Banking on innovation: How martech is shaping financial customer experiences

Juliette Aiken, CMO at Dotdigital, explores how firms can optimise their martech stack.

Marketing technology (martech) has become an indispensable tool for financial institutions eager to stay competitive and meet the expectations of their customers. As consumers become more digitally savvy, they demand faster, more secure, and highly personalised experiences from their service providers. The financial services market is increasingly competitive – consumers will simply look elsewhere if their current financial service provider fails to live up to their expectations.

Marketers in the sector must maintain innovative, proactive strategies to both attract and retain customers. At the heart of this lies the ‘martech stack’—an integrated set of tools that allows marketing teams to simultaneously build and grow customer relationships across multiple channels. The importance of a well-crafted stack cannot be overstated when navigating complex regulatory landscapes while meeting customer needs is essential.

Getting started – pick your vendor carefully

Selecting a martech vendor for financial services requires thorough due diligence. Looking to vendors who are listed on G-Cloud, the UK government’s Digital Marketplace for cloud-based software providers, can serve as valuable benchmarks in this process. Although financial services companies may not be required to procure through G-Cloud, verifying that a potential martech vendor is G-Cloud certified can be a helpful indicator of high standards across data privacy, security, and accessibility. These factors are paramount when dealing with highly sensitive customer data.

G-Cloud listings also clearly display ISO certifications, demonstrating a company’s commitment to responsible data practices and sustainability amongst other International Standards. By incorporating G-Cloud-certified vendors into their martech stack, financial marketers can better ensure their needs around industry standards are met.

One size does not fit all

Artificial intelligence is stamping a significant mark on the broader martech landscape, enabling businesses to refine customer experiences and extract more value from their data. Using AI ethically and transparently, particularly in financial services, is non-negotiable.

If a financial institution is going to integrate AI into its martech stack, it’s critical to build responsible AI frameworks such as those adopted by Dotdigital. These frameworks ensure businesses remain informed about when and how AI is used, allowing full transparency. Whilst AI can improve the customer experience and reduce human error in your customer experience design, human oversight of the output is a key component to ensuring your and your customers’ peace of mind.

While innovations such as AI-powered chatbots enable companies to communicate quickly and round-the-clock with customers, when a situation involves sensitive data and money matters, almost all customers want the choice to speak to a real person. As our CMO tracker found, in which 750+ marketing leaders were surveyed, marketing teams are increasingly looked to for end-to-end ownership of the customer experience. So, striking the right balance between AI capabilities and human expertise ensures that AI remains an enhancer, not the sole decision-maker, in a truly customer-centric marketing strategy. Needless to say, AI implementation should always be handled with care and is key to the adoption of new technologies that can improve the customer experience. Financial service providers in particular should prioritise proper guidance and training for their teams- without it, the potential of technology like AI may remain untapped.

From send to seen

Timely and reliable communications are a non-negotiable in the relationship between customers and providers of financial services and products. Unlike other industries, where delayed messages might merely cause inconvenience, they can have serious consequences in the sector. For example, when transactional messaging, such as password resets, payment confirmations, and account-related notifications, aren’t sent and delivered when you need them, it causes frustration and a customer may look at alternatives, particularly in a competitive landscape where cashback incentives and services to switch are increasingly offered.

Besides ensuring your messages are accurate and delivered when needed, marketers in the financial services space should also consider where they’re needed. The keyword in cross channel marketing is context. By leveraging web personalisation technology and channels  such as SMS and mobile app push notifications, marketers can ensure their messages are relevant, timely, and helpful. The stakes are high, investing in the right marketing technology pays for itself and then some; the link between good customer experience and customer lifetime value is inextricable. Outside of channel reach and AI, marketers reviewing any component of their martech stack should also consider a providers’ consent management and deliverability capabilities. There’s a lot to learn in this space, and understanding a martech providers’ infrastructure (including the use of shared versus dedicated IPs) can make a material difference to the impact of your communications for the future.

Recent industry data underscores the importance of good deliverability. According to Dotdigital’s 2025 Global Benchmark Report, the financial sector shows a high email open rate of 53%. In comparison, the open rate for the travel and leisure industry is sitting at 44% and consumer goods and services at 43.7%. People tend to pay close attention to communications from their bank, as they inevitably involve important information.

Investing in robust delivery infrastructure and partnering with top-tier service providers can help ensure that these messages reach their intended recipients quickly and reliably.

Onwards and upwards

Building a robust martech strategy is no longer optional- it’s imperative. However, this strategy must go beyond mere technological sophistication; it must be fundamentally customer-centric and deeply rooted in trust and compliance.

Marketers in the financial services sector should critically evaluate their existing martech stacks, prioritise trusted tools and forward-thinking partners that offer innovative capabilities whilst demonstrating a commitment to ethical practices. This approach ensures that marketing efforts align with the high standards of trust and security that consumers expect from a financial services provider, winning their loyalty in return.