The Increasing Criticality Of Agility

A large part of what makes good marketing is recognizing the opportunities in a changeable marketplace at any given time. Right now, US retail banking sits ill at ease, with major events expected in some quarters and discomfort that erratic pulses of economic volatility could lie ahead. Marketers need to ready to move at breakneck speed and so they need to be agile.

Anticipating the need to change direction quickly, marketers must be ready to pivot immediately, confidently and with their data and creative capabilities in order. For some time now, successful marketing in financial services has demanded near-instant prescriptive activity that allows the bank to deepen current relationships and build new ones through the optimization of data and in reaction to market forces and constant, iterative segment testing and feedback. Sensitivities to every customer segment must be carefully considered and built into new plans, meaning hypertargeting is paramount.

Proactive and reactive marketing teams no longer rely on single, cumbersome traditional marketing campaigns that take between 12 and 16 weeks to produce. Instead banks are looking to make gains from the blending of multiple concurring projects in which agility means the good execution of prompts and rules which are set and working on an always-on basis. This requires the marketing team – of which data analysts sit at the center, with creative – to be working in sync and testing in different corners of each segment.

The issue for marketers is timing. Getting to the point of always-on agility can take years, which is not a timeframe most marketers can afford given the expectations for the next few months and increase in competitor noise. Recognizing the need to accelerate to speed quickly, Amplero onboarding takes about the same length of time it takes to create a single marketing campaign. It is built to learn quickly, and when context changes (macro-environment or competitive moves) always-on adaptation allows for circular project management, rather than hard-coded rules that require reconstruction at every event. 

Should events unfold as expected over the course of the next few months some banks will hope the strength of their brand will be enough to carry them through, putting standard and generic company or product messaging in front of their customers. Progressive marketing departments are already growing into new markets at different levels, personalizing, hypertargeting and pivoting with each event and maximizing agility. The banks that invest in the right architecture right now will capitalize on preparation for what lies ahead, armed with greater accuracy, tighter release cycles and scalability.

This article is part of the Marketing Intelligence series from the analysts at Amplero and Marketing Analyzer. To read the full article and receive our fortnightly commentary email Michael.mccaw@curinos.com.