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Martech for fintech: How DCM helps financial firms adopt a digital-first attitude

July 28, 2022

Technology is a must-have not just for financial institutions’ ever evolving services, but also for their increasingly complex marketing and communications.

Joel Schlesinger – Postmedia Content Works – 3 minute read Sponsored story

Image above – DCM helps financial firms simplify the complex through marketing technology. GETTY IMAGES

Today’s financial firms — be it banks, credit unions, insurers or investment brokerages — often look a lot like technology companies.

Leveraging web- and cloud-based technologies, financial institutions are able to better serve clients at home, a branch office or virtually anywhere.

Technology, however, is a double-edged sword.

Sure, it helps organizations provide better service for an ever-growing slate of exciting new products and services.

Yet it can also add more complexity to already complicated infrastructures.

Challenges aside, financial companies are under mounting pressure to use technology in order to remain responsive to changing market conditions and clients who are demanding digital services like those of big tech companies.

One area where some financial institutions may struggle is marketing and communications operations, says Jim Ferreira, senior vice-president of enterprise solutions at DCM.

“From a technology perspective, financial institutions spend a lot of capital, but the digital investment focuses mostly on core systems such as client account management — for instance, account set-up and maintenance processes.”

Few have expertise in digitally managing marketing and communications infrastructure from end-to-end, he adds. “Often when banks talk about digital, it’s the customer experience, not the internal workflows delivering it.”

So while “fintech” may be an industry buzzword, industry leaders are also familiarizing themselves with another: “martech,” short for marketing-technology, Ferreira says.

“Martech really addresses an enterprise-wide need, enabling many disparate users — for example, branch personnel or mortgage officers — to identify important marketing and communications content, then curate and personalize it for a specific audience.”

Embracing technology will help financial companies remain responsive to changing market conditions and client needs. GETTY IMAGES

It’s not only about digitizing print-based content to be consumed online as more customers embrace mobile services.

It’s about organizing, facilitating and executing every initiative — from a company-wide ad campaign to helping individual advisors keep clients informed about current market conditions.

Big or small, all these communications must be consistent with brand and onside of regulatory environments.

Consider the marketing and communications needs of mortgage specialists at a major bank.

“There are hundreds of different pieces of content about mortgage rates, properties and the market, and all this content has to be curated for each advisor — in addition to the fact that interest rates change daily,” Ferreira says.

Managing these moving parts is difficult but essential to the success of marketing and communications initiatives that integrate print, digital, social and other media.

It’s an area of expertise DCM has specialized in for decades with one overarching goal, Ferreira says. “Our tagline says it all: ‘Suprisingly simple.’ We simplify the complex.”

DCM’s flagship martech platform, DCMFlex™, is built to do just that.

A complete workflow ecosystem, DCMFlex automates and simplifies many of the routine, time-consuming and manual processes inherent in marketing and communications of large organizations such as major banks.

“It solves for a lot of complexity in these organizations, which can have dozens of different lines of business with thousands of employees, all with unique content distribution requirements.”

The importance of DCMFlex in marketing operations is evident in its client base, which includes nearly all of Canada’s largest financial institutions.

Few other companies have DCM’s unique insights into the technological obstacles financial companies face not just executing marketing and communications, but keeping them on-brand and legally compliant.

Currently, for example, DCM is working with one bank to re-categorize its entire marketing catalogue from an enterprise standpoint — rather than organize assets according to individual lines of business (LOBs). While this seems like a common-sense and relatively straightforward change, for a large financial institution, it’s a major undertaking, and one that involves planning for unique LOB requirements while implementing an overarching enterprise strategy.

Most financial institutions don’t have the experience to make this kind of change without significant up-front investment of money, effort and time.

DCM does.

Taking direction from clients’ marketing teams, who are using the DCMFlex platform, DCM implements end-to-end communications that are brand and regulatory compliant.

Equally important for financial institutions is that new technology has a plug-and-play simplicity so it can be easily adopted across organizations, Ferreira says.

“After all, you want to deploy technology that your users genuinely use because it makes their lives easier.”

DCMFlex is built for ease of use and has a track record to back it up, with clients using the platform for tens of thousands of marketing and communications projects annually, Ferreira explains.

“Our clients drive their campaigns — the messaging, imaging and the where, when and how — but we help implement them, seamlessly.”

This story was created by Content Works, Postmedia’s commercial content division, on behalf of DCM.