speaker-3 (00:00.366)
Hello everyone and welcome to Alkami’s webinar hosted by the Financial Brand, Personalization that Performs Using Behavioral Data to Win Digital Banking. My name is Molly Irelan, Alkami’s manager of research and content, and I’m really excited to be your moderator for today’s event. Let’s meet our panelists.

speaker-3 (00:19.896)
Today our session will feature Alkami product expert Lesly Fruge and two FI leaders who are leading the charge on delivering personalized banking experiences from Elevations and Valley Strong. Ladies, I will have each of you introduce yourself, starting with you, Lesly.

speaker-2 (00:36.152)
Hi everyone, I’m Lesly Fruge, Director of Product Manager Management here at Alkami. And as part of my role, one of the things I get to do is work with banks and credit unions like Elevations and Valley Strong to help them turn behavioral data into real in the moment action for their account holders, which is exactly what we’re gonna be digging into today.

speaker-3 (01:00.322)
All right. Andrea, would you please introduce yourself?

speaker-0 (01:03.892)
Thank you. Thank you for having me. My name is Andrea Stevenson. I am the director of digital banking at Elevations Credit Union. We are a boulder, Colorado-based credit union. We started at the University of Colorado and today we have grown to over 180,000 members across Colorado’s front range and 3.5 billion in assets.

speaker-3 (01:29.206)
Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today. And Tiffany, last but not least, if you could please introduce yourself and Valley Strong.

speaker-1 (01:36.234)
Yes. So my name is Tiffany Garcia. I am the Digital Solutions Manager here at Valley Strong Credit Union. we are based out in California with branches all throughout the Northern Valley as well as Mid Valley. We are currently sized a little more than four billion in assets. We serve over three hundred and fifty thousand members with roughly around two hundred and thirty thousand of those members utilizing online banking.

speaker-3 (02:02.796)
Awesome. Well, let’s get into it. If anyone has any questions along the way today, please send them in the chat and we will be responding in real time. Now let’s get into this discussion with this powerhouse lineup of women in banking. So at Alkami, we love our research. And I wanted to frame the discussion today in some recently commissioned research, not yet published. So y’all are getting a sneak preview of what’s to come from our thought leadership engine over the next couple of months.

After surveying 1,500 digital banking Americans, we continue to see the trend towards digital. This isn’t a new concept, but it is a it is front and center for acquisition and retention efforts. Your digital strategy is your relationship strategy. The research shows that account holders are using digital experiences as a signal of care, trust, and relevance. And that changes how financial institutions should think about digital banking. It’s where account holders are served.

Guided, retained, and invited into deeper relationships. Among those who participated in the study that I mentioned previously, 85% said the quality of a digital banking experience is essential or important when they are considering a new primary financial provider. And 31% have had such a bad digital experience with a financial provider that they actually went and opened a new account with a different institution.

Last one here, 76% think a financial institution’s digital banking experience reflects how much it cares about its customers or members. So turning this over to our panelists, let’s start this conversation by discussing your member segments more specifically. Andrea, I’ll start with you for this question. How have you seen expectations for digital experiences evolve over the past few years?

speaker-0 (03:49.932)
Yeah, I mean, I think in this day and age of Amazon and Netflix and, you know, personalization at every turn in your daily life, the expectation for personalization, especially as it relates to your financial health, has only risen. And particularly as the new generations, the younger generations who have been raised in the digital age are coming along and and inheriting wealth. at elevations, we take

Great pride in our feedback on our in-person experiences, how friendly, knowledgeable, and responsible our staff is to our members. So our goal is to really humanize the digital experience in that same way. Just as a member of our staff would listen with you and per listen to you and provide tailored guidance based on the signals that they’re receiving.

we really want our digital channel to work in that same way and we believe that that’s the expectation of our members. so our goal is really to convey that same ease and satisfaction that you would get interacting with staff in the digital channel.

speaker-3 (05:02.188)
I love that. I love the connection to the branch and bringing that into the digital and being able to replicate that within the digital banking experience. Tiffany, next question for you. Why has personalization become a priority for Valley Strong?

speaker-1 (05:16.898)
Yeah, so for us, personalization has become a priority because very similar to what Andrea stated already, we know that our members’ expectations have changed, right? And in today’s age, most folks are looking for instant gratification. And they’re not just comparing us to other institutions that they have. Similar to how Andrea said, they’re comparing us to Netflix and Amazon and other all of these other apps that we know are

giving them that intuitive experience. And so because their expectations have shifted, in order for Valley Strong to continue to stay top of wallet for our members, we know and understand that we must stay competitive, we have to stay intuitive, and we have to stay relevant. We have to be able to save our members time, but not only that, save them money. And so very similar to what Andrea said as well, we feel like our goal

is to deliver the in-person experience just throughout the digital channel. And so we see personalization more as a tool to help digital banking feel more natural. And so we genuinely want to understand where our members are within their financial journey so that we can help them accomplish what they came to do. And so personalization is going to help us achieve that goal. And so we have to make it a priority in our organization.

speaker-3 (06:45.676)
Definitely. And we’ll get more into how you’re accomplishing that. But before we do, I wanted to to ask, you know, we you both have been partners or have been working with Alkami for the last couple of years now. What role does digital banking play in your overall growth and engagement strategy? Andrea, I’ll go with you.

speaker-1 (07:00.525)
What role?

speaker-0 (07:08.248)
Sure. well, since we launched on Alkami, I think we’ve really shifted our mindset to thinking of digital banking as an opportunity and a channel to deepen and build relationships. Previously it was a service channel. It was somewhere you came to, you know, get information and make your transfers, but now we think of it much more proactively. so you know, we really want to be able to take that opportunity to guide members.

to the right products and services and tools at the right time when they really need it. so, you know, we we look at it as a win-win. We’re supporting the financial institutions’ health and growth, but we’re really supporting our members’ needs as they arise. you know, we’ve in the past done a lot of blanket targeting, but we know that that just leads to inefficiencies.

Whether it be that, you know, people end up applying for loans that they don’t quite qualify for, and then you know, our staff has to go through that manual burden of processing or reaching out to those folks. you know, we really see the channel and and the personalization layer as that opportunity to streamline the experience so that we’re really bringing the right opportunities to the right people at that right time.

speaker-3 (08:33.166)
Great. Thank you so much. Tiffany, how is Valley Strong thinking about digital banking in regards to its greater engagement and growth strategy?

speaker-1 (08:43.072)
Yeah, so for us, digital banking has evolved from being just a channel into becoming one of our most important relationship platforms, right? And so for many of our members, it’s their primary way to interact with us. And so we see every single login as an opportunity to either strengthen and sometimes weaken the relationship that we have with our members.

And so we no longer really measure success simply by adoption or login data. we are kind of shifting our mindset to look at transaction volume. We look to see how effectively we’re helping members accomplish their financial goals, how easy we’re making their experience. And honestly, we have an environment that is truly engaging for our members. And so when we focus on digital banking, we see the impact across our institution.

we see the higher engagement, we see the better retention, we see the increased product adoption and even the lower operational costs. And so here at Valley Strong, when we talk about growth, we don’t necessarily separate digital banking out of our strategy. Instead, we use it more as a key driver for the overall organization.

speaker-3 (10:00.642)
That’s fantastic. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing your institution’s point of view there. We know that personalization is top of mind for everyone. I know when I pick up my mobile device and navigate to my banking apps, I want it to be one step ahead of me and know what my financial goals are, help me take action. And this sentiment is really felt by many other consumers, with 44% of digital banking Americans wishing that their primary financial provider.

Did a better job anticipating their financial needs and goals. When I look at this stat, this really stands out to me because oftentimes I think we think about personalization in the context of targeted, relevant offers. And while that is obviously very important, especially for revenue growth, that’s what drives conversions. But many account holders are really looking for something more out of their financial partner. And they want someone to serve as their financial coach, giving them meaningful.

Full guidance, pointing them to the key features that are relevant to their needs. And that’s how to win trust and more importantly, to drive active engagement, which Tiffany and Andrea, I think you you both hit on that in the strategy that you just discussed. So a moment ago, I mentioned the targeted offers. I know I can speak from my own experience here that I do work with a megabank sometimes, as like my key operating accounts, but

They consistently send me an offer for a business credit card at least once a month. And it’s a direct mailer. And as someone who works within the financial services industry, I do understand how data analysis and marketing automation tech should work. And I also know for a fact that my transactions do not indicate that I’m a small business owner. Or am I looking to start a business anytime soon? So

To me, that makes me feel like they really don’t know me at all. And it doesn’t make me want to grow that relationship. And I think this is a really common experience. When we went back to the research, we found that only 47% of digital banking Americans say that products that their primary financial provider recommended to them became more relevant over the past 12 months. However, those numbers really start to shift when broken down by FI type.

speaker-3 (12:18.146)
So this is where we see that neobanks and megabanks are leading the pack, with roughly half of their account holders saying recommendations have become more relevant. like the example I just mentioned, half of them are not becoming more relevant. but that number really starts to decrease when we look at consumers who bank with a regional or community bank or credit union. So to me, that’s really a goldmine opportunity for many of the folks on this call today. And I I think.

This discussion is going to help us tap into that in a lot more detail. So let’s get into it. Data really helps financial institutions stop the guessing game. And the question is not whether account holders are logging in, it’s what they tried to do, where they stalled, they what they may not have discovered within digital banking and any moments that might have created friction for them that they decided to take their activity somewhere else.

speaker-0 (13:03.459)
Where

speaker-3 (13:14.732)
So Tiffany, starting with you, before you had deeper visibility into digital user behavior, what were some of the biggest unknowns? And what surprised you most when you started analyzing how users are actual actually navigating your digital banking experience? Were there any assumptions that the team ended up being proven wrong based on the data that you had?

speaker-1 (13:41.312)
Yeah, of course. Great question, Molly. So I would say one of our biggest unknowns was again that we were relying on assumptions instead of behavior. And we only knew what members were telling us, but we didn’t exactly know what they were doing and what their journey was along the way. And so I would say that one of the biggest surprises was realizing that sometimes the loudest feedback wasn’t always a fair representation of the majority.

And I can share with you one example that really stands out to me. so after we launched Alkami Engage, we decided to publish a survey on our business ACH product. And the reason we did that is because we had one member who was incredibly vocal about being dissatisfied with his experience. And he had come from a previously much larger financial institution, and they were able to provide him with

Pretty much a custom service. And so I got to a point in my experience with him where I felt like I was taking his feedback personally because I was assuming that if he felt this way, others must feel this way as well. And so after we published a survey using Alkami Engage, we tried to gather feedback from other members to understand if this was also their experience as well.

I can say that within a week of this survey being published, we had roughly around 13, I believe 14 members who had actually rated their experience as excellent. And we even had further commentary from members telling us, please don’t change anything because they love their experience. And so just that one action alone and that insight helped me change my.

perception, right? Like we were ready to spend time and money improving a product that a majority of our members felt like was a perfectly satisfactory product. There was nothing that they felt like needed to be changed or improved. So for us, instead of investing significant resources into changing to changes that may not have created meaningful value for a majority of our users.

speaker-1 (16:02.258)
Now what we can do is we can focus on efforts where the data is showing us is the greatest opportunity. And so I would just say that we have been acting with assumptions. And now with Alkami Engage, we can see the end-to-end journey and all of the behavior of what our members are conducting within their online banking. And so just this one example has proved to us that the data is really key here.

for further decisions moving forward.

speaker-3 (16:36.79)
Yeah, that’s a fantastic example of using data to really inform your operational decisions and strategy. that really makes Valley Strong’s experience, I think, feel tangible for others in the audience. Andrea, how about elevations? What visibility challenges did you face prior to adopting Alkami Engaged?

speaker-0 (16:58.018)
Yeah, so prior to Alkami Engage, I would say we did a really good job of tracking conversion and understanding like general demographics. So kind of, you know, the who, what, when. but what we were missing was the how. So I would say, and put that into even greater perspective, I I think we didn’t quite grasp the sticky factor of these various features and functionality that we were offering.

So again, we could see the ultimate conversion and we could measure to a degree based on that, but we didn’t really have a sense of how frequently are people interacting with this particular feature and what kind of you know loyalty or stickiness is that driving for that user with our financial institution? So in other words, how valuable really is that offer?

We also didn’t really have a great sense of missed opportunities. So people who might have been trying to complete an action or a task and fell out and getting some insights into why that might be and where we could maybe offer a little bit of bridge guidance or help to get that user through that friction point. so a couple of examples that I could think of is we launched a premium checking product, a couple of

months back and with it came a new premium checking perks platform. adoption has been somewhat lower than we expected. so our marketing staff came to us and asked could we, you know, maybe give that path to the new checking perks platform more visibility. We have around 60% of our active users are in mobile.

So the assumption was let’s put it as a quick action button in mobile and you know we’ll magically see all this traffic appear. And once we got into engaged and looked at it, that alone was not moving the needle. we really didn’t see great adoption of that mobile functionality. So I think what that signals to us and what the next step there is, is now we need to, you know, probably add some guidance, contextual guidance that reminds those particular

speaker-0 (19:20.024)
premium checking holders of these perks and the value that it brings. And, you know, just points them in a very subtle, non-invasive way, but points them back to how to get there so that they just keep it more top of mind. and again, they just we, you know, I think I think it was Tiffany said something that stuck out to me. You know, we don’t really want to just think of our digital banking channel as a place where we’re selling.

you know, we really want to think of it as the win-win. There’s a lot of features and things that we offer within the platform that are very beneficial for the member and their financial health. and there’s a lot of little interesting, you know, finds within that checking perks platform for them to take advantage of. so if we left it unsurfaced or unguided, then you know, that would be a missed opportunity for those members. So yeah.

I think just really getting people to the right place.

speaker-3 (20:20.396)
And we know that consumers are looking for these types of services. So if you’re able to better surface them within the digital banking experience, it’s gonna keep them, retain them engaged. Yeah. and ideally have them using less external services where there’s potential for deposits to leave. I’m gonna stick with you for this next question. So I know in preparing for this webinar, we talked a little bit about Alkami engage and how.

speaker-0 (20:38.732)
Definitely. Mm-hmm.

speaker-3 (20:50.04)
How does this fit into the broader data strategy for elevations? so could you just tell us what’s different about Alkami Engage versus some of the other data solutions that you leverage with Alkami and how does it play into your greater data strategy?

speaker-0 (21:06.316)
Yeah, so I alluded to this in my last answer, but you know, I see it as a piece of the puzzle, not a replacement for the whole puzzle. So it’s a complement to a greater data suite. the other data suite pieces that we license have, you know, told us the who, the what, the when, but it was the how that was missing. so I think that this is filling in that gap and

The second part that makes this extremely unique is the ability to action those insights right away by building the in-app guidance. you know, some some examples that I can point to there, most Alkami features they support deep linking. But on the credit

The credit card management page or the card management page, I should say, because it is credit and debit. there’s a lot of features. It’s a very powerful widget. There are a lot of things, and Alkami’s done a great job of making it very elegant and making that interface very seamless. However, I do think that members can miss some of those really great features that are available to them. so in the past, you know, we would have.

Sent out email communications, listing out all the benefits that are available within that card management widget and then giving the step-by-step instructions through email. that’s just inefficient. You know, who in this day and age has time to like open up an email, then go into their digital banking, follow these instructions. So now with Engage, you know, the really, really elegant thing is that we can just write.

Right with an engage, build out a guide that points out all these features and then helps that user remember how to get back to them in the future.

speaker-3 (23:06.018)
I really love that example, how you mentioned before of being able to surface those insights, but then being able to act on them right away. I think that’s really powerful. Lesly, you’ve been way too quiet this whole webinar. So we’re gonna put you on the spot here next. both of our FI leaders have shared some really incredible strategies that they’ve deployed at their institution to support deeper personalization. Could you please share some more details about how?

Alkami is enabling this for our customers through Alkami Engaged.

speaker-2 (23:39.308)
Yeah. I think Andrea articulated the key distinction really well that Alkami Engage is not competing with the tools that RFIs are already using for insights and engagement. It is actually the missing piece that connects them. It’s not CMS, it’s not like your transactional data. Engage is telling you exactly what’s landing with your end user and like where someone’s getting stuck, what they’re trying to do.

what they’re finding and what they aren’t finding. And then in an like nice aggregated view, you can also start to correlate what products grow a relationship in other ways. So you can start to see, okay, if my end users use this really valuable, you know, checking feature like has been cited here, they also are more likely to do this other thing. And I need to guide them there because now they are in a trusted relationship with me and look at me as a trusted visor.

And so that’s how we’re enabling deeper personalization for our customers. We can give them a way to boost that digital adoption. It reduces friction with personalization, doesn’t just blast it out to everyone. It’s in the moment guidance so that you can increase those high value products and features through targeted engagement. and you can improve right in the moment.

Like Andrea said, you don’t have to wait for a dev cycle. You can respond as you learn with no code tools.

speaker-3 (25:10.082)
Thanks so much, Lesly. That was a really great explanation. And as a marketer, I can really appreciate how Alkami Engage allows folks to guide their customers and members through the digital banking experience so that they can really maximize that engagement one-to-one. Before we talk about how to use these insights to improve the digital banking experience, we want to hear from our audience. Please take a moment to complete the poll on your screen and let us know if you’d like to learn more about.

Alkami Solutions, and we will follow up after this webinar. I’ll give you a quick moment and then we will keep rolling. All right, moving on. So thank you all for taking a moment to complete that poll. I’m gonna turn the mic back over to Andrea and Tiffany. From what Lesly shared about Alkami Engage, it’s all really great in theory, but we’d like to learn more about what this looks like in practice.

I know it’s early in your journey, but from your perspective, what impact has contextual guidance or personalized messaging had on feature adoption or engagement? Andrea, we’ll have you kick this one off. how do you how did your institution decide which digital experiences or journeys to optimize first?

speaker-0 (26:27.628)
Yeah, I think it really comes down to a blend of what are our business goals and using that data to help us uncover the member need and member insights. so you know, we really want to hit that sweet spot of streamlining the member experience and also creating back office efficiencies. So, you know, the low-hanging fruit is

an onboarding some onboarding guides. So thinking of it as like a checklist of things to point out to the member so that they’re aware right from day one what’s available to them. Things like alerts, e statements, savvy money, monitoring your credit score. and you know, you can also get really, really creative with how you can help or how you can utilize Alkami Engage to

to lessen impact on members as change occurs. So an example I can share is, you know, we’re planning to convert one of our services, our aggregation service. And with that, there will be some member actions. They’ll have to relink accounts, they’ll lose, you know, some of the categorization functionality that they had before. And as always, we will of course do our

Our routine communications where we tell them over email, we give them the heads up the best that we can. But we’re planning to use engage to also reassure when the moment comes, what exactly is happening, what’s, you know, what is expected of them, and set that expectation of how this new service will work and why it’s good for them going forward. and our hope and our anticipation is that we will thus reduce con contact.

contact center volume because maybe they didn’t see the email or maybe the email went into a spam folder. Now we will have the opportunity to either reinforce what they maybe read and it went in one ear and out the other, or, you know, we’ll have the opportunity to help, you know, mitigate that impact when it occurs if it’s the first time they’re hearing about it.

speaker-3 (28:38.988)
Yeah, I’m I’m really curious to hear more about that once you go through that that conversion because I I feel like as a user, if I was to encounter that, I might not even realize that something was changing. I just know I need to take action. So I feel like you’re going to get great adoption on that and hopefully ease a lot of that call centered volume that you mentioned before. Tiffany, how has Valley Strong approached prioritizing specific initiatives?

speaker-1 (29:09.346)
Yeah, so there’s three areas that we feel like need to all work really well together in order to drive that best experience, right? And so what we did is we took a look at member impact as well as business value and then also friction. And so what we tried to do is we tried to find the intersection of all of these three areas. And so using Alkami Engage, we

went in and we went to go look at data points like usage, drop-off, completion rates, sentiment, support volume, anything that we can find that Alkami Engage can provide, we use that to connect it to our larger goal. And so our l larger goal included you know, digital adoption, engagement, retention.

And so from there, we prioritized the areas where improving the experience would make the biggest difference and for the greater amount of members. And so ultimately our goal was to focus on the journey that helped the member versus maybe, you know, focusing on maybe some of the loudest feedback that we received. And so with that, we did decide that our first journey would include optimizing the statement opt-in experience.

Because that without a doubt was where the data within Alkami Engage was pointing us to go.

speaker-3 (30:38.998)
Yeah, those are really appreciate the color there. Those are both such amazing examples of practical applications that were really tailored to both the needs of your institution, but also to the account holders that you serve. Lesly, I know you’ve been a key stakeholder in bringing this product to life. Are there any best practices or recommendations that you would share with leaders who are looking to get started?

speaker-2 (31:06.52)
yes. The number one piece of advice I would give if I starting out is don’t try to guide everything on day one. I just pick one moment that you already suspect is a problem, a drop off point or like recurring support theme, like what was just mentioned, or a feature that you think is underutilized and build a single just focused guide around it and then let the data choose your next move.

not your gut, right? Because now you have it. So you can grow from there. So once you can see where people are actually falling out of a flow, that tells a story of where you can go next. And it may not be where you assumed. And so then you can tie everything back to a business outcome. That’s the important point. adoption, opt-ins, reduce support calls, like these ladies mentioned. So then it’s easy to build internal momentum for the next step.

And you can start to narrow, prove it works, and then expand.

speaker-3 (32:07.628)
Awesome. Well, we’re gonna keep with you, Lesly, for this next point. But from your perspective, which use cases do you think have the biggest opportunity to drive real impact for financial institutions?

speaker-2 (32:21.378)
Yeah, some of these will echo what has been said already. Like the first use case is really digital optimization, accelerating time to value by guiding people through steps that actually matter. Alerts, external accounts, e statements, every one of those in the moments where an account holder can either set it up in two minutes or call into your support group. So guides close that gap.

Which is why you can see faster time to value and less attrition right out of the gate. And the second is feature awareness. This is where, you know, you have account holders who log in every week. Maybe they’ve never touched credit score or card controls or mobile deposit. maybe they don’t have any alerts set up or don’t know that, you know, spinning habits are available to them. So I wouldn’t, you know, say to

promote the everything to everyone all at once, but engage lets you target those specific messages to specific behavior and actually drive adoption and not just impressions. And then the third is like deep feature onboarding for anything more involved, like business user setup and business payments, templates, a structured like step-by-step walkthrough replaces that support call.

And it also nudges people towards like templates for tasks that they’ll repeat. And that pays off both in satisfaction and lower support costs.

speaker-3 (33:55.704)
That’s fantastic. I know I unfortunately don’t have the number in front of me, but we know that when someone is a new customer member, they go through digital account opening and they’re within digital banking. Like if you’re not able to really onboard them and get them engaged, there’s a lot higher of a chance that those are going to become inactive users, right? So I think this is such a relevant conversation as people are thinking about.

Not only streamlining the account opening experience, but then also like really deepening those relationships and priming them for expansion and ideally a long customer or member relationship. So we’re gonna bring the conversation back to personalization. And this looks vastly different from today than it did even five years ago. So Andrea, I’m gonna have you answer this first question.

For elevations, how are you thinking about personalization today?

speaker-0 (34:52.62)
I think our definition of personalization has really evolved quite a bit. you know, we used to personalize based on the demographic data points that we could glean. So age, location, you know, and kind of grouping people together by assumed lifestyle needs. now I think we’ve come to understand that.

Not every 35 year old is in the same life stage or on the same journey. so you know, it’s really about getting down to that user level need. Like who are you as a user? Not who are you or member, I should say, really, not just a user, but and really understanding where you’re at and what we can do for you at that moment in time. So I think it’s gotten a lot more granular in in

Concept for us.

speaker-3 (35:50.83)
Appreciate that insight. Tiffany, how does this compare to your strategy at Valley Strong and how you’ve might have changed your view on personalization?

speaker-1 (36:02.796)
Yeah, I think I would definitely echo the same message. I think a few years ago, personalization was looked more as simply putting the right offer in front of the right member, right? Or at least according to our assumptions. And I think today we think about it much more broadly. it’s not just about marketing or product recommendations. Instead, it’s more about creating that digital experience again that feels more conversational, relevant.

more helpful. And so I would say from a digital perspective that personalization today means we are using the data and member behavior to help reduce friction and to help anticipate their needs. If a member is trying to complete a task, how can we help them complete that task even faster? If they’re showing signs that they may benefit from a certain tool,

How do we place that tool and educate them about that tool in a much more simpler, you know, natural way? And so I think for us, when we compare it to what we thought about a four a few years ago, it’s no longer a future state idea for us. Today it is, it has become a part of how we think about the overall member experience.

We want to make it less transactional and we want to make it more relationship driven.

speaker-3 (37:36.75)
Definitely. And Lesly, from your point of view as the person building the product, how do you balance delivering greater personalization while also keeping that experience simple and intuitive?

speaker-2 (37:50.91)
I would say that when something is genuinely personalized, it feels like it was built for you. It feels like whoever is picking opening your app, it feels like it’s built for them. And so it’s not about showing someone more. It many times is about showing them less of what just doesn’t apply to them and then going ahead and showing them what does. so from a product

Point of view, we’re focusing on giving FIs the tools to make those prioritization calls themselves and the data that they need to back up their decisions and make those decisions because you know your account holders better than any out of the box rule will. And so a simple and simple and personalized aren’t actually intentional. Done well personalization is what makes an experience feel

Simple.

speaker-3 (38:50.99)
Yeah, I love that. so moving on to this next point in our discussion, you know, personalization strategy is great, but the other thing that we have to talk about is really measuring success of those investments. So we know that the goalpost keeps moving as financial institutions are really striving to keep up. And we know that investing in the right tech’s one thing, but also the on the other hand, we want to make sure that we’re also measuring what that investment’s actually doing for your institution.

So digital banking success has been has long been thought about in terms of login rates and active users. But looking beyond that, what metrics do you think matter most when it comes to evaluating the impact of digital engagement solutions like Alkami Engage? And Andrea, I will have you go first.

speaker-0 (39:42.874)
Yeah. I mean, I feel like I am just hitting the tip of the iceberg on how we can leverage all of the data and all of the monitoring that Alkami Engage offers. you know, some things that I have really come to appreciate about it is the ability to compare across segments. So being able to maybe carve out your most engaged members and

maybe compare that to your lesser engaged segments and you know really identify like what is it that you know what is the model that we’re looking for of our most valuable relationships and how can we emulate that and increase that amongst these lesser engaged users. So you know I think it’s generally just trying to drive more of that stickiness.

Today, a feature that I came across or a data point that I came across was time to adoption. And that’s just so fascinating to me. it was actually in relation to our credit score tool. And I was surprised to see that it could be something like 14 to 30 days. I would have assumed that’s like one of the very first things people are excited to learn about. so you know, one KPI that I’m going to define is narrowing that window, I think.

That’s way too long for people to be on top of their credit score. there’s also, you know, journey fallout. there’s guide engagement. There’s so many metrics that you can dive into. It’s really endless within this platform. And again, I’m only at the beginning stages. So there’s a lot I don’t yet know. And I think that it’s going to be an extremely powerful tool for us.

speaker-3 (41:37.932)
Well, I’m excited to follow along in on your journey. And I really love that example that you mentioned of just like drive trying to drive adoption with your members and really getting into those insights to see what you can discover about them and how to better appeal to them. You’re both fairly new to leveraging Alkami Engage. When thinking about some of your early wins, what are some of the early results that you’ve seen at Valley Strong?

speaker-1 (42:05.41)
Yeah, so earlier I mentioned about the three areas that we first evaluated in order to understand which journey we wanted to optimize first. And so we did decide to move forward with our e-statement campaign first. and the results from that were phenomenal. So what we decided to do is we decided to test the waters at first. for the first two weeks of June, we had

three separate statement campaigns running in online banking simultaneously. We had it was an onboarding guide, we had a banner, and we had a card all displayed to members who were not currently subscribed to statements electronically. And so even with all three placements visible, we were only able to get roughly around 200 users to engage with the content.

and so it gave us disability, right? But it didn’t really give us like the full picture of what members were doing after they saw the message. for the second half of June, we decided to launch an e-statement campaign through Alkami Engage. And like I said, the difference was immediate. Like we were able to see the full end to end member journey, including all of those who engaged, what actions they took, those who dismissed,

you know, the campaign that that popped up on their page. And we were able to see right on the dashboard exactly which members subscribed. And that two-week campaign using Alkami Engage actually brought us about 400 members who had enrolled into eStatements. I mean, literally doubling the amount of subscribers that we had with only a quarter of the effort that you know we had used.

Trying to get the three separate campaigns out that we published in the first half of June. And so that campaign was done on desktop. we are working on publishing the exact same campaign on mobile. And I am fairly confident that once we are able to push it out on mobile, we’re expecting these numbers to probably triple, honestly. And so this use case helped support the idea that.

speaker-1 (44:21.288)
Instead of putting messages in front of your users and hoping that they take action on it, we were able to create a more intentional experience for our member rather than, you know, waiting on them. We were able to present them with the process that we felt like would be as easy as possible for them to take action. And I mean, they took it. So we’re very excited on what we’ve seen so far with Alkami Engage.

speaker-3 (44:52.238)
Yeah, I’m really looking forward to following along on those results, not only from the amount of trees that you’re saving and the messaging that you’re positioning, but also from the cost savings too from that statement adoption. Before we get to our final question in our discussion, we have one last poll. So for our audience, please stick around to hear the last insight from our speakers on the future of banking and how to effectively deliver relationship banking at scale.

But if you liked what you heard today and want to see the product in action, please complete the poll and the Alkami team will follow up with you to schedule a demo. All right. Let’s wrap up our conversation. Looking ahead, what do you think will differentiate the best digital banking experiences over the next two to three years? Tiffany, we’ll go with you first on this one.

speaker-1 (45:45.944)
Yeah, great question, Molly. So I would say looking ahead, I personally think the best digital banking experience is gonna be the ones that feel less transactional and more like a guided relationship, right? Like members are going to expect us to know them, to understand what they’re trying to accomplish and make it easier for them to make to take the next best step. And so to me that means that digital experiences

are going to need to be proactive. They’re going to have to be personalized, but also balance that simpler experience. I think the one thing that we always keep in the back of our minds is at the end of the day, all financial institutions, we all offer this same similar but competitive services, right? And so how do we stand out and offer that more personalized experience that’s different than maybe what these bigger banks have?

and so with Alkami Engage, I would say that in the next two to three years, we will be able to use this data and insights to create those moments that maybe bigger banks are currently offering. and I think that the institutions who can do this well will be able to create a more conversational experience through digital. And I know that a few of us spoke on this earlier in the webinar, but

We really want to make sure that our members who are leaving our branches feeling confident, that they are also leaving the digital experience feeling confident as well. And so we just have to continue to balance convenience with transparency. we don’t want to put our members in a position where they feel targeted, right? we don’t want members to feel like their devices are listening in on their conversation. So with the right tools, such as Alkami Engage.

we can create the digital banking experience for them that is responsible but also meaningful.

speaker-3 (47:46.71)
Awesome. Thank you so much, Tiffany. and we’ll have you go next, Andrea, to talk about what do you think will really differentiate the bet what do you think will differentiate the best digital banking experiences over the next two to three years?

speaker-0 (48:03.322)
I’m s I’m going to steal some of Lesly’s earlier comments and sentiments, but I think less will be more. I think making it more minimalist so that everything that you are seeing is truly relevant for you will be where the value lies because you’re really going to want to pay attention and engage. I also think intelligence is going to be huge. So

Giving empowering our members with their own data and making that data usable to them in a way that really supports their financial journeys and health.

speaker-3 (48:43.392)
Absolutely. And Lesly, I’ll have you bring us home. What do you think from Alkami’s perspective? what do you think will differentiate the best digital banking experiences over the next two to three years?

speaker-2 (48:55.946)
Yeah, I will just repeat that good digital banking will become turned from to that to anticipating it. Right. So we Molly, we saw it in our research. Forty-four percent of digital banking Americans already wish their provider did a better job of anticipating their needs. And I think the gap is only going to get more visible as neobanks and larger institutions raise that bar.

So it’s going to be about who it’s not going to be about who has the most features anymore. It’s going to be about who understands the behavior well enough to make digital experiences feel like it actually knows you. And that is what turns a digital banking app from a utility into the relationship itself. And on the flip side at Alkami, we with an aggregated view, our product team.

is viewing this data and actively looking at trends to make sure that we understand those across our entire customer base and sharing those insights with our advised to help them succeed, improve the product based on everything we see.

speaker-3 (50:07.168)
Well, thank you all of you so much. I hope everyone on today’s webinar found this conversation as insightful as I did. I know as a marketer, content ideas are generating a lot. I’m thinking about what else we can get out of this conversation. And I just wanted to extend a big thank you to our two banking leaders for sharing their time and perspective with us. and to all of you who joined us today on our webinar.

Thank you so much and we hope you have a great rest of your day.w