According to a BCG survey of 759 global C-suite executives, nearly three-quarters expect macroeconomic uncertainty to be the key challenge facing their businesses in 2023. The survey’s report cites that “the recent failure of Silicon Valley Bank and others shows how difficult it is for executives to anticipate/predict the future, even in the near-term.”

To deal with this uncertainty, C-suite leaders are focused on improving efficiency and cutting costs by employing four key levers: 

• 52% redesign processes and operational models
• 49% reduce indirect spending
• 43% cut direct spending
• 47% simplify organization structure

So where do banks and financial institutions usually turn first to make cost reductions and efficiency improvements? Marketing. 

Marketing is often viewed as non-essential to running an organization, or an area that can function with a reduced budget. We know this is not usually the best course of action. Most banks still have lofty growth goals, and reducing marketing spending can make these goals hard to hit.  So the question becomes: with all the market volatility and the ramifications from the failure of banks like Silicon Valley Bank, how does marketing up your bank’s defenses against cost-cutting measures?

Marketing must be able to easily prove its value to the bank of how it impacts sales growth and affects the organization’s bottom line. One of the products that is helping marketing teams become less susceptible to potential budget cuts and improve efficiencies is Salesforce Marketing Cloud Intelligence. Here we outline ways that Marketing Cloud Intelligence can help you overcome common barriers so you can protect your marketing worth.

1. Marketing data is siloed and not easy to access.

One of the biggest roadblocks we see with a bank’s marketing team is that their data is all over the place in disparate systems. Teams lack the visibility, accessibility, and connectivity they need to quickly and easily automate and scale. And without accessible data, marketing cannot showcase how it aligns with and fulfills the bank’s goals and business functions.

Marketing Cloud Intelligence has out-of-the-box APIs that bring multiple marketing and media data sources from across your enterprise into the Salesforce platform. It allows you to connect all of the data in one place so you can begin to understand the impact your outcomes are having on your bank’s growth. Marketing Cloud Intelligence customers reported a 30% increase in the efficiency of marketing analytics and reporting, likely due to having a unified view of performance.

2. Marketing goals are not aligned with the bank’s lines of business.

According to the Salesforce Marketing Intelligence Report, only 33% of marketers strongly agree they gain insights fast enough for impactful decision-making. Nearly half say customer satisfaction is their most important metric, followed by return on marketing investment – but fewer than two in five marketers feel completely successful in evaluating these metrics definitively.

Marketing Cloud Intelligence has a unique out-of-the-box data model that makes it simple to line up the bank’s goals, such as increased sales or loan applications, into a structured data model along with your marketing KPIs. The data model will help you gain a better understanding of your data and how it affects budgets. You can then share those findings with executive management and make sure you are directly impacting what matters.

3. Trying to piece marketing data and naming conventions across campaigns.

Marketers must have the ability to take different campaign naming conventions and connect the campaigns from across various channels. For example, you may have a checking campaign with a discount offer running on search, social media, and email. You need to be able to identify that checking campaign versus all the other checking campaigns running across your channels. Without this taxonomy ability, marketing teams can’t determine the campaign’s overall impact. 

The Marketing Cloud Intelligence Harmonization Center brings together the data from multiple campaigns to function in unison as if they were a single data source. The Harmonization Center automatically takes the data from various campaigns, merges it, and provides a complete view of your marketing activity. Cause if the data isn’t harmonized, you must analyze each source individually, which makes it challenging to gain insights into what is really driving ROI quickly and efficiently.

Transform your bank’s marketing team with Silverline

Going back to that BHG report, to navigate the economic uncertainties, more than half of C-suite executives plan to invest in innovation. They are focusing on technology and their business models to stay competitive and ensure longer-term growth. 

Marketing Cloud Intelligence accelerates a bank’s innovative technology by turning disparate data into insights that boost your bottom line. The Silverline team has real-world expertise gained across the financial services industry and can work with you to tailor a Marketing Cloud Intelligence solution for your bank’s current and future needs. 

Find out how Silverline can help your bank’s marketing team.