The Identity-Driven Marketing Playbook

Jim Marous (00:12):

Financial institutions are overwhelmed with customer data but lack meaningful insights. Banking credit unions find it difficult to accurately identify their customers across scattered digital channels, monitor customer behavior from the initial contact to conversion, and to demonstrate which marketing efforts truly produce results, all while they have to comply with strict data privacy laws. It's like a never-ending battle for a market which is my background as well.

Jim Marous (00:40):

Today in the Banking Transformed Podcast, we're tackling these issues with Harmon Lyons, the Vice President of Strategy and Market Development at TransUnion. We're going to be discussing full funnel marketing strategies for financial services that blend brand awareness with acquisition tactics, achieving up to 40% improvements in identity completion.

Jim Marous (01:03):

This allows banks and credit unions to finally demonstrate ROI and link marketing efforts directly to conversions. If you’re a financial services marketer facing customer data fragmentation, attribution challenges or privacy compliance concerns, this episode offers actionable strategies for enhancing your campaign performance in 2025 and beyond.

Jim Marous (01:29):

So, welcome to the show, Harmon. Before we begin, could you please introduce yourself to our audience?

Harmon Lyons (01:35):

Absolutely. Jim, just want to say thanks for being here. I'm Harmon Lyons, as you mentioned earlier, I'm the Vice President of Strategy and Market Development at TransUnion, specifically working on marketing solutions in the financial services vertical. And my background, this is almost 30 years now in digital marketing with a good portion of that, working specifically with financial services companies, so excited to be on the show.

Jim Marous (02:02):

You know our past kind of paralleled quite a bit because I was with marketing agencies in the direct marketing days until I got into digital and got a little bit more into digital, but actually, we used to buy all kinds of data and also used to compete against TransUnion. I worked for an agency that dealt with just financial services as well, so we come from similar backgrounds.

Jim Marous (02:21):

So, let's begin with the bigger picture: what exactly is meant by this term, marketing chaos and financial services, and why has this become such a big issue for banks and credit unions?

Harmon Lyons (02:34):

The chaos in the industry is insane to say it broadly. And we actually did some research with Forrester that talked about how brands are using over 16 different MarTech stacks within just doing marketing alone inside their shops.

Harmon Lyons (02:57):

So, think about that, 16 different technical platforms just to do marketing effectively, that's a lot. And you can't do it well using that much with all the different fragmentation. So, when we talk about the chaos, it's how do we bring some clarity to that? How do we distill that down to something that's A, easier to use, and then ultimately, easier to understand, and giving the marketers a platform at which they could do that with.

Jim Marous (03:30):

It's interesting because I talk about the fact that it's like trying to get mercury on a linoleum surface, that it's just all over the place and yet still is kind of a solid.

Jim Marous (03:41):

It's interesting because with all the new channels, with all the new platforms as you mentioned, it's a matter of even having those talk to each other and use the same data and getting their solutions, and even though we have all those platforms and all those solutions out there that an organization can use, do they really use it towards deployment or simply towards just making better reports?

Jim Marous (04:05):

So, the foundation of everything we're talking about here is identity resolution, which is a term that's often used by many people, but may not be fully understood what it really involves and how it changes the whole marketing spectrum. Can you explain a little bit about identity resolution, what it is, and why it's so important today for financial service marketers?

Harmon Lyons (04:29):

Yeah, and I think it's important beyond just marketing. So, if you think about identity at its core, it is the basis for everything that you want to do as an organization. You need to know who your customers are, who you're talking to, and have that almost exact max.

Harmon Lyons (04:48)

So, that identity resolution, think about someone that changes their name when they get married. So, it's Jane Doe, now it's Jane Smith, is that the same person? Is that a different person? And that's a really rudimentary one. It could be a whole bunch of different name changes, address changes, how do you connect those dots?

Harmon Lyons (05:11):

And so, the identity resolution really helps do that. It's this common data set that allows you to tie in these multiple pieces of identity that are fragmented across your life. Whether I'm Harmon Lyons somewhere, Harmon P. Lyons somewhere else, connecting those with multiple data points across the board.

Harmon Lyons (05:36):

Whether that's online or offline, being able to know who that person is to make good financial decisions as a financial institution, but then even more so as a marketer, how do you send the right message to the right person. And if you don't have that resolved, you could be throwing money away, and that's the idea of getting identity right at its core that's super important across the board.

Jim Marous (06:02):

That's so true. And I've seen in my own life in that I have business accounts and personal accounts, and I know for a fact that my business banking organization doesn't really know me as a person, it knows me as my company name or multiple company names that I have.

Jim Marous (06:18):

And there's so many dynamics to there as you mentioned, and when you're talking about a customer that may use different channels for different ways they bank, maybe use only the branch for savings and maybe they don't ever go into a branch, use it for their checking account, they may not use it for their credit services.

Jim Marous (06:35):

And even the whole issue of silos that we talk about quite a bit, it's a big obstacle for financial marketers trying to balance the need for deeper customer insights with privacy regulations. How do institutions navigate this tension, getting the data they need while remaining compliant and without maybe scaring the customer away thinking, how much do you really know about me?

Harmon Lyons (07:03):

That's a great question. And as a consumer, what Chase knows about me and what Fidelity knows about me are two different stories. And so, how I get spoken to in regards to both of those institutions could be totally different if they can't connect the dots. And then how do you do that in a way that's to your point, compliant and not creepy?

Harmon Lyons (07:28):

And the tactics that can be used are use third parties to help complete that identity story, how do I find out more about me? What are those complete data sets that pull those in that tell that story, and then how do you pull that from me as you engage me as a customer? How do you find that additional information?

Harmon Lyons (07:52):

I just had it from American Express, they just asked me to kind of verify my income, is that still the correct income level? Because that changes how they speak with me and how they market to me at the end of the day.

Harmon Lyons (08:04):

So, I look at threefold. It's A, having that personal relationship with the consumer where you can extract more and more of that data, and in a very kind of compliant and not creepy way because there's a relationship there.

Harmon Lyons (08:19):

It's how do I append that information via third parties like a TransUnion who has a whole slew of information on the consumers that can complete that story to help you know who that is, and then how do you market to them that doesn't cross that line. And so, that's where all the privacy and regulation stuff comes into play, is you need to do that in the right way because crossing that line does turn off consumers.

Harmon Lyons (08:45):

So, you want to balance that with, I know enough about you to tell a very thoughtful story, to send a very thoughtful message to then drive the behaviors that we're looking to drive. But it's really those few points that altogether help a marketer be effective at what they do, especially for financial institutions.

Jim Marous (09:07):

Well, you mentioned, especially for financial institutions, we've been up against this for decades trying to personalize experiences without as you said, getting creepy. And what's really challenging now is the consumer overall, not just for their financial institution relationship (with all relationships), they're getting used to organizations using data to save them time, to save them money, to build better personalization.

Jim Marous (09:33):

Sometimes almost invisibly, Amazon, you know they know a lot about you, but you forget the fact that you used to have to scan a whole lot of products before you actually bought it, and now you're scanning less because they're more pinpoint as far as what they're offering you as a selection criteria.

Jim Marous (09:50):

Well, how do you deal with this at TransUnion because you have a lot of financial institution clients? How do you deal with this where financial institutions really shy away from risk to begin with, with the risk of desire to be perfect as opposed to close?

Jim Marous (10:06):

And how do you deal also with the whole dynamic of instead of having all the answers, and you mentioned with American Express, maybe asking some questions of their clients as opposed to simply saying, “I have to find the perfect data point as opposed to asking for the consumer to actually participate.” How do you balance that, and how do you resolve it with your customers?

Harmon Lyons (10:28):

Well, I look at it a couple different ways because as TransUnion, we're in a lot of different businesses. So, you think about TransUnion, most people go to the credit bureau side of our business, and most don't know how deep we are in the marketing solutions business, and that's outside of the credit and risk space is media mix modeling, multi-touch attribution.

Harmon Lyons (10:52):

We have to tell that story ourselves, we're in the communications business and fraud business, so there's a lot of aspects to what we do. And for us to resolve those items, it goes back to that identity piece, what's the core thing about all of those going across and really resolving who are the people that we're talking to, and really understanding that.

Harmon Lyons (11:20):

Because when you resolve that and I'm talking TransUnion as a business, solving all of these problems for our business customers, our banks, our financial institutions, that layer stays the same. If I need to solve a communication issue, who's calling me? Who's calling into the bank right now? Do I know who this person is? Can I verify them? That's a communication product that we sell.

Harmon Lyons (11:42):

Now how do I talk to them if I want to sell them a product? Well, that's a marketing solution that I want to sell. That identity layer is the key to all of those. And then you get to other problems that are being solved by financial institutions like fraud, the identity layer is that key piece. And so, as a business and how we work with our customers and how we talk to consumers, solving that identity layer is the first and foremost thing that we do to address those concerns.

Jim Marous (12:14):

Well, it's interesting because one of the statistics that you mentioned in your information toolkit on your website is that you've helped clients achieve up to a 40% identity resolution increase. That's a remarkable number in 2 sense. One is how bad was it to begin with, and number two, that you were able to increase that much because really as we're resolving this, we're not just talking about, “Oh, you got my name right,” it's about the whole relationship coming together.

Jim Marous (12:45):

And that gives you such power when you're trying to build personalized solutions, when you're trying to deal with agentic AI potential in the future, when you're dealing with simply talking about customers and what their needs are. Can you walk us through what's actually happening behind the scenes to drive the level of improvement that you got with many of your clients?

Harmon Lyons (13:08):

Yeah. And it's a great stat and one we're super proud of, and it's actually really simple. So, if you think about it, I go onto a bank website, they've got a great CD rate that they're offering, I want to find out more. I type in my email, send me more information, and a lot of times that's it. I get the information I need, but the bank only learned the email from me, that was the only piece of information they got.

Harmon Lyons (13:36):

I gave it to them so they can now have this conversation because I asked them to send me information, but they don't know anything else. So, now, it's how do you complete those records? If I'm not willing to give more, how do they find out more about me to move that forward? And that's where the identity resolution comes in.

Harmon Lyons (13:58):

They partner with a company like a TransUnion that, “Hey, I know that email. I know who that person is. I know where they live, I can now complete that data set for that bank so they have a fuller picture of who I am.”

Harmon Lyons (14:13):

Now, the use cases, they're all a bunch of different permitted use cases when using that data. It doesn't mean they can go send me direct personalized marketing information, but from an insights perspective, they now know they have someone with more information about me somewhere that's interested in their products, they can start tailoring their communications a little more effectively than they could before.

Harmon Lyons (14:39):

And just those simple behaviors and that clarity to who I am based off of that email address can provide a ton of benefits down the road in terms of whether I become a future customer or not, because now they can have a clearer picture and have a more fruitful conversation.

Jim Marous (14:58):

So, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to explain what I'm asking for here, but I'm going to try. Let's say you’re in a financial institution, you're a marketer, what is the biggest gap in information that would provide the biggest lift in results?

Jim Marous (15:14):

Is it the email address? Is it their cell phone number? Is it some balance information is what they hold elsewhere? If you were to say, I want to fill this one column of data because it's going to bring me the best overall results, what's usually missing at most financial institutions that they need?

Harmon Lyons (15:33):

That's a really good question. I think everybody's a bit different, so it all depends on their tactics to fill that out on what's missing and what's not. But the crucial piece is the ability to communicate. So, to me, it's a phone number or an email. To me, the phone number is the thing that ties me to me.

Harmon Lyons (15:55):

People have tons of different emails that they use for multiple different purposes, the phone number doesn't change that often. So, if you can get the phone number correct, that's a really big differentiator in my mind and one you want to try to fill.

Harmon Lyons (16:12):

And that's just from an identity perspective, because emails are easy to get, I know I have a bunch of them, I use them for different reasons. I have one phone number, if you can get to me that way, that's typically a great way to identify who I am.

Jim Marous (16:29):

Interesting you should say that because that's what I was thinking in the back of my mind, that that probably is the piece of information that financial institutions don't ask for enough, especially the cell phone number and the power of marketing using text as opposed to email, especially now.

Jim Marous (16:44):

I mean, we've truly gotten away from emails as being the communication tool for each other, and the text brings a sense of urgency, it also bypasses some of what people perceive to be phishing things, even though we're seeing a lot of phishing on cell phone numbers. But the bottom line is there's a lot better ways of matching that up and customers are used to giving it everywhere so it's not like it used to.

Jim Marous (17:08):

I mean, I go back to the days and you may also … when financial institutions were skittish about asking a person's birthdate before they required you by government to get that information as part of the know your customer, you go like, “Man, we've come a whole long way since that.”

Jim Marous (17:25):

But we're talking about direct marketing but we're also talking about more of a brand marketing. So, let's talk about the full funnel approach. You know many institutions have traditionally and logically emphasized a lower funnel acquisition tactics such as direct response and performance marketing. Why is incorporating the upper funnel brand awareness so crucial to the overall marketing mix and what does an effective, full funneled strategy look like in the financial services?

Harmon Lyons (17:54):

The full funnel is super important and it really doesn't matter if you're a credit union, a regional bank, a large national bank, that branding top of funnel communication is really about building trust. It's building trust and building awareness.

Harmon Lyons (18:14):

And if you think about it just from a conversion standpoint, if I get a piece of mail, whether it's direct mail or an email or even a text from an institution I don't know, nothing's happening from that, I'm not taking that next step. It's having that awareness of who they are, whether that's in my community or whether it's more broadly.

Harmon Lyons (18:37):

And I think today more than ever, branding is you can accomplish that on a limited budget, you can really get into a branding because how well you can target these days. TV used to be out of reach because it was national or regional buy, and it was so expensive. You and I are getting targeted video ads on streaming directly to us. They can be a regional bank telling that story on not a large budget and they're building a connection, they're building an emotional connection and that's really the top of the funnel piece.

Harmon Lyons (19:15):

And what we see in our research is that when you have top of the funnel marketing, it increases that conversion at the bottom of the funnel. And so, once there's that comfort level, there's that kind of conversation that's happening between a brand and a consumer, driving those conversions become more effective.

Harmon Lyons (19:37):

And so, we're really seeing the top of the funnel really helps drive more effective bottom of the funnel. And we encourage that with our financial services partners and brands to try it out and test it, even if they're a small player in the space on limited budget, those are things you can test and learn and see how those improve your performance and hopefully drive more customers at the end of the day.

Jim Marous (20:02):

So, I'm going to have you put on your community banker hat right now or a small regional bank, how can they improve their brand awareness knowing that they only have so much money to spend? What do you see as the marketing mix that you're looking for from your smaller and regional players that don't have unlimited budgets, don't have ability to take a big buy but they still need that impact?

Harmon Lyons (20:28):

It's obviously different for everybody in their size of their budget, what they could pull off but I've seen kind of the regional banks still sponsoring stadiums, like the regional sports complexes, that happens. You see outdoor, you see the local streaming ads, all of those in my mind, those are the top of the funnel type of opportunities and in the right mix is really a test and learn.

Harmon Lyons (20:57):

So, I can't go and say, “Hey, you should put 30% into the top of the funnel and you're 70% in the bottom of the funnel.” Because what you want to do is you want to start, you want to try it, you want to see how the performance works and see what it takes to drive it. Because if you can get the results at 20% top of the funnel with 80% at the bottom, hey, then you didn't make that big of a change to your overall marketing budget and you're improving your results.

Harmon Lyons (21:24):

If you need to spend 40 because that's where your brand's at and it needs more awareness, you need to put higher at top of funnel in order to build that up because you don't have that kind of community awareness that another brand does, then that's what you need to learn and to test.

Harmon Lyons (21:43):

So, I'd be remiss if I threw out an actual number and say, this is it, but to me you start with 10 and you see what happens and then you start building it up or dialing it back and seeing where that optimal spot is but to ignore it completely, I would say is a miss for a financial services marketer.

Harmon Lyons (22:08):

To me, you have to have that top of the funnel, you have to build that awareness, it doesn't have to be streaming TV, although I think that's a great way of doing it. It could be billboards, it could be community outreach, there's a lot of ways to build up your brand and build that trust with your current and potential customers.

Jim Marous (22:30):

So, you're working with a ton of financial institutions that almost all to a certain degree have fragmented customer data across multiple systems, multiple channels. Where do you usually start when you are engaged with a financial institution saying, we got to take care of the identity, we got to get better data coverage on this. What's the roadmap for transforming that marketing chaos into clarity?

Harmon Lyons (23:00):

I mean, that's a great question because the starting point, and we talked a little bit about solving identity is the key you’re bringing up even before the identity piece on where does that data live. And so, if it's a large institution, you know their card and banking side might have one platform, their mortgage side might have another platform, do they talk to each other?

Harmon Lyons (23:21):

What we're seeing in the financial institutions today is those things are really starting to come together. They've realized that that data that they have is a real asset and is real powerful if used in the right way, and getting that into one place is super important. So, we see a few things happening.

Harmon Lyons (23:41):

One, it depends on comfort level but a lot of banks use on-prem solutions, they're putting it all in one place, behind their walls or up in a private cloud, that's one way. We're seeing a lot more adoption of companies like Snowflake and AWS and GCP and Databricks and financial institutions finally getting comfortable using these third-party cloud platforms to put their data.

Harmon Lyons (24:13):

And when they do that, when they get to that commonplace, all of this other data sets like at TransUnion and others become available to kind of match in a privacy compliant way, and that's when it becomes super interesting.

Harmon Lyons (24:28):

And again, everybody's at a different place on that curve. I've been having these conversations for many years and I would say over the last kind of three years, we've seen a conversation go from data lakes and on-prem to up in Snowflake and AWS and GCP and Databricks.

Harmon Lyons (24:51):

And like in the financial services world, that is a monumental shift and a pretty quick one in terms of timing that just a couple years to move from that to a cloud-based environment. So, those things are super exciting to me, and where I would start that conversation before resolving those identity pieces.

Jim Marous (25:12):

So, it's interesting, there's a lot of data firms out there that are helping financial institutions build better profiles on their customers and to understand their customers better. And the customers are expecting personalization at a level we've never seen before being driven by other industries. But my concern is, and what I'm seeing in the industry is that there's a big difference between the data they have that they can use and what they actually deploy against.

Jim Marous (25:42):

Financial institutions from the time I was in the banking world, continued to love their reports to know about their customers. But my challenge is, you may know me, you may even understand me, but how do I know you know me and understand me?

Jim Marous (25:56):

How do you work with financial institutions that are really, as you mentioned, tentative sometimes, they're very worried about what if I get something wrong? How do you work with institutions to go beyond great reports to actually deploying so that the customer feels that they know them?

Harmon Lyons (26:17):

TransUnion's in a really unique position to answer that question because we're under the same kind of regulations that these financial services institutions are with the way we collect and use data. So, the walls we build around that story are tall, and we hold ourselves to a very high standard in how that data gets used.

Harmon Lyons (26:40):

And so, the conversations we have with financial institution is, we understand your concerns, we understand the compliance and regulations, and we abide by them. And so, building that kind of comfort level between the organizations is a big piece of it, and then how do you deploy that data in a compliant way? And we live by that, we are accountable to that, the same as the financial services institutions are.

Harmon Lyons (27:12):

And so, having that almost comradery of having that same kind of standard held to both of our companies builds that trust bridge between the organizations on, "Hey, we know how to do this, we hold ourselves to the same standards as you do, let us help you understand how to do this in a way that is both safe, compliant, and also drives results at the end of the day."

Harmon Lyons (27:43):

So, we're living and breathing kind of that same environment the financial institutions are which I think brings a level of credibility to the marketplace that not everybody that's selling data can say that they have, and so that's how we help.

Jim Marous (28:01):

What's the biggest challenge you see out there from a financial services department or financial services marketing department? What's the biggest challenge you see in actually moving forward?

Jim Marous (28:11):

Because everything you're saying makes all the sense in the world and building a single identity, you can sell that, but what's the biggest challenge in actually deploying against this, and actually getting the return on investment that's possible when you're using your data to drive marketing initiatives, to drive things that can be measured?

Harmon Lyons (28:31):

I mean, there's a few hurdles that are challenges to overcome in order to do this effectively. One, it's getting everybody on the same page that everything's on the up and up. This is all compliant, this is how it works and if you think about the financial services space, even the credit bureau space, what you're allowed to do is very strict. But when you get to the marketing space, the reigns open up a little bit because you're using marketing data, not financial data, so it's a different story.

Harmon Lyons (29:01):

But when you're in these financial institutions, getting everybody comfortable with taking that next step is one of those internal challenges you need to overcome. Once you do that, that's a big hurdle. You overcome that, okay, we're all on the same page, marketing permissible data is different than financial data, so let's use our marketing permission data to go tell our story and talk to our customers.

Harmon Lyons (29:25):

Then it's about understanding who the consumer is, deploying that message out to the customer or prospect so that identity layer is super important, getting it out there, and then ultimately, bringing back and measuring that in a way that helps you understand all of those different components.

Harmon Lyons (29:46):

And that's what happens when you have 16 different MarTech stacks. It's like there's little bit of deprecation in each one. You lose a little bit of fidelity in your understanding of the customer in the connection point.

Harmon Lyons (30:01):

So, the more you can kind of shrink those number of platforms that you're using into closer and closer to one, to be able to resolve identity, activate those audiences and then measure the results, the more effective your marketing's going to be, and the more effective you're going to be able to understand your customer, and then take those learnings and drive better marketing outcomes as you move forward.

Jim Marous (30:32):

So, it's interesting, as we look at what's going on right now, I meet with financial marketers a lot and even people that are in marketing, but outside the industry, and they just come out of university and they're excited.

Jim Marous (30:43):

I said, got good news and bad news for you. The good news is you know more about what's going on in the marketing field than anybody in your institution that's been out there for more than a couple years. The bad news is (what I just mentioned) that in a matter of just a few years, your information will be a great foundation but will not get you a seat at the table because you've got to keep on learning because so much is happening.

Jim Marous (31:07):

What excites you about what's coming down the road with regard to financial marketing, the use of data, the deployment of data or even marketing channels?

Harmon Lyons (31:17):

So, I love that question and there's a lot that excites me about what's coming and also a little bit what scares me about what's coming but it's that constant learning piece that you're talking about that you have to do in order to stay ahead of this.

Harmon Lyons (31:33):

AI obviously is super exciting, how do you use it? How do you use it effectively? And then if you look at the kids in college now who are going to be AI natives, this is how they're living and learning. We're picking this up as we're running right now but this is a part of how they're moving through college.

Harmon Lyons (31:56):

I have a son who's a freshman right now. I can't send him enough AI stuff to do this, do this, do this, try this, see what happens here but just the idea of using AI to move faster. I don't necessarily buy into the full premise that AI is replacing everyone, I think it's going to make us more effective and more efficient at what we do, and it's going to allow us to do more things, move faster than we had in the past.

Harmon Lyons (32:29):

So, whether it's from writing copy, but just think of the data connections that we have to make, right now that used to be manual, now we can do it in the cloud. Now you throw AI on top of it, this stuff can just happen and it can move faster. And because it moves faster, we can have a conversation with the consumer faster, we can market to them in a quicker way.

Harmon Lyons (32:56):

And again, that's the exciting part, the scary part is how fast it's moving because I was in a summit where Sam Altman was speaking (who's the CEO of OpenAI) and he gave an example, he's like, “12 months ago, ChatGPT was not enterprise ready, it was a good use case, but it wasn't good enough to be used in the enterprise. Here we are 12 months later and it's being used across the enterprise. It is now fully adopted across the enterprise.”

Harmon Lyons (33:35):

And what 12 months from now is going to look like nobody knows, but it is going to be exponentially farther along than we were as we're sitting here today on what those use cases are. And I think about it just what we're talking about today, identity resolution, how much easier does that get? How much quicker does that happen? Deploy audience, targeting messaging, how fast can that happen? How quickly can we react to something that's going on in the marketplace and then the measurement.

Harmon Lyons (34:08):

Is the measurement now almost instantaneous or as soon as there is an action or reaction to something. So, now we can measure and get results instead of having to wait a month, two months to see what's happening to then move.

Jim Marous (34:23):

A year.

Harmon Lyons (34:25):

Yeah, a year. Can we now do that in days? So those are exciting, exciting times on what's going on within marketing and also how do we keep up with that? Because there's a lot to learn really fast and I think that next generation is just going to know that's just how they were brought up. And so, I'm excited for them, I'm excited for the technology and I think there's a bright future ahead for marketing and financial services companies in general.

Jim Marous (34:59):

It is interesting because my son graduated three years ago from university and he had a data analytics degree and marketing degree put together and a couple other things he threw in there because he went for an extra year because of COVID.

Jim Marous (35:12):

But what's interesting is the whole dynamics because at that point, he said it was hard to learn about data analytics because most of the people were in the field doing it. I would say the same thing about AI today. AI at the university level, there may be people that can talk about it, but the actual implementation of this, these people aren't in the field because they're in high demand.

Jim Marous (35:35):

But you look at just ChatGPT and I referenced this a couple times on the podcast recently that I use ChatGPT every day and all of a sudden around four to six weeks ago, it started asking follow-up questions to what I was asking it to do and the follow-up questions were a thousand percent on point for where my mind was going to go next.

Jim Marous (35:55):

But it was asking me this, think about that from a financial services perspective, where a customer, let's say, looks on your webpage around credit card rates and competitive offers that you're offering and all of a sudden that question or that inquiry sparks a conversation between a chat bot or an agent and the customer.

Jim Marous (36:17):

And then we build our database from every point that you're having that conversation which seems to me to be extraordinarily exciting because it will transfer what I'm telling it into an instantaneous opportunity potentially or maybe just showing some empathy and helping that customer down that path.

Jim Marous (36:37):

So, now, you're back to being a CMO at a mid-sized financial institution, maybe a credit union or community bank who feels overwhelmed by everything we discuss today; data fragmentation, the compliance concerns, the identity and attribution challenges — what's the first piece of advice that you'd give them on what they should focus on today?

Harmon Lyons (37:02):

To me, it's always the foundation. What are the fundamentals and foundation that you need in order to go build your business effectively, and it always goes back to identity. None of this, not even AI … like any of this, if you get the identity wrong-

Jim Marous (37:22):

It doesn't matter.

Harmon Lyons (37:24):

It goes off the rails. So, to me, that's the focus and those are the conversations I have with the community banks. It's where do you start? Let's start and make sure that the data is accurate. If we can get the accuracy and resolve identity, and we have that as a starting point, just think of all the places you can go from there.

Harmon Lyons (37:47):

But if you've got that wrong, the messaging you send out's going to be wrong, who you're targeting is going to be wrong, the measurement's going to be wrong. So, you've got to start with that core layer. And to me, it actually makes the conversation a lot easier and a lot more palatable. For someone that's overwhelmed by everything that's going on around them, let's just focus right here at the core, let's get that right.

Harmon Lyons (38:14):

And if we get that right, then all the other pieces are going to kind of … they'll stair step, it will be natural and it will work. And so, to me, that's kind of the starting point for any conversation that I have, is I pull it back to that foundation, and let's start at how good do we feel about the identity layer, and then let's take the conversation from there.

Jim Marous (38:36):

Well, and it's interesting because it's never been easier to do that step, because the reality is when we go back to our days when we were working with direct marketing and all these other things, so much of what we were talking about was, what I'm going to say paper based. Well, so much now is all digital.

Jim Marous (38:53):

Digital where you do transactions, how you pay for things, what you buy, the channels you use, all these digital components makes it so building that identity has never been actually easier. But as you said, it's never been more important that you get that part right because everything that's coming down the line after that is going to be more and more difficult.

Jim Marous (39:17):

And it's interesting because the different discussions we've had with your firm over the years, what's interesting, everyone has dealt with data, analytics, personalization, bring it all under one roof and getting it right because at the end of the day, it's about trust.

Jim Marous (39:33):

And we've said this in every one of the podcasts that we've referenced, and they're going to be on the end cards, other interviews we've had with TransUnion. But again, we're talking about marketing in a lot of sense, but at the end of the day, we're talking about trust. Because if you don't show that you know me, I don't trust you, and I won't give you that value proposition. I may not give you that permission to use my identity to help serve me because you don't feel like you really know me very well anyway.

[Music Playing]

Harmon Lyons (40:03):

And for financial institutions in general, trust is core. In everything that they do, it's how do you have that, how do you build that, and to your point, it starts with that fundamental layer of identity.

Jim Marous (40:20):

Harmon, thank you so much for being on the show. I really can't believe we haven't had you on the show before because we've certainly done a lot with TransUnion. But I think what's interesting with all the other podcasts we've done with your firm, we've always talked about in different ways, different product lines, everything else, the importance of the data layer, the inside layer, the democratization data, how powerful that can be in the hands of employees, which we didn't really cover that much on this podcast.

Jim Marous (40:47):

But I’m looking forward to having more discussions with you and with your team at TransUnion. Thank you so much.

Harmon Lyons (40:53):

Thank you so much for having me. This was terrific.

Jim Marous (40:56):

Thanks for listening to Banking Transformed, the winner of three international awards for podcast excellence. If you enjoy what we're doing, we would really enjoy a positive review. Also, check out my recent articles in The Financial Brand, the research we're doing for the Digital Banking Report.

Jim Marous (41:12):

This has been a production of Evergreen Podcasts. A special thank you to our senior producer, Leah Haslage; audio engineer, Chris Fafalios, and video producer, Will Pritts.