We've Got our Very Own Goldmine!

by Ron Daly 

I don't have a Rolodex. I used to, but that was before it got cumbersome and Bill Gates put a contact program in whatever version of MS Outlook I'm using. For you Gen-Y folks, a Rolodex used to be the "big thing" and the thing to have if you were a businessperson. The little cards full of names that you kept on your desk so you could make calls and make deals were invaluable. They were worth a lot and salesmen were often hired based on their Rolodex, the information contained in them and who they knew. 

I read an eye-opening article called "The Price of a Marketing Lead"the other day. It breaks down information gathered about a lead into "basic fields" and "premium fields". Basics fields like first name, last name, home address and email addresses are worth $.60 each. Premium fields consist of things like Twitter names and home and cell phone numbers and command up to $2.27 each. I estimate that at $.60 per lead, the 30.9 million members in the 154 credit unions over $1 billion in assets are worth approximately $18.5 million dollars to outside marketing firms.

Eureka!

I know that we don't sell member information and I'm not advocating it, but what a valuable asset we have in our possession! Why would any CU pay through the nose for pay-per-click advertising to grow their business when we have a goldmine of information at our disposal already? Read about the Facebook vs Google Click wars. The numbers quoted above are just to give you an idea of what valuable information many have locked away and are not using it. For example, why are credit unions unwilling to use an email address or place outbound phone calls to reach your members and potential members and get them into a dialogue about the value of the CU and its products and services? Everyone else is doing it. 

My point is - communicating with members is constantly changing. There's real value in keeping all contact info current and using it. Gathering even more information like cell phone numbers and multiple email addresses increase the value of the asset we hold. We need to - 

1) be collecting (or updating) email addresses and phone numbers at every member touch point; 

2) get ready to collect and store more types of member contact information in our core systems; and 

3) better use the valuable information that we have at our fingertips to grow our businesses. 

It's time to take advantage of the data we have on hand.