From Campaigns to a Growth Engine
Most
credit union marketing still runs on a quarterly rhythm. Leadership names a
priority, such as certificates this quarter, home equity the next. Someone
pulls a list, sends the email, tracks responses in a spreadsheet, and reports
the results. Then the calendar turns over, and the team starts again from
nothing.That
approach generates activity, but it struggles to generate consistent growth
because members don’t add products on the credit union’s schedule. They add
them when a paycheck changes, a certificate matures, a business takes off, or a
child leaves for college. A campaign that runs for six weeks in the spring
misses every member whose moment arrives in July. With competition for deposits
intensifying, those missed moments go to whichever institution shows up on
time.
A better
campaign won’t close that gap; however, a system that runs every day will.
The shortcuts and signals
that fall short
The most
heavily promoted answer right now is transaction insight: scan checking account
activity for payments to a competing lender, an insurer, or an investment app,
then market to the members who make them.
Those
signals are real, and they belong in the mix. They are also far narrower than
the pitch suggests. Run the math for a credit union with 50,000 members.
Perhaps half have a checking account. Of those 25,000, maybe 80% use it as
their main transaction account. The models read transaction descriptions, and
many descriptions say nothing useful, so a usable signal turns up for roughly
1,000 members. That is 2% of the membership.
And a
signal is not a lead. It tells the credit union that a member has a
relationship somewhere else. Winning that business is one more fraction of a
fraction. Marketers who have tried it tell the same story, reporting a couple
dozen leads the first week, and the same couple dozen the week after.
The larger
problem is who never appears. The member with only an indirect auto loan, the
saver with a single certificate, the business owner, and the household that
keeps its checking elsewhere generate no signal at all. Those are often the
relationships with the most room to grow.
Start with the whole
relationship
A growth
engine starts from everything the credit union already knows: who is in the
household, which products each member holds, how balances are trending, tenure,
loan maturities, digital activity, past campaign response, and what the
relationship is worth. Transactions are one input among many.
The
difference, though, shows up in the size of the audience. A transaction model
finds the handful of members who pay another mortgage servicer. A full
relationship view finds every member with signs of homeownership, deposit
capacity, a solid history with the credit union, and no home equity line. The
first list produces a few good conversations. The second is large enough to
move a growth number.
Four programs that never
switch off
With that
foundation in place, the calendar of one-off campaigns gives way to a small set
of standing programs.
Onboarding:
Every new member enters a sequence of touches
across the first few months: digital enrollment, direct deposit, and/or a
second product. One community bank I work with built a seven-touch, 120-day
program that automatically skips any product a customer already holds.
Nurturing:
Members who aren’t ready for an offer keep
hearing from the credit union with something useful, so the next offer doesn’t
arrive cold.
Cross-sell:
Members qualify for the next product as their
circumstances change; for example, balances grow, a
loan nears payoff, or a deep relationship shows an obvious gap.
Attrition:
Falling balances, fewer logins, and closed
products trigger outreach while there is still a relationship to save.
No one
launches these programs each quarter. Members enter when they qualify and exit
when they act.
And three
things separate a system from a string of efforts.
Audiences
that build themselves: Define
each audience once, as rules, and let it refresh as the data changes. That
requires the data to live in one place, cleaned and organized by member and
household, not scattered across the core, the lending system, and digital
banking.
Follow-up
that doesn’t depend on memory: Email
is only one response. A valuable member showing signs of leaving should
generate a task for a branch manager or loan officer, with the reason attached.
Staff then open their day to a short-list of members worth calling and why.
Results
measured in accounts and balances: Opens
and clicks describe the message. The board asks about the member: Did they open
the account? Did balances grow? Is the relationship more profitable? When those
answers come from the same system that built the audience, no one reconciles
spreadsheets, and each result sharpens the next round of targeting.
Separate
tools can handle each piece, but the trouble lives in the handoffs... the list
exported from one system and uploaded to another, the results that never make
it back.
This does
not require rebuilding the marketing department. Instead, pick one program.
Onboarding is usually the right first choice because the trigger is
unambiguous, the audience replenishes itself, and results show up within a
quarter.
Credit
unions can still run a campaign when a rate change or a new product calls for
one. Growth simply stops depending on someone remembering to build a list.
Every member is watched for the next need, staff know which conversation to
have, and each program keeps working while the team builds the one after it.
About Author:
Keith Henkel is the founder and CEO of FI Works, a Relationship Intelligence and Engagement Platform for community banks and credit unions. He brings over 30 years of experience in financial technology.
Keith Henkel is the founder and CEO of FI Works, a Relationship Intelligence and Engagement Platform for community banks and credit unions. He brings over 30 years of experience in financial technology.
Before founding FI Works in
2004, Keith served as CTO of Acxiom Corporation’s database marketing business,
leading data integration and real-time marketing innovations. Previously, at
ALLTEL Information Services (now part of FIS), he led the development of
award-winning banking technology solutions. He began his career at Systematics,
Inc., building the first PC-based asset/liability management system.
Keith holds a bachelor’s
degree in economics and business administration from Rhodes College in Memphis,
Tennessee.