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Artificial intelligence is changing how financial institutions operate, but the real opportunity is not replacing people. It is empowering them. In this conversation, Meredith Olmstead sits down with HubSpot Partner Development Manager Clare Fallon to explore how AI is reshaping marketing, onboarding, and member engagement for credit unions and community banks. From abandoned applications to personalized onboarding journeys, the discussion highlights how institutions can combine automation and human connection to deliver smarter, more responsive experiences.
Key Takeaways:
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1. AI enables personalization at scale. AI tools can analyze member behavior and trigger personalized messaging based on where someone is in their journey. This helps institutions recover abandoned applications, improve onboarding, and deliver more relevant communication automatically.
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2. AI increases efficiency while keeping humans at the center. AI handles repetitive tasks like summarizing CRM data, drafting emails, and answering common questions. This allows teams to focus on strategy, service, and higher-value member interactions.
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3. Sales enablement drives measurable revenue. As automation increases, audiences are gravitating toward authentic, people-driven content. Video, social media, and influencer-style storytelling help build trust and emotional connection in ways automated content cannot.
Transcription:
Meredith Olmstead:
Hi there. I'm Meredith Olmstead, CEO and founder of FI GROW Solutions. We are a digital marketing and sales consulting agency, and we work exclusively with credit unions and community banks. And I am here with Clare Fallon. Clare is our partner development manager from HubSpot. So she is a guest today on our podcast. Say hi, Clare.
Clare Fallon:
Hi, Meredith. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
Meredith Olmstead:
We are so excited to have you. So Clare is joining us today because we wanted to talk about all things AI and HubSpot. And we wanted to talk about... Because HubSpot is always so ahead of the game when it comes to things. And so what we wanted to pick Clare's brain on today is what she is seeing in terms of trends around AI at HubSpot, and how those trends are applicable or really relevant for credit unions and community banks. So that's what I asked her to be on our podcast today.
So first of all, Clare, I want you to tell our listeners today, how is HubSpot implementing... Just in a nutshell, how is HubSpot implementing and using AI high level in the tool? Because we're a HubSpot agency. Now, of course, there's lots of other great tools out there. But of course, we love HubSpot. So how is AI front and center with the HubSpot tool right now?
Clare Fallon:
Yeah. I think that HubSpot is ahead of the game. And I think that what we're realizing is that it's not a nice to have, but a need to have for-
Meredith Olmstead:
Essential. Yeah.
Clare Fallon:
Yes, essential for customers moving into this era. We call it the agentic customer platform. And we use this AI layer called Breeze. So there's two larger ways that we're using AI inside of HubSpot. Our Breeze assistant, which is basically used to be called our copilot.
Meredith Olmstead:
Okay.
Clare Fallon:
It's a chat style assistant across the entire CRM of HubSpot. It summarizes a member for you basically, drafts a follow-up email basically for you.
Meredith Olmstead:
Gotcha.
Clare Fallon:
Show me X contacts in X segment. It shows your CRM data to you in real time, which is great. And it's right inside wherever you are in HubSpot. We also have Breeze agents, which we like to call them, at least I like to think of them as doers. It's not just your chatbot. So we have our customer agent, which is your 24/7 concierge. We have your prospecting agent, which watches intent signals, researches accounts for you, can create sequences and multi-step outreaches for you. And then the data agent, which is a way that you can do bulk research and enrichment across your contacts and companies.
So it's really taking the maybe mundane things that you do inside HubSpot or in your everyday work life that take hours and hours and hours and manual work and making it faster, making it better because it has all this access to everything, and making you better and giving you that time back to be able to really make strategic decisions, data-driven decisions, and be able to be there for your members if we're talking credit unions, or for your customers, for example. So really, truly, it's about a hybrid team, so humans plus AI.
Meredith Olmstead:
Gotcha. So that's the key. The big key isn't... It's not like AI is going to replace anybody-
Clare Fallon:
No.
Meredith Olmstead:
... in a sense. I mean, it's going to add efficiency. It's going to bring a little bit of scale to things that maybe wasn't there before. It might make you a little faster, might make your teams a little leaner, might bring a little bit more speed into the game, but you're not going to be taking people out of the equation. So you're really talking about hybrid teams. That's how HubSpot is looking at AI in the equation. It's humans plus AI, right?
Clare Fallon:
Exactly. It's your doers. It's an extension of you.
Meredith Olmstead:
Okay. So what does that look like then for credit unions and community banks? If we're talking about... Let's think about marketing to start with.
Clare Fallon:
Yeah.
Meredith Olmstead:
So the first thing that comes to mind for us is, say, applications, like loan applications, or applications to open an account for a credit union or a community bank. How could AI help with something like that? How does AI get in the mix with that? And it could be with the HubSpot tool or maybe with any other tool. How does AI help with that?
Clare Fallon:
I think a great way that AI could help with that is by using your workflows and your AI content to track people maybe who don't finish your application, and being able to nudge them back into finishing that application with personalized content at scale that your AI agents are creating, and being able to recover those abandoned apps. I think that's one way, especially for credit unions for application recovery.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah. Yeah. And even personalizing that content for sure.
Clare Fallon:
Yeah. Yeah.
Meredith Olmstead:
Trying to figure out where on that journey or where on that application they fell off, and maybe changing the follow-up messaging based on where in the application, if it was page one, page two, page three, where they fell off-
Clare Fallon:
Yes.
Meredith Olmstead:
... so that you can actually really nurture them back with something specific or with something a little bit different that was very specific to where they fell off of that application.
Clare Fallon:
Right. Because I think, now, it's really all about personalization, but personalization at scale.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah.
Clare Fallon:
So it would be so hard for someone to go in and identify... I mean, you could do it, but identify exactly where a potential member fell off on that application. With AI, you can create that workflow and send them that personalized email immediately.
Meredith Olmstead:
Sure. Now onboarding. One of the other things we do for a lot of our clients is we onboard new members or new customers. And I know we could do... HubSpot has a lot of ways to use and leverage, and we are even using other tools as well to leverage AI in onboarding journey. So what could you see? How could you see AI helping with onboarding new members or new customers? And that's like, sometimes, our digital onboarding campaigns can be six months long. Digital-
Clare Fallon:
Right.
Meredith Olmstead:
... onboarding campaigns can be six months long. So how can we leverage AI in those?
Clare Fallon:
Yeah. Well, we can definitely segment for the different products of a specific onboarding of each of the credit unions and what product that customer is going after. But besides you're just creating a workflow of a welcome, a digital banking setup, or a card activation email, we are using AI to be able to personalize that content and change that content, kind of what we were just talking about a second ago, based on where that potential member is in their life stage, what generation they are, where they are in their buying journey, what product they're going after. So again, that personalization at scale is where we're really seeing AI help these credit unions be able to access all of these different people.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah. And also just smarter emails that change based on what you know about people in real-time.
Clare Fallon:
Yes.
Meredith Olmstead:
Personalize that cross-selling, make sure that you're not trying to, say, tell somebody to activate a debit card if they've already activated that debit card.
Clare Fallon:
Exactly.
Meredith Olmstead:
Make sure that you're not cross-selling a product that they already have open. Those kinds of things.
Clare Fallon:
Exactly.
Meredith Olmstead:
So it's really real-time knowledge, and then changing up those emails and those experiences in real time.
Clare Fallon:
Absolutely. And one of my favorite things actually that we do have inside HubSpot is this send time optimization. So using the data that you have, our AI tools are able to call out the right email for the right member at the right time. So again, it feels super personalized, but you're doing it at scale, and you're accessing all of these different members at the same time.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah. The other thing that I really like about some of the AI features, and again, we're in HubSpot, so that's the one that I kind of fall back on, but is member service stuff. Because with a lot of the chatbot and the live chat features, you can surface the AI tools that are built into live chat and the chatbot will surface the most important or the frequently asked questions, the answers to those really, really quickly and keep people from going into the live chat or having to make phone calls into your call centers.
And so it keeps those call centers and those actual human people open for the more in-depth member interactions or the customer interactions that really need an actual live agent. And I know that that happens with HubSpot all the time.
Clare Fallon:
Yup. Yup.
Meredith Olmstead:
So you're asking a question on the HubSpot chat. And if it's an easy question, boom, you get an easy answer. But if it's a harder question, you get an actual person. So that's where you're talking about the hybrid model of an AI plus a human, right?
Clare Fallon:
Yes, absolutely. And everybody needs to reset their password. Everybody wants to know maybe where your ATM is located. And those are simple questions that our customer agent can answer. And it's always on. It's 24/7. And also, you can connect it with some of your socials, as well as a WhatsApp or an SMS, text message. I know I do love a text message when I get a reminder for an appointment or something like that.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah.
Clare Fallon:
But to your point, it keeps those humans, those customer service or customer success employees open to really dive into complicated issues that your members might be having, that if you didn't solve it right away, you could potentially lose a member. So you're answering those tier one questions easy, easy, easy. But then the customer agent will also route it to a human to be able to dive into a little bit more of a strategic answer.
Meredith Olmstead:
So last thing that we were talking about that I wanted to make sure we touched on is that with the shift that we've seen with AI is the shift back to people when it comes to content. And content and the types of channels that brands are creating content on. And I am seeing this... We were talking about this. I am seeing this with our clients on social media and on different channels where our clients are coming to us and saying, "Hey, we want to get back to creating content that is on people driven channels."
And I recently heard this on a HubSpot call. Tell me about this from the HubSpot side of things, and how this is being driven from this AI shift and things.
Clare Fallon:
Yeah. I really think it's so interesting. Because AI is so technical sometimes. So because of AI, we're shifting back to humans makes me very excited. But we're thinking a lot about short form and long form video and being able to reach your members in different forms, not just a single channel, but multichannel. And that includes YouTube, that includes a Reddit page, that includes influencer marketing.
Meredith Olmstead:
TikTok.
Clare Fallon:
Yes. TikTok.
Meredith Olmstead:
And Instagram and reels.
Clare Fallon:
Yes.
Meredith Olmstead:
And all these things. Yes.
Clare Fallon:
Exactly. Because a video shows a real human.
Meredith Olmstead:
Right.
Clare Fallon:
So it's someone that you can trust because it's that human connection is in there, and it connects people. I think we were talking about before, but it's like that human emotion, which is really exciting that we're bringing it back to that. Because you do have people who are using LLMs to go out there and search for information. So if we can use humans, use influencers, use our TikTokers to be able to put content out there, that content will then show up in an LLM search for that potential.
Meredith Olmstead:
Search results.
Clare Fallon:
Yes.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah.
Clare Fallon:
Yes.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah.
Clare Fallon:
But at the end of the day, going back to the top of what we were talking about, it's all about a hybrid situation.
Meredith Olmstead:
Right.
Clare Fallon:
It's all about AI plus humans, and elevating the work that the human is doing.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah.
Clare Fallon:
That's what I think it really is. So I'm excited that it's moving back towards social media.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah, it's funny.
Clare Fallon:
Back towards video. Yeah, we were just talking about this.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah.
Clare Fallon:
So I'm excited.
Meredith Olmstead:
It's kind of this full circle thing where it's like-
Clare Fallon:
Yeah.
Meredith Olmstead:
... AI is coming in and helping things become more efficient, but then it's also driving people back to looking for people again.
Clare Fallon:
Connection. Yes.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah. Yeah.
Clare Fallon:
Yeah.
Meredith Olmstead:
That's interesting stuff.
Clare Fallon:
Yeah.
Meredith Olmstead:
Well, thank you so much, Clare. This has been really useful.
Clare Fallon:
Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yes. And hopefully, we'll have you on the podcast again maybe in a couple more months. So I hope this was useful for our listeners. If you're interested in learning more about credit unions and community bank marketing, please visit us at figrow.com. We have lots of other podcasts, blogs, case studies, so we would love to have you there. And otherwise, let's just all get out there and make it happen.
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