Language, Relevancy And Personalization: How To Build Trust In Banking Comms

C-Suite Scoops

When it comes to banking, trust is paramount. It’s crucial to a stable, thriving, and healthy banking and lending system. However, in an ever-changing regulatory environment—and following the news that the U.S. Treasury is planning to take a larger role in bank regulation—consumer confidence in banks is poised to take a major hit. In fact, recent data from Thales found 56% of consumers don’t trust banks with their data, meaning there’s a long road ahead.

The unexpected feels particularly scary for consumers in periods of economic turbulence. My advice to marketers at financial institutions is to lean into assurance-forward messages, emotional language, and personalized communications to reassure current and prospective customers that their needs and financial health are top of mind. Regardless of the subject matter or audience segment, prioritize both agility and responsibility in your messages while remaining compliant. Here’s how you can strike this important balance and maintain critical customer relationships through times of change.

Why Language Matters

Money elicits emotion. A recent study by Credit One Bank found that nearly two-thirds (59%) of Gen Z feel stress and anxiety about their finances, while only 29% of baby boomers feel the same (in fact, 61% of baby boomers actually feel confident and in control). Adopting an emotionally intelligent and contextualized approach to customer experience can strengthen customer relationships and encourage long-term loyalty. For example, the most successful emotional drivers in anxious times emphasize phrases that reinforce feelings of safety in financial decisions.

Check out these examples of messages related to credit card rates that emphasize emotions of safety:

You're covered with <bank> (safety)
We’ve checked and you have the best rate offered on the XYZ product (safety)
We're helping you stay in control with fixed rates (safety)
Rest assured <first_name>, we're dedicated to getting you the best rate (safety)
We are here to answer any questions you have about rates (safety)
We're making sure your information is up to date (safety)

Each of these messages covers unique topics—making them ideal for different audiences—but they share safety-based language, reassuring customers that their banks have their backs, promoting ease of use, and helping customers to feel heard.

Keeping Your Marketing Communications Relevant

Relevance is equally important as emotion in building consumer trust. Tired, overdone, and stale messages aren’t likely to keep customers’ attention, let alone their trust. A consumer banking study found that for 45% of respondents, unengaging content did not build their trust in their bank.

As needs change, so should marketing content. By building fresh and engaging communications for each customer segment (such as customers with no credit history versus those with a rich credit history), institutions can nurture trust, ensuring consumers feel understood by the company that they chose to bank with. In fact, there are material consequences to using a generic, one-size-fits-all approach to your communications: a recent report found 45% of consumers might switch banks for ones that deliver more personalized digital experiences.

Here’s an example centered on communicating with customers interested in life insurance policies. You’ll see how the messaging varies depending on the audience’s financial status or stage of life:

Audience	Emotion & Narrative	Message
Younger consumers	Encouragement & Customization	Protect the ones you 🥰 with a personalized life insurance policy.
Affluent consumers	Achievement & Peace of mind	You’ve earned the peace of mind life insurance offers.
Consumers with tighter finances	Attention & Proactivity	You're prioritizing family with reliable life insurance coverage
Value-focused consumers	Gratification & Peace of mind	We're offering the protection of life insurance benefits

Building Trust with The Right Tools

Everyone wants the same thing from their bank or lender: a clear understanding of their financial situation that doesn’t add to anxieties around personal finances. But creating messaging that conveys this understanding is challenging to achieve at scale. Specialized AI tools can step in as a copilot, generating relevant marketing content informed by the unique emotional drivers that motivate customer behavior.

Leading solutions are also trained on pertinent regulations to ensure content is compliant, protecting brands and accelerating content review cycles with legal/compliance teams. The result is effective, compliant content that’s more agile and relevant than ever.

Where Banks Need to Go Next

Customer retention requires trust, especially during tense and uncertain times. Leaning into assurance-based, emotional messaging like safety and peace of mind—as well as prioritizing consumer preferences and financial situations—will help build consumer confidence and strengthen customer relationships.

Technology that continuously learns from what messages have worked and applies that intelligence into new campaigns keeps your content fresh, on-point, and most importantly, trust-based. It’s up to you to invest in consumer trust, or risk losing your customers altogether.

Mon, Jul 21, 2025

Lisa Spira

VP of Content Intelligence Persado

Lisa Spira is the VP of Content Intelligence at Persado, an AI for marketing company trusted by 8 of the 10 largest U.S. banks and 6 of the 7 top card issuers. She helps leading financial institutions elevate their marketing through AI-driven language and personalization. She focuses on the emotional impact of words on digital communications that drive trust and engagement.

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Banking Communication AI Marketing Emotional Language Financial Personalization Customer Trust Persado Financial Marketing Banking Trust Content Intelligence Personalization In Banking

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