Key Connections at Canada FinServ Summit

More than 200 attendees test-drove new technologies, built relationships, and gained critical insights into the latest trends and advanced technologies specific to financial services at the 12^th Annual Digital Marketing for Financial Services Canada Summit, June 8-9, 2022, in Toronto. This was the first on-site DMFS conference post pandemic, and the atmosphere was absolutely revitalizing.

The conference featured speakers from 35 iconic brands in finance and financial services marketing, including CitiBank, CPP Investments, Hearsay Systems, and Consumer Genius. Following welcoming comments by Peter Tessier, host and producer of The Insurance Podcast and VP of sales and marketing at BSI Insurance, the speakers shared their insights on the latest regulatory issues and FinServ trends, such as content, personalization, voice search, SEO, AI, and omnichannel customer engagement.

Day one focused on innovative strategies and best practices in the field of digital marketing—newer methods for social media, influencer, account-based marketing; customer journey personalization, and performance measurement—to accelerate customer engagement and digital transformation for FinServ organizations.

Alex Tapscott, globally-recognized investor, speaker, and author of Financial Services Revolution and Blockchain Revolution, kickstarted the conference with an opening keynote, “The Digital Asset Revolution.” According to Tapscott, it is imperative for brands to implement digital marketing campaigns with a short timescale and to manage digital “test and learn” more quickly to keep up with ever-changing customers’ needs and to augment success more nimbly.

Jonathan Moran, head of martech solutions marketing at SAS, highlighted how the demise of third-party cookies will pose a challenge for brands to measure the value of their customer relationships. He presented a case study on capitalizing the opportunity of “madtech,” that demonstrated the integration of marketing and advertising technology. He also shared smart tools to quantify key business metrics and evaluate efforts.

Day two took a more targeted approach, focusing on the intricacies of FinServ marketing, organizational processes, and behavioral science. The conference concluded with a panel session on longer-term digital marketing strategies for the next five years.

Eric Stevens, vice president of strategic engagement at 4point, an Adobe enterprise partner, highlighted the importance of post-acquisition marketing. According to Stevens, customer experience revolves around documents and correspondence, and less on a website or other marketing-controlled environment. He then offered examples of personalized customer-facing documents, contracts, statements, and collateral that enhance customer engagement, increase retention, and reduce cost.

Todd Trautz, chief innovation and solutions officer at Maru and author of Feel, Behave, Think–the Pathway to Human Decision-Making, and Kyle Davies, SVP and head of syndicated research at Maru, explored the practical operational processes of financial services industry organizations. They discussed how payment methods impact consumer behavior, and how brands can leverage tools such as buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) to maximize revenue.

During the expert session, “How to not get left on ‘Read’” Resulticks CEO and CTO, Mani Gopalaratnam, provided a compelling case for omnichannel marketing over traditional marketing. He emphasized the imperative to create truly engaging conversations with customers across multiple channels and touchpoints. This will lay the foundation for continuous conversions and strengthen banks’ value propositions.

Gopalaratnam noted, “As Resulticks expands into North America, the DMFS conference is a timely opportunity for creating deep connections and strategic alliances with our North American counterparts. I am inspired by my industry peers who are extremely passionate about meeting the needs of an evolving financial landscape and to improve customer experiences. With an arsenal of key takeaways and robust solutions, I’m excited for us to make a difference in our marketplaces and to witness FinServ marketing transformation over the next five to ten years.”