In Part 1 of this series, we talked about trust, compliance, and the caution financial marketers need to exercise when approaching artificial intelligence (AI). Our guiding principles of discernment and transparency aren’t just buzzwords; they shape the way we explore and adopt new technologies on behalf of our clients.
But, this article isn’t about guardrails, it’s about gears. We want to show you some of the incredible values and benefits RAIN is seeing from AI in May of 2025.
Google, Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, and all the other major ad platforms and DSPs have proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) tools built into their platforms to help marketers optimize campaign performance. We’re making use of these in three key areas:
AI helps us understand who’s most likely to engage with your brand — and where to find them. These tools analyze past campaign performance, user behaviors, and platform interactions to help us build smart, strategic audience segments. So whether we’re trying to reach future homeowners, car loan seekers, or Gen Z savers on their phones during a lunch break, we’re using real data to guide our targeting decisions.
And because we work in the financial space, we also have to respect strict ad category rules. These AI-powered tools help us expand our reach responsibly, finding new audiences without crossing compliance lines.
Olympians work on shaving time off transitions (like baton handoffs or flip turns) because they know faster pivots mean better performance. We’re not world-class athletes… but we are world-class marketers with clients who certainly appreciate that we can change direction on any campaign when necessary, without losing momentum. That’s all thanks to real-time AI insights that tell us when we need to tweak content or redistribute ad spend based on which channels are (or aren’t) leading to conversions.
Programmatic advertising has been around for over a decade, and while it started as a way to automate ad buying with predefined rules, today’s platforms have taken it several steps further. Now, these tools are built on adaptive machine learning models that adjust bids, placements, and targeting based on live data and performance patterns — all within a set of guardrails and constraints we can set to ensure that any automatic changes made stay within the legal and ethical boundaries required by banks and credit unions. The shift from static rules to responsive, live data-fed decision-making is what moves programmatic buying into the realm of true AI, and boosted its effectiveness for managing campaigns at scale.
This evolution helps us dynamically allocate budgets, test new placements, and maximize ROI in real time — without giving up the control or oversight financial institutions demand.
AI doesn’t just power our campaigns; it powers the team behind those campaigns. Everyone on our team is subscribed to whatever AI tools they need specific to their department, and leadership is glad to make the investment because it makes us faster, sharper, and better able to spend time where it counts: deep research, creative thinking, and high-level analysis that constantly challenges the status quo moves the needle for our clients.
Here are three of the many practical ways we’re utilizing AI tools above and beyond the standard practices you read about every day on LinkedIn:
We’re using AI to analyze what’s worked in the past — and help us make it even better. These tools scan creative assets, identify top performers, and give us insights into what resonates with different audiences.
It also speeds up brainstorming and A/B testing, so we can move from concept to final edit faster. Large Language Models’ natural language processing make thesaurus.com look like the dinosaur it’s always sounded like. And don’t worry — AI might help us draft or explore options, but no creative or copy leaves our door without a human polishing it first.
Our engineering team members (who have all been doing this since long before LLMs existed) work on technical marketing, our proprietary campaign management and reporting platform, and our website. They've fallen in love with the ability to save time with the simpler coding and debugging tasks that plague all programmers.
Sometimes, it helps to hear your own ideas said back to you — with options. We use GPTs and tools like Grammarly to rephrase messaging in different tones, levels of formality, or a defined brand voice. This helps us calibrate the best fit for our audience and explore new angles without starting from scratch.
New AI-based tools are being released every week. Here are just a few areas we’re exploring now, and that we're excited about implementing in the near future:
We're researching and working on internal tech that will help us evaluate and optimize ad campaigns across multiple platforms simultaneously, adjusting budgets and creative allocation in real time.
We're looking into tech that will combine platform data with internal benchmarks and AI insights to make campaign performance reports easier to analyze, interpret, double-check, and present.
Using machine learning models, we're looking into better ways to project future campaign outcomes based on historical data, market trends, seasonality, and dynamic external factors based on controllable levers. (Think: "what could we expect to happen if Fed rates are lowered?")
We're testing ways to use LLMs to dynamically find and analyze competitors' ads, landing pages, and messaging to better understand market positioning and identify white space opportunities.
We're exploring AI tools that can localize campaign creative for different regions or customer segments, while preserving brand voice and compliance guardrails.
We’re a digital marketing agency for banks and credit unions, and that means we hold ourselves to higher standards when it comes to AI tool use and transparency. But we also believe that compliance doesn’t have to mean compromise.
With the right strategy and the right partner, AI can help you move faster, connect smarter, and maximize your budget. If you want to learn more about what an AI-powered digital marketing agency can do for your financial institution, let's talk. Just fill out the contact form below!
Most of our clients like us enough they stick with us for the long term. We think you will too.
