Digital Marketing Strategies 2026: Leveraging AI, Data and Automation for Growth

Recap

On Wednesday, February 18th, the FCS hosted its first Education Summit of the year at the New York Yacht Club. The sold-out, full-morning event focused on digital marketing strategies for leveraging AI, data, and automation to accelerate growth for financial institutions.

The Importance of Trust Behind Customers’ Choices

The summit kicked off with research from the Financial Marketing Institute (FMI), presented by Northwestern University lecturers Frank Dudley and Vijay Viswanathan. Frank anchored his presentation in the Customer Choice Journey and its core component: trust. He highlighted that with any digital experience today, customers are looking beyond the products themselves and instead seeking reliability and ethical consistency from the brands they support. To navigate this, Frank identified three primary shift drivers facilitated by AI: enhanced decision-making, data-driven personalization, and automatic performance optimization. Employing these drivers allows companies to move beyond guesswork and toward a more calculated customer-centric approach.

Frank and Vijay concluded their research by outlining the Intelligence Growth System, a framework marketers can use to restore confidence in purchasing decisions by removing friction across the stages of the Customer Choice Journey. The framework empowers brands to go beyond digital marketing to create and implement automated intelligence growth systems that deliver continuous value through four pillars:

• Audience Intelligence: understanding a brand’s primary demographic
• Experience Intelligence: delivering timely, relevant information in every customer interaction
• Activation Intelligence: driving precise conversions that can transform into lead conversions
• Optimization Intelligence: learning faster than competitors

DOWNLOAD WHITEPAPER FROM FMI

Trust and Automation in Financial Services Marketing

Following this presentation was the Marketing Leadership panel, which featured Greg Boosin, Chief Marketing Officer, Equitable; Paula Pullano, Global Head of Marketing, Investments & Wealth, BNY; and Shana Sood, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Individual Life Insurance, Prudential Financial. The discussion revolved around AI’s role in the current financial services marketing landscape. Greg, Paula, and Shana emphasized the importance of trust when integrating AI into marketing. They agreed that though automation has become prominent in the customer experience, it is not yet associated with trust among consumers. As such, face-to-face interaction remains the gold standard for credibility.

The Marketing Leadership panel also dove into how financial brands’ marketing teams can integrate AI and data analytics to drive growth and improve customer engagement. The consensus on the panel was that it is important to understand AI’s ability to capture consumer mindsets during the information search stage. Automating this process frees up more time for firms to promote products and services that are more personalized to specific customer needs.

Bridging the Gap with Gen AI

After a networking break, Vijay followed up with the presentation, “Brand Intelligence: AI-Driven Brand Experience Management.” He highlighted how generative AI (gen AI) can enhance the brand and customer experiences through continuous auditing across multiple touchpoints. Social media touchpoints are especially fragmented, with interactions often siloed and disconnected from one another. Vijay presented that gen AI can act as a bridge for these gaps. For example, it can pull real-time signals from a brand’s various channels. This information can be turned into valuable insights that can then accelerate the decision-making process and leave more room for content mapping that is brand-aligned and resonates with customers.

Use AI, But Use It Intelligently

The Future-Focused Digital Marketing panel rounded out the morning, featuring Pradip Sigdyal, Head of Digital Marketing Strategy, Americas, UBS Global Wealth Management; Aparna Menon, SVP, Head of U.S. Digital Marketing and MarTech Transformation, TD Bank; and Veronica Mendoza, Vice President of Growth Marketing, Betterment. Pradip, Aparna, and Veronica discussed the practical uses of AI. They highlighted that AI is useful in the creative process for certain tasks, such as speeding up the development of first drafts for short-form content. However, AI does not necessarily reduce total production time and may even prolong the creative process. Financial marketers should be especially considerate of AI-generated content, conducting a thorough review process that ensures the content aligns with consumer interests while remaining compliant with government regulations.

The Education Summit concluded on a forward-facing note for the industry: While AI is not prepared to lead the world of marketing, it is ready to boost it. With maintenance and managerial tasks delegated to automation, more time is allotted to marketing teams for creativity, innovation, and perfection. The research and panels emphasized the importance of staying curious about the limits of AI while continuing to integrate it into work. The key is to use it for what it has been proven to be successful at.

— This recap is based on reports by FCS Marketing Scholars Evan Butler, Abigail Cristofaro, Allie Kouch, and Juliana Tulio, with editing by FCS Administrative & Communications Coordinator Juliet McAlee