigned a number; we don't know who that attaches to. So, we're able to use those models as a stepping stone with our partners that we can go in, and we know how individuals are going to respond. And because we continually update that database and we continually update our models, we always have a place to start.

Erin Allen (13:48):

From there we really take it to the next level. And we say, "Okay, we've started with this model, but based off of your membership, this is how they responded." And that's how we're able to continually dial it in for our financial institutions.

Erin Allen (14:02):

So, we take this big subset that we have, and then as we have actual responses across the board, whether that's email or direct mail, then we can continue to build their model and make sure that we're speaking to their member, their customer in the right manner.

Jim Marous (14:19):

So, from your perspective, and you've been in the industry for a while, how does today's testing compare with what I'll call legacy or traditional testing methods?

Erin Allen (14:30):

I would say the biggest thing is speed. So, as I mentioned, we use factorial analysis in one campaign. We can get learnings across 36 different variations. So, in the past, I mean, that would've taken, you now how this works, it would've taken years by the time you actually send something.

Jim Marous (14:50):

That's assuming you'd get it.

Erin Allen (14:54):

I mean, you go through, and you would test one thing against another and then you'd have a control creative, and then you would test it against a different data set. But all the while in the middle there, you're waiting for results to see if your hypothesis was correct on which is the winner. And then you test again, and you test again. You'd be lucky to get five tests out every year, I would say, and get the true results.

Jim Marous (15:19):

And it's interesting because as you talked about speed and availability of data, invariably you get the program that you did in January's results back in June or July, but you already had done two other programs and you're falling behind always and to the point where you kind of throw up your arms and go, "Why am I doing this?"

Jim Marous (15:42):

So, when you look at the speed of that, does Franklin Madison actually do the testing and do the analytical work or do you simply dump the data back to the client and say, "Here's all the information we know, it's yours to parse out?"

Erin Allen (15:58):

No, we do all of that on behalf of the client. So, we have a full marketing agency in-house. So, we have creative development, we have a whole group of data analysts. We mail it on their behalf. We have a number of print relationships. We actually can deploy the emails on our own or through others.

Erin Allen (16:16):

And then we actually are taking in those applications on their behalf, so we know who is responding. So, we can take all that information in and then we're able to push all of the information, including the analysis, back out to our partners.

Erin Allen (16:31):

For partners that don't use us for the enrollment piece, we're able to get that file directly from them and scored that against who was mailed to, who was emailed to. So, again, they're getting the full response file.

Jim Marous (16:45):

So, really, for a small mid-size organization, you become the analytical arm for the marketing team where they would've never had that before, correct?

Erin Allen (16:55):

Correct. Absolutely. We have a whole team of data scientists. Sometimes I listen to them, and they seem to speak a different language, so I'm always happy when they give me something that I can present, but they get very granular in what they do and how they approach this and it's amazing to see.

Jim Marous (17:14):

It's interesting too, I would imagine that when you're presenting the information back to the financial institution, the marketing team is learning about how to make their other direct marketing programs better through the partnership with you.

Jim Marous (17:30):

So, when you start talking about response rates and the engagement capabilities and people that tend to be big buyers of additional services, you're actually educating the marketing team and the financial institution as to how to make programs that you're not involved with better correct?

Erin Allen (17:48):

I would agree. I think more than anything, what we can help with is that life stage approach. Where it's not necessarily an age, it's not necessarily the demographic profile, but really the life that you're living and the decisions that you're making and those types of segments can be used across all different types of products and services, not just insurance marketing.

Jim Marous (18:09):

So, you've worked with a lot of finance institutions in the past with regard to Franklin Madison, and I'm wondering what are some of the unique ways the partnerships have worked where the overall engagement level has gotten really strong and they're a go-to client because they tend to use everything you have, but also do a lot of things on their own.

Jim Marous (18:34):

What's the makeup of that relationship? What makes that relationship different from a response basis, from a success basis, but also from a partnership basis?

Erin Allen (18:44):

I think it's that they have a similar mindset and a similar culture around testing that they're doing it internally. And so, we're able to work with them on what we're doing. So, they're potentially open to new products with us.

Erin Allen (19:06):

We've had success in the past with that relationship. They're open to testing a new product with us. They're open to testing maybe a new segment within their membership knowing that the results that they get from that are going to help them with their product marketing at the credit union.

Erin Allen (19:16):

But I think the best ones to me are those that already have a testing mindset that already are doing some of that methodology internally with their existing products and that are open to trying new products with us.

Jim Marous (19:29):

So, it's interesting, we talk about the goods of direct marketing and testing, but obviously there's challenges financial institutions have. When you open the door to a brand-new financial institution, what are some of the challenges that marketers face when implementing testing and how can they overcome these obstacles?

Erin Allen (19:49):

I would say the biggest obstacle is cost. Direct mail is expensive. And so, if you have an existing program and you have a control package that's working, it's hard to set that aside because you know what to expect. You know what results you're going to get. They might not be optimal. They might not be where you want it to be, but you know what to expect.

Erin Allen (20:13):

So, to take away a part of your budget to actually test, there's some anxiety there. You don't know how well this is going to perform. Is it going to be up to what your control package currently is or is it going to be less?

Erin Allen (20:26):

And then how do you go and explain that to someone that, "Hey, we're trying to optimize what we're doing." Whether that's in the data profile, that's actually in the direct marketing or email campaign.

Erin Allen (20:38):

The timing of how we're sending things, we're trying to optimize it, but in the meantime, we might not get the results we've been getting from the control, but over time we know that this has to be done.

Erin Allen (20:51):

Because quite often, if you're going through the same old, same old, what you've always done, you're getting results, they're okay. By the time you realize that things aren't working anymore, trying to get them back on track is going to be so expensive and so hard to do because you don't even really know where to start. You don't know if it's the creative that's not performing.

Erin Allen (21:14):

You don't know if the data you're pulling in is accurate anymore. You don't know if your target market is the same. So, where do you start if you haven't been doing some of these iterations along the way?

Jim Marous (21:24):

So, how many clients do you have currently at Franklin Madison?

Erin Allen (21:27):

Currently, we work with between 600 and 700 financial institutions at any given time.

Jim Marous (21:32):

Okay. I asked that because I knew it was a big number. I didn't realize it was that big, but when you talk about the challenge of testing and trying to test against your control, things that have worked well in the past, I think there's kind of an insurance policy, for lack of a better term.

Jim Marous (21:48):

When you have so many clients you're working with and you're saying, "You know what, can we try something here? Can we test something here? Because we've seen it work at 250 of our 600 plus clients."

Jim Marous (22:00):

I mean, there's a benefit to math, there's a benefit to the learning capabilities you've had over time with all your other clients. So, I would think that somewhere in the mechanism, there's actually a cost savings to doing testing where you may not save it from the cost of doing the testing, but the results drive the cost going down correct?

Erin Allen (22:24):

I would agree once you get to that point, the hard ones to convince sometimes are the ones when we don't have results. Those first 2, 3, 4, that we're asking to trust us. “We can do this. We know what we're doing. Let us use you as this test incubator to try something new.”

Erin Allen (22:46):

Once we've proven results, I think it's really easy to show the ROI, to show why it's important to make these changes. But getting those first few on board is really where you need those relationships. And you need those like-minded partners that are already doing testing and understand the value of it.

Jim Marous (23:05):

There really has to be trust. I mean, it's interesting and it's not just with Franklin Madison, it's any third-party solution provider. You need to find a organization that's going to run down the field on your behalf, going to work on your behalf, are not going to have to be handheld.

Jim Marous (23:21):

And you trust that you've hired them because of the experiences they have throughout the entire financial services industry. And that you have to at some point, because most organizations, the one challenge that every financial marketer, but even every financial executive says they have today is not enough time.

Jim Marous (23:42):

You are there to save them time on something that they would not spend the adequate amount of time on. So, not to stress the negatives because I just talked about challenges. What mistakes do you see? What are some typical reasons why a campaign may not perform as it should? And how can this be prevented?

Erin Allen (24:02):

Great question. Hopefully, our 50 years of marketing and testing keeps us from making too many mistakes. But when I think about those that we're working with, I would say the biggest mistake is in targeting too many responders and mailing too many. Refining your audience really keeps your cost down. I mean, that's just the facts.

Erin Allen (24:21):

And for those that are going to argue that yes, you might be missing out on some leads, I would say you're exactly correct. You're going to miss a few sales, you're going to miss a few leads, but at the end of the day, the sales you get from going outside of a true model, just don't justify the cost to mail those.

Erin Allen (24:37):

Instead invest those dollars to further target those that are most likely to purchase. I would say the other mistake that I see in the way in which we communicate offers to prospects, and that's where it gets back to identifying those that might respond to email first.

Erin Allen (24:52):

So, if we do spend your time, spend your money on those that are going to respond to an email, get learnings from that segment and then that demographic first, and then use those learnings and apply them across the board.

Jim Marous (25:08):

It's interesting. I would add to that the fact that … and it seems to fit right into the discussion today is not doing testing. Mistake can be that you do a program, you say, "Here's how it performed," and you let it go. You don't try to fine tune it, you don't try to make it better, and you don't test the elements that are involved.

Jim Marous (25:29):

And yes, that takes time, that takes effort, takes some meetings. But the reality is you're continuously looking for not the perfect set where you're not going to get a hundred percent response rate, but the optimal where the cost and benefits cross each other, the right place.

Jim Marous (25:47):

It's interesting too in a lot of cases, an internal marketing team is just too busy to do testing. What are the pros and cons to using an outside organization to help you in that testing process?

Erin Allen (26:03):

I mean, everyone is too busy, and we all have goals to meet that keep us busy throughout the day. Add in that many departments are understaffed, and you just have a recipe to keep doing what you've always done. And at the end of the day, I don't think anyone can blame them. Who's going to do their day job if they're developing new creatives or enhancing their models? And this is where a company like Franklin Madison can really help.

Erin Allen (26:26):

We have the ability to come in and do these things for you while you continue to manage your existing campaigns. We can help you to optimize that creative, we can give you recommendations on your model or we can do everything for you.

Erin Allen (26:40):

So, that ideally when you're so ... know we're so successful with what we develop, the models, the creatives, the customer journey that becomes your new normal.

Jim Marous (26:52):

It's interesting in your experience, because I know I've had some experiences, what are some of the most surprising, maybe even counterintuitive findings you've encountered through testing? In other words, I remember a couple campaigns that for the life of me, either on the positive or negative, I couldn't understand why a program didn't work or the reason for something working.

Jim Marous (27:16):

You just go, "Did not see that coming." What are some things that have happened, and you have a long illustrious career. I mean, what are some of the things you go, "Boy, I'll never forget that just because it went counter to what I thought was going to happen."

Erin Allen (27:30):

Let me think on that. I mean, there's a few times I think where you're pretty set and you think you know who your audience is, I would think that's probably been the biggest surprises. Is you maybe develop a product internally in the financial institution. Everyone's worked on this, and you really feel like you know who this target is, and you send it out and that demographic just really isn't interested.

Erin Allen (27:55):

So, I think there's been a few times, I remember one early on it was like a senior checking account that we had developed, and it just really did not resonate. And when we started digging into it a little bit more, the biggest reason why is because we called it a senior checking account and they didn't see themselves as seniors.

Erin Allen (28:17):

So, it's literally down to the wording that the product itself was great. There was so many benefits that would be really helpful, but it was just how that individual identified themselves and didn't think that that meant them. So, they weren't interested, and they didn't even open it because they didn't even think that that message was for them.

Jim Marous (28:38):

It's interesting because I think in my recent past, some of the things that I've seen is response rates from segments such as channel use by more elderly, older people where the whole marketplace is changing, where the use of channels dictates a lot around what response rates are going to be.

Jim Marous (29:00):

And it used to be very easy to say, "Well, the most senior group is not going to respond to this through digital channels because that's just not what they use. Well, that's changing and it's a divergent, as I described about in my family where we have vastly different ways of responding to messages, marketing messages and different ways of being connected.

Jim Marous (29:21):

But I think counterintuitive to finding that is more understandable today than it was when it first happened was really how different aid segments of the population, even income segment of the population respond to different things. It's changing every day.

Jim Marous (29:36):

One of the things I remember again, back in my day was having to present results to key executives, key stakeholders, senior executives going into that marketing meeting and having the key finance person just there just to tell you that you're a cost not a revenue generator.

Jim Marous (29:56):

How can marketers more effectively communicate the value of testing and the value of results to key stakeholders to get a buy-in for those initiatives going forward?

Erin Allen (30:07):

I think the key goes back to data and goes back to targeting. I think when you're talking to finance in particular, I think you need to explain to them how you've narrowed this down and the factors that went into why you selected the target group that you targeted, what you were expecting to see as a result. What was your hypothesis before you even kicked this campaign off?

Erin Allen (30:31):

And then what the results are, I think you get down to some very specific indicators. What is the cost per lead? What is our actual cost per acquisition? Those are very different. Marketers, our job is to bring them in the door. We need to get them to us. So, potentially it's the issue between a lead in the conversion. So, what does that look like?

Erin Allen (30:57):

Is it an easy process once someone raises their hand and says, "I'm interested," how do we get them to actually purchase? Is that the online portal that we're sending them to? Is that an easy journey for them? Do we have the ability for them to pick up the phone and call someone to purchase that product?

Erin Allen (31:17):

Do they need to return the direct mail piece? What does that look like? Are we providing them a business reply envelope? We don't want someone to not take advantage of a product because they have to put a stamp on it.

Erin Allen (31:29):

So, a lot of it to me is really breaking down whether they're measuring that cost per acquisition, the cost per lead, and really driving that to the whole model.

Jim Marous (31:40):

I think you're right. I think number one, know your numbers. My degree was in finance and accounting, yet I always knew I wanted to be a marketer. I don't know if I was wise before my age or just lucky, but I was never threatened by the finance department challenged me on numbers because I knew how to work with numbers.

Jim Marous (32:01):

And back then, a lot of marketers came in through the social side of business schools. Maybe they were in advertising and things that weren't as numbers driven, but now everything's numbers driven.

Jim Marous (32:13):

Another one, and you mentioned it, is the ability to understand your back office to say, "It may not be a marketing problem, it may be an operations problem."

Jim Marous (32:26):

If you take 15 minutes to open a new checking account or 20 minutes to initiate an insurance product, the reality is the problem may not be that you're not getting enough customers. It may be that you're not converting enough leads into customers, and that could all be around friction.

Jim Marous (32:43):

I think you put it really well because I think … and if the marketing department understands that, then they can make a really strong case for, we need to fix the things that make it difficult to do business with us. And invariably that is more and more of a situation as people are busier and busier and have no time to use up a lot of their time to make your job easier as a marketer.

Erin Allen (33:10):

I agree, and I think we find it with financial institutions now, there's a lot more focus on that customer experience, on that customer journey. I think that financial institutions see that we need to make it as easy as possible, and we need to identify where there are stumbling blocks.

Erin Allen (33:28):

We worked with one company on their scripts for when someone called in and it was, I think we took it from like 45 minutes, was the initial sales process down to about 15. We understand in insurance there's things that you have to have. You have to have some of these disclosures, you have to say some of these things.

Erin Allen (33:48):

But really helping them to identify was that a good use of your customer's time to spend 45 minutes, likely it's not. So, how do we take those journeys and reduce them where we're still getting all of the information that we need, but we're really mindful of how this experience and all of these needs that we have internally are impacting that customer.

Jim Marous (34:16):

So, Erin, as our last question on this series, I'm wondering how do you see — there's no conversations in any kind of trade association meeting right now in the financial service industry that doesn't at some point talk about gen AI or AI in general. How do you see AI and gen AI really impacting the marketing process and the testing process going forward?

Erin Allen (34:41):

I think that we're all seeing the rise of machine learning and AI technologies, and I think we expect to leverage these capabilities as well. How much this impact has in the short term, I think remains to be seen, but we fully expect AI to assist in and help us helping find the right customers for our products.

Erin Allen (35:00):

To me, I think it's going to be finding that happy medium between what machine learning tells us and what our team sees in the data. Ideally, we take the best components from both in order to help our consumers. Because at the end of the day, that's what Franklin Madison does.

Erin Allen (35:16):

We supply protection products to consumers through their financial institutions, and we want to be there for every bit of their life journey protecting them as they navigate life's curve balls.

Jim Marous (35:25):

Erin, thank you so much for being with us today. It's interesting, we covered a lot of ground, and you were very succinct in the way you described the opportunity out there. And I think as a legacy marketer myself, I think the opportunities to do testing, to be able to do multi-variate evaluation, to be able to look at channels and messaging and envelopes, whatever it may be, as well as offers you provide are greater than ever, and the speed in which you can do this really puts a lot of power in the hands of a marketer to bring revenues to a financial institution.

Jim Marous (36:00):

Again, appreciate your partnership at Franklin Madison around how organizations can do marketing of insurance products and ancillary products more effectively. Thanks a lot for your time today.

Erin Allen (36:15):

Thank you, Jim. Appreciate it.

[Music Playing]

Jim Marous (36:16):

Thanks for listening to Banking Transformed, the top podcast in retail banking and the winner of three international awards for podcast excellence. We appreciate the support we've received to make this endeavor a success.

Jim Marous (36:29):

If you enjoy what we're doing, please take some time to show some love in the form of a review or simply just share our podcast with others in your organization.

Jim Marous (36:38):

Finally, be sure to catch my recent articles on The Financial Brand and check out the research we're doing for the Digital Banking Report. This has been a production of Evergreen Podcasts. A special thank you to our senior producer Leah Haslage, and our audio engineer and video producer Will Pritts.

Jim Marous (36:54):

If you have not already done so, remember to subscribe to Banking Transformed on your favorite podcast app and YouTube channel for more thought-provoking discussion on the intersection of finance, technology, and leadership. Thanks for joining us. Until next time, keep innovating and transforming.