Banking on trust: How AI can help you win over Gen Z and Millennials

Millennials are poised to inherit more money than any generation in history, according to the Coldwell Banker Wealth Report. This “social generation” accounts for arguably the most active 22% of the US population right now in terms of earning, spending and using services.

AI is the most valuable tool in delivering personal messages at scale

It’s a market that’s critical for financial brands to win over. But how can they go about doing it?

The challenges of marketing to Gen Z and Millennials

The language of the youth has always shifted at a faster pace than that of previous generations, but with the wide variety of groups splintered around the internet, keeping up with those changes has never been as multilayered or expansive. If marketers want to speak their language – at scale, and across a growing number of digital channels – they’ve got a lot of work to do just to keep up.

These younger generations are also known for their passion for brand authenticity – they want to do business with brands they can feel good about. For finance marketers, creating brand authenticity means developing a distinct and recognisable identity across creative, product, and communications. Because so many customer touchpoints happen in writing, it is imperative to maintain a consistent brand persona in order to preserve credibility, increase customer loyalty, and differentiate from competitors.

Banking institutions trade on trust. No doubt, marketers in financial services work painstakingly to earn the confidence of customers, and to establish brand loyalty. For banking brands in particular, loyalty is fragile, and requires great care and maintenance. As the gatekeeper of capital and the protector of customer life savings, banks know their brand equity is uniquely vulnerable when customer trust is breached.

This is all the more important when you consider that competition is becoming more fierce as new competitors enter the market. Brands like Klarna and NerdWallet are rethinking traditional models, which is especially appealing to younger generations who are more open to shaking things up.

So you’ve got a huge market, ripe for opportunity, who is speaking their own language, running headfirst towards all things digital, and who want to trust the brands they work with in a time of increased competition. How do you provide them with the kind of customer experience that will turn clicks into loyal customers?

AI is here to help

Financial marketers can meet these younger generations where they are using today’s most futuristic technology, artificial intelligence (AI). AI can generate copy that’s always on-brand and never off-color. AI tools make it possible to craft the best experience for each person, properly representing the brand, but without hiring more and more copywriters for unmeasured results.

Rather than depending on the human mind to keep up with the internet, we can instead use an artificial mind to analyse our copywriting and continue speaking with our young audiences in the most effective ways. And it helps financial brands not only cut through the noise, but also protect their hard-won legacy with messaging that’s guaranteed to remain on point with all customers, including Millennials and Gen Z.

AI is the most valuable tool in delivering personal messages at scale, all while ingesting data that allows that messaging to improve as we go. Whether buying their first car or refinancing a home, Gen Z and Millennials will still navigate email subject lines, SMS messages, push notifications, web ad copy, and social posts. 45% of all internet users actually seek out advice about products and services on social networks, and 98% of all users use at least one other social media network, according to the Digital 2021 report by We Are Social and Hootsuite.

So wherever they’re meeting your brand in the digital landscape, AI can help you produce the right messaging across all channels, and with machine learning (ML), it can improve conversions with every interaction.

The future can come at us faster than we can notice. The best hope of properly harnessing it lies with using AI to help you communicate with your potential customers. If done in the right way, maybe there will be far fewer financial potholes and hazards out there for whatever more technologically-savvy generation comes next.