Marketing automation for banks & credit unions | Prisma Blog

Interview of Prisma's Head of Growth at The Financial Brand Forum 2024

Written by Clara Hori | Jun 13, 2024 2:36:00 PM

Listen to Mike Lawson with CUBroadcast interviewing Prisma Campaigns' Head of Growth at the Financial Brand Forum 2024.

Discover some highlights of the event, how AI was the trending topic, and how financial institutions are embracing marketing automation.

 

 

Interview transcript

Mike

Mike Lawson here with CUBroadcast. Welcome back to our continued coverage of the Financial Brand Forum here in beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada. And in the studio lounge, we have Prisma Campaign's very own Clara Hori.

Clara, how are you? I'm great.

Mike

Good to see you again. Yes. All the way from Uruguay, right?

Clara

All the way from Uruguay. Oh, my gosh. I think we win the prize of most miles traveled.

Mike

Yes, I think you should. You better.

Clara

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you for having me again. It's nice to see you.

Mike

I didn't know you guys were here or else I would have uh

Clara

Yeah, we wouldn't miss it.

Mike

Wow So yeah, so how is the show going for you guys?

Clara

It's great. It's great

Clara

Uh, we feel the difference between the last one which was I think a year and a half ago, and people were just coming out of the pandemic, so they weren't really into networking and they were sitting in their tables and now everyone is really excited, and there's a lot of things to catch up on. AI is really something real and

Mike

Yeah it's very real

Clara

and I think credit unions and banks are really are really hungry for it

Mike

I think they're starting to embrace it. Last year, obviously, was the hype, the chat GPT, if you will, hype, and now I think now we're coming back to Earth.

Clara

No one wanted to be the first, right?

Mike

No, no, you're right.

Mike

So I think we're coming back down to Earth with it. So other than AI, which is probably the de facto highlight of the show, but anything else, any other highlights from the conference that stand out this year?

Clara

I think it's been interesting to see, from our perspective, marketing automation, to see how really banks and credit unions are really starting to get the value and building it right you know because marketing automation seems like that kind of thing like you just you press a button and you sit back and see you know the whole show running and it's really not like this it's more like you put the work up front and then and then it starts paying off and I think there's a it's nice to see a lot of financial institutions getting to that mature level and being able to get beyond that point that the data is not accessible and is sitting in a lot of different places. You still have a lot of that, and it's fine because everyone is at their stage, but we've met with some very interesting financial institutions that are mature and are really exciting prospects.

Mike

So, speaking of that, what have you been talking about in the hallways here? What's the buzz in the hallways here? Besides AI, because we all know that's top of mind, but what type of conversations are you having with folks here?

Clara

Sometimes we have to have real conversations, like, you know, we have to really like, okay, AI aside, how are you, where is your data sitting? How are you doing? Tell me, are you still uploading spreadsheets manually? And they confess that they are, you know? And so, being able to have, to hold both things at the same time, to be really looking at the front wave and seeing, you know, what are you doing for the future, but also what are you doing today to solve your problems, your today problems. And at Prisma, we like to be able to do both and to really solve the spreadsheet problems and also be able to say, okay, you're gonna get there. You're gonna be able to hyper -target your campaigns. You're gonna be able to run 70 campaigns at the same time. But we have to get there one step at a time.

Mike

So, well, speaking of that, share with me, give us a quick elevator speech on Prisma Campaigns. For those one or two people out there who may not have heard of it yet.

Clara

Sure, so we are a marketing automation solution that is specifically designed for financial institutions. So what that gives you is there's a lot of the problems that are already figured out. There's a lot of the decisions that we've been here before and we can help you. So a lot of the use cases are onboarding, indirect members, converting indirect members and deposits and things like that. A lot of these campaigns, they are already structured in a way that credit unions and banks can say, OK, it's going to make it easier for me to automate these campaigns because I don't have to start from scratch, which is usually what would happen if you would get a horizontal solution that works for all the industries. And we have a lot of good relationships with a lot of the vendors, so all your tech stack, we can take data from all the different parts of your tech stack, from your online banking, from your core, from your loan origination system, and rather than being one more silo, we can help bring everyone together. And so it's really interesting to see everything that you can do with marketing automation in the financial industry, which, you know, sometimes we forget about it, but we are the ones that have the data and everyone is envious of the financial institutions because of the data that we have.

Mike

There's a ton of data. Of course.

Clara

And we can know our customers and members and do a lot of incredible things for them. So it's really exciting.

Mike

Well, I don't know if you've heard this, Clara, but I've heard this. Not sure if it's true or not, but credit unions and banks probably have more data on their customers and members than Amazon has on its customers. So that's a pretty big statement.

Clara

They say that we're only second to healthcare.

Mike

Oh, are we? Okay, I get that.

Clara

But they got other data and I'm not sure we want to have that data. No, we don't want that. Keep that under wraps. For sure. All right. Yeah.

Mike

So are there... Well, bringing it back to the conference here, were there any sessions that you attended that really kind of stood out for you or anything? What interested you at the conference here?

Clara

I really liked the session that I was in today, and it was humanizing digital touchpoints. I'm not sure if I got the name right of the session, but it was really like use cases of how in the entire like a member cycle how they were using technology but also humanizing and I thought that was so interesting.

Mike

I think I had, oh no that was you said that was today right?

Clara

That was today at I think at 11.

Mike

Oh earlier today, yeah I'm in the afternoon here.

Clara

I think that was my favorite session.

Mike

Yep yep. Oh here, human-centered connections, customer engagement in the digital era?

Clara

Yes, that was it. And it was the credit union that was giving. I love those. I mean, I like the sessions where the credit unions and the banks are sharing.

Mike

I'm right there with you.

Clara

Yeah, and I also sat through a session where Star One was also talking of Star One Credit Union. They're one of our customers and they were talking about how they are using data to better know their members. So I always like to hear the happy stories.

Mike

Was that Becky Smith? Was it Becky Smith from?

Clara

Yes, that's her.

Mike

Oh my gosh, now I'm blaming the interviewer this morning.

Clara

Yeah, it's the end of the day. Yeah, yeah. I don't remember it.

Mike

Yeah, she, but yeah, I had her in here this morning before her session. Oh, good. Gave her a little warm -up before it, but yeah, she was fantastic. Yeah. I was very jealous of those who were in there.

Clara

Yeah, we always promise that we're gonna watch the recording, but you know what happens when we get home.

Mike

Yeah, I know.

Clara

Something else. Another wave.

Mike

Life happens. Another wave. Well, to wrap up here, Clara, I mean, what's on the horizon for you guys and what are you taking back from this conference that will help you guys serve your clients better?

Clara

I think for me it's the confirmation that we have to be able to work on today's problems while we're looking at what's coming up for tomorrow. So we have to be able to be pragmatic about the financial institutions that need to help with, you know, gather the data, better connect with their members, engage better with their members, and also be very attentive to all the possibilities that AI is opening. So that's, I think, is going to be the key.

Mike

That's going to be the theme this year,

Clara

Both things at the same time.

Mike

Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. And where can folks find out more about Prisma Campaigns? Where do they go?

Clara

So they can go to our website, and one of the things we do is we sit down with them and we ask all these questions, you know, how are you doing this? What are the campaigns you're running? and we try to give them a view of everything that they're missing. So it's a very good starting point.

Mike

All right. Well, thank you so much for your time.

Clara

Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Mike

Thanks for coming by. I love the impromptu interviews. So thank you. Absolutely. For your time and keep up the good work there at Prisma Campaigns. And above all, safe travels back home to Uruguay.

Clara

Thank you. Thank you.

 

 

 

 

Credits: CUBroadcast