Welcome to today’s episode where we’re diving into the future of financial services marketing with Chris O’Brien, SVP of Product at M&T Bank. We’ll explore the strategic use of first-party data, the integration of omnichannel customer experiences, and the modernization of marketing technology.
As SVP, Senior Product Owner at M&T Bank, Chris is responsible for driving growth by enabling go-to-market strategies through the application of MarTech, AdTech, and digital data strategy. Chris is focused on using a data-driven, audience-based, journey-led approach to build the underlying architecture to enable diverse enterprise use cases and elevate CX.
Resources
M&T Bank website: https://www.mtb.com
ActionIQ website: https://www.actioniq.com
Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstrom
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Transcript
Note: This was AI-generated and only lightly edited
Greg Kihlstrom:
Welcome to today’s episode, where we’re going to talk about first-party data and financial services marketing with Chris O’Brien, SVP Senior Product Owner at M&T Bank. We’re going to explore the strategic use of first-party data, the integration of omni-channel customer experiences, and modernization of marketing technology. Chris, welcome to the show. Greg, thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here. Yeah, looking forward to talking about all this with you. Why don’t we get started with you giving a little background on yourself and your role at M&T Bank?
Chris O’Brien: Yeah, thanks, Greg. Happy to do so. So I’ve now been at M&T just about eight years, which is pretty wild to say. But during my time here at M&T, I’ve really been focusing on advancing our Martech stack and our strategy around that stack and the delivery of it, you know, really starting off in sort of implementing and utilizing personalization platforms. And then that remit really expanded, you know, we had a lot of greenfield opportunity to advance our stack. And I’ve really seen that growth over the time that I’ve been here. And it’s been really exciting. During that time went from an individual contributor to someone who has a team and now a team of teams. So I lead a team of teams that maintains, innovates on our stack for marketing and some of customer experience on behalf of M&T and the Wilmington Trust brand. And I really lead that from a product management perspective. And we’re sort of the business. And then we partner really closely with our tech and data partners. So really cross-functional, cross-departmental. And it’s really rewarding to see a lot of the great work that we do and how we’re really able to advance the things that we do in terms of our interactions, communications with our customers and communities.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, great. And to give a little context for those that may not be as familiar with M&T Bank, do you mind just giving a quick overview of M&T as a business and maybe the operating model?
Chris O’Brien: Yeah, happy to do so. So M&T Bank is a top 20 commercial bank in the USA, and some will know us from retail banking, But we actually derive a lot of our revenue from other activities, mostly in what you might call B2B. So things like commercial banking, business banking, and then we also have the Wilmington Trust Brand. So there there’s institutional client services, wealth management. And so it’s really a very diverse organization. And that’s one of the I think fun things about the job, but also one of the most challenging things is we’re not working on one business line or one product. We’re really focusing on delivering for the entire enterprise. So that’s going to be B2B, B2C, a lot of different user groups, a lot of different customer types. And so that really does make it challenging, but it also makes it interesting and fun. So, you know, think of M&T as a really diversified financial services organization. And we mostly operate within the Northeast, but we have expanded into some new markets up in New England. And then also our Wilmington Trust business takes us to some geographies that are sort of out of that traditional footprint and even into Europe. So when we think about user privacy, and I know we’ll get into this a little bit, we have an interesting seat because we have customers in most 50 states. And then we do business in Europe. And so it, you know, as you know, there’s a lot of different challenges with data privacy regulations and different geographies, because they’re not all the same. So yeah, hopefully that was a pretty useful kind of overview of M&T and Wilmington Trust.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, definitely. And so then to give a little more context for what we’re going to talk about as we talk about first-party data and some of these other things, could you give a little background on, you know, how does M&T think about customer experience? You mentioned there’s a few different brands and operating models that you’re working within. You know, how do you think about customer experience and how does that relate to, you know, the marketing stack and things like that?
Chris O’Brien: Yeah, great question. You know, in everything that I do, I try to reflect back to the enterprise priorities and, you know, the vision that the senior leadership has. And we really want to be a community bank at scale. And our CEO, Renee Jones, has said, you know, we want to be the bank that’s invited into homes and communities. And so I do take that as guidance and I take it very seriously. And I think it’s a really good North Star for us, as we’re thinking about customer experience, and how we can utilize technology for things like personalization. I think that gives us a good guidepost for how we should be principled in the work that we do. You know, one of the things that we have as an advantage over something like a publisher or a retailer is that we have a really deep data set on our customers, right? And they trust us with their data. And that’s almost nowadays a feature of a bank right because ultimately we’re in the trust business and so customers must trust us. to do right by them, including with the data that they share for us. And so we really think about that and take it very seriously. But again, we also want to use that to improve their experience. So, you know, a North Star being, right, how do we improve performance and efficiency within the business, but do it in a way that we’re providing value for the customer? I really like the concept of sort of that value exchange Within the data privacy space, when someone is sharing their data with you, they should get value for doing so. And I really think that that’s a good way of us thinking about how we can make things like personalization really helpful and useful. Rather than what you see sometimes with personalization and AI misses where it becomes really creepy and turns people off such that they no longer want to interact with that brand. I think nowadays for modern brands, Right. Not just banks. Trust is becoming a key feature of someone doing business with you.
Greg Kihlstrom: Well, yeah. So with that, let’s let’s dive in here and we’re going to talk about a few things. But first, I want to talk about first party data, first party data strategies. You know, it’s it’s been hard to escape the recent news of Google was for quite a while announcing the end of third-party cookies and all those things was looming, now kind of pulled the rug out from under a bunch of brands planning on this. But from my perspective, I think from many people’s perspective, this doesn’t mean that first-party data is not super important and should be a focus, but it does change some of the some of the ways that brands may approach certain things. But with that, a focus on first party data strategy is still important and it still affects every industry. You briefly touched on this already, but could you share how has this impacted the financial services industry and how is M&T adapting to this?
Chris O’Brien: Yeah, great question. And certainly everyone’s going to be affected and impacted in certain ways. You know, regardless of what a brand like Google or Meta or other platforms do to maintain their business, right? And I think this move from Google is exactly that. It’s right there exploring, right, how they might increase trust and increased user privacy, but they have to balance that with the really big revenue number that they already have from the advertising business. I think that’s really what ends up shaping a lot of this. It might be clouded and working towards user privacy, but ultimately, Google is an advertising business and they derive a lot of revenue from ads. So I think they’re going to want to orient themselves towards being able to continue to grow at the crazy pace that they have done. So for us, it’s a little bit different. We want to be able to navigate the landscape regardless of customer behavior change or privacy changes or these ad platform changes. We want to be able to be really agile and be able to take advantage of the shifts. In terms of cookies and whether or not they’re deprecated and how much they’re deprecated and what types of cookies or data tracking pixels we’re talking about, I always go back to, as a marketer, we have to know our customers. and marketers should know their customers better than anyone else in the organization. And so whether it’s cookies or it’s first party data, that’s really a way for us to know our customers. And so that’s what we really focus on is, right, what are we trying to talk to our customer about and how can we build a profile of that customer such that we can talk to them about that in the places where they are. And that might be on our website, right, where first-party cookies are going away. And so cookies might be really useful for the types of things that we’re trying to communicate to our customers. However, that might not have as much usefulness in certain media strategies, right, on other platforms. And we advertise on Google, within the metastack, Microsoft. DSPs on and on. And so, right, we really want to focus on, hey, right, we have something that we want to communicate. And we have a number of ways to do that with our customers and with, you know, potential customers. And so that’s what we really focus on work backwards from the customer. What do we know about that customer? How can we do more? And how can we do that in a way that respects their privacy and has usefulness to that customer or potential customer. And I know we’ll get a little bit deeper into privacy, but I really do think it ties back into that, right, is how do we know the customer? How do we know, right, how they want to be interacted with in a privacy and preference context? And I think that’s the thing that’s really happening now. It’s less about cookies, and it’s more about shifts in privacy and user behavior. And ultimately, there’s power shifting from brands to users. And I think that’s a good thing.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, well, and it also speaks to something you brought up earlier, which is consumers are willing, and not just willing, but they’re they want to provide information sometimes if it helps them get something that they want or need or get something better, right? So, you know, to that end, how are you looking at, you know, using first party data to you know, identify and even re-engage consumers who may have abandoned processes, you know, loan applications, things like that. You know, how can you use first-party data to, you know, again, reach the right people with the right things?
Chris O’Brien: Yeah, great question. And again, I think that goes back to, you know, trying to be principled in our approach. You, as a consumer, experience a lot of different things when interacting with brands digitally that are probably not helping the brand from a long-term perspective, right? Maybe it’s helping drive immediate revenue, but it may not help in terms of driving lifetime value, driving NPS, right? And that’s where I think trying to balance the different objectives and key results and have principles is really, really important, right? So yes, we want to drive revenue, but we also want to maintain long relationships. You know, especially within retail banking, what we try to do is drive primacy, right? We like to have the full relationship. So people might open a checking account with us, but then we want to be able to kind of expand and deepen that relationship. And there’s a number of ways to do that. But there’s also a number of ways to not do that well and to lose a customer, right? So we want to be able to retain that customer such that we can continue to earn their trust and engage with them and do business with them. And I think that’s really what this all goes back to. With that said, there are some simple things that brands can do. that are incredibly powerful. One of the things that we’ve done is really just a basic re-engagement strategy for cart abandonment. So it’s pretty typical e-commerce strategy, but it’s not something that you see a lot in financial services, right? And I think the performance of that speaks to the importance of knowing our customers, not only through first party data, right, that we typically would have on them, but also first party behavioral data, right? And really thinking about what is this person’s context What are they trying to do? And how do we engage them when they’re interested in being engaged? So to me, that really speaks to knowing your customer. And while we are using behavioral data for certain programs, I think there’s so much more opportunity to activate against behavioral data as it is part of sort of a first party customer data profile. And that’s what I see is a huge opportunity when I speak to other folks kind of in similar roles and in similar seats is like brands are thinking about, right, how do I collect user behavior? Perhaps I put analytics around it to understand what’s happening on my website. But it seems like far fewer brands are actually taking those insights and then activating against them as part of a customer profile. And that’s something that we’re really focused on. But again, doing it in a privacy-centric way, a preference-centric way, and using all the channels that we have available to us, because we are still a bank that does believe in being in the community. And that means a physical location, but also folks like relationship managers and business banking and commercial banking. So we need to work across that stack of channels. you know, and that’s really the stuff that gets me excited is how do we use that data, and then orchestrated experiences that matter, whether that’s right in digital channels, or it’s interacting with, right, the call center or branches is really like coming together as one team, and showing up as as one as one entity bank.
Greg Kihlstrom: And along those lines, I mean, certainly your customers, like any customers, are probably using multiple devices and sometimes they’re in the branch, sometimes they’re on the phone, sometimes they’re on their devices, and sometimes all of the above in a matter of days or something like that. So how do you… How do you maintain the right kind of consistency? Obviously, someone wants a different experience when they walk into a branch versus when they use their mobile app, but they still want a consistent experience. How does M&T manage to integrate all these experiences and orchestrate them with the right kind of consistency?
Chris O’Brien: Yeah, that’s a great question. And one that I’m probably not qualified to answer all of it. But as I think about it, there’s a couple ways to kind of maintain that consistency. One is, you know, design consistency, look and feel. And certainly we have we have work that that we can do there. The thing I’m a little more knowledgeable on is really thinking about orchestration. And again, another place where we have plenty of work to do. But the thing I go back to in the example that I think is incredibly interesting, and I think this comes from telecom, but really thinking about how if someone is in a complaint cycle, how do you not only drive positive NPS and that experience in the time when the customer is in need, but also drive revenue from that, right? Really thinking about each interaction as an opportunity really to just deepen that customer behavior. And not every time is the right time for a sale. And I think that is really important and something that as a brand, we think about, certainly in the physical locations, but we try to do that too, digitally, is thinking about what’s the right way to measure the… Digital marketers, this one’s for you.
This interaction and ladder the KPIs up to the business objectives because every interaction can’t necessarily be a sale. And another good example is like if someone is in the complaint cycle, how do we pull that knowledge into a profile and then turn off marketing perhaps, right? And think about experimentation around things like that. If someone’s in the complaint cycle, right? And we market to them, how does that affect NPS? And, you know, some of this is theoretical, but ultimately, there’s so much opportunity, especially as you think about activating against that behavioral data. So that that’s the kind of stuff that gets me excited is thinking about, right, like orchestrating, again, experiences that matter that drive brand loyalty, you know, and it’s definitely hard, but I think it’s one of those places where the brands that do that best, drive trust and experiences across the stack are the ones that are going to win. you know, I always kind of hated this thing marketers like to use, which is surprise and delight, right? And surprise and delight wins. And I think that was like the big thing maybe, maybe like five years ago, but but I, you know, we could say it in a different way. But ultimately, that’s what we’re trying to do, right? Instead of surprise and delight, maybe it’s trust and engage, right? And thinking about how do we drive that in all the interactions across channels?
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah, and so what are you finding? What technologies and strategies to use those technologies do you find are working to help enable this orchestration and personalized communications and all of the above?
Chris O’Brien: Yeah, great question. So we talked a little bit about the ad stack. I’ll just add a little bit more to that. One of the things I see really great opportunity in is taking strategies and tactics that are working in the ad channels that we’re using today and really trying to expand that inventory. So taking the same strategies, tactics, first party data, knowledge about the customer and expanding that into other inventory and really looking for opportunities, right? There might be an opportunity to drive really great efficiency and cost per acquisition on Bing search, let’s say, versus Google search. And that might be seasonal, that might be for certain audiences, but really expanding our ability to deliver audiences regardless of the channel and then opening inventory across the ad stack That’s something that I think is really important for brands to think about is building their stack around the ability to quickly move strategies and tactics to new inventory. And then I think secondarily, taking those same audiences and being able to utilize them across your own channels and platforms. So ad stack. Right. Personalization, testing systems, content management systems. And then, you know, centrally is like that audience management and orchestration piece and then layered in with identity. So there’s a bunch of different things that brands are doing here that, you know, is sort of the art of the possible for us. At the core is what we call our digital experience data platform. So naturally, as a marketer, I had to come up with an acronym, DXDP, but ultimately that DXDP is a CDP. We work with ActionIQ. And in addition to that, we have solutions from Salesforce, from Adobe, and then there’s a number of other partners. that we work with and we’re always really trying to actively manage that stack right thinking about what’s the business objectives what’s the business road map and which are roadmap be. And so one of the other things we’re really looking deeply at now to support B2B is really that account-based marketing space. And there’s some overlap there, right, with the CDP space. And so that’s an interesting, you know, thought experiment. And some of it comes down to like the operating model, like who’s hands on platform, What are they doing? What’s the separation of duties? But that’s something we’re really exploring now is really thinking about, you know, B2B, account-based marketing. And then all of this is wrapped in identity, which is really critical, right? Kind of having those identity solutions so that you can kind of put a wrap around that customer knowledge, right? And so there’s a bunch of different things that we’re doing there. and other teams are doing as well to kind of make that identity graph really solid, especially as we’re thinking about some of these privacy changes, right, and how we’re going to take someone’s privacy, take someone’s preference, embed it in a profile, and then enforce that across the channels. That’s a bit of a difficult exercise, and it requires a lot of different systems and cross-functional collaboration.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, and talking about, because I think when a lot of people think first party data, they’re thinking about the customer data platform, which you just mentioned. So if you don’t mind just talking a little bit more about what exactly is the role of the CDP in this context? What is it doing for you? How are you leveraging it to enhance CX and the operational part of this?
Chris O’Brien: Yeah, you know, I think there’s really three core functions that that we look to it for. And that’s really audience management, orchestration and identity. And it’s not going to do all of audience management, not going to do all of orchestration. not going to do all of identity necessarily, but we’re going to try, you know, to kind of think about those as capability sets that are enduring, and we manage them as a product. So I think it’s important to kind of think about, right, how you architect your stack, but then also, more importantly, and more difficulty, what’s the people and process around that. And right now, you know, we’re really thinking deeply about audience management, and rethinking how we do that, you know, in the past, I think brands did this in different ways, right? And there’s been an evolution from in the past, it being sort of a technical exercise where there’s teams of developers writing SQL against a database, right? That’s a customer database, it was essentially a customer data platform, right? And pulling, you know, lists of customers, and then Maybe the next evolution was some of the marketing automation platforms, and those were slightly better. And then CDPs really allow teams, many of whom are non-technical, to really build and ship audiences across channels. So how do we pull in those necessary data sources, build audiences, and orchestrate those audiences across channels? And then how do we do that in terms of the operating model, right? Who’s doing what, what’s the separation of duties, how we make sure that we’re really strong on data governance, and then pulling all of that together in order to, you know, deliver these experiences for, you know, our customers and potential customers.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. Well, Chris, thanks so much for joining today. One last question before we wrap up here. I wanted to get your thoughts on looking forward. There’s a lot of technologies on the rise, things like composability, composable approaches, and other things for Martek and financial services. What do you see as the next big steps for Martek and financial services?
Chris O’Brien: Yeah, I think the composability story is a good one, right? I think everyone, especially technology and data teams, have always wanted to get to this holy grail of zero copy data, right? Where we have one source of truth on our customers, and we’re not copying customer data to multiple different platforms. And that’s kind of where Martek a lot of people with their stacks is today where it’s like every platform has its own data platform. And so you have to copy data for, you know, potentially each channel. And the zero copy story, opposability story is, is one I really like. It’s like, how can you build semantic layers for what you’re trying to do on top of the data platform? So sort of separate away the need to have a data platform embedded in the actual semantic layer, right? Like what we need to do is audience management, orchestration, and identity, but I don’t necessarily want to be in the data management business, right? Like that’s for the data teams. We want to just be able to utilize the data for things like performance marketing for our business objectives, right? On behalf of our customers, but really driving the business forward. And that’s a great story. I think the other one, is around automation and AI. This is getting embedded in every platform. And so at this point, I think everyone’s experienced some sort of AI, and certainly there’s more to come. I feel like there’s just a huge opportunity there. One, in terms of efficiency, how do we empower our people to perhaps be 10x maybe even more performant than they are today. And then second around performance, right, things like personalization, things like media optimization, there’s so much opportunity to really be able to write, utilize, utilize the data and the strategies that we have, and really just kind of supercharge those, you know, with with automation. And so that’s, I think, a really important story. that I know gets a lot of hype, but I think it gets hype for a good reason. And some of the experiments we’ve done, we’re seeing really positive results. And so we’re going to be bullish in that space as well.
