Send the Word

by Ron Daly 

Charity begins at home - or in some cases, on your home page. 

As the head of DigitalMailer, I get to see every email that goes out on behalf of our clients. I take a few moments to read things over and get a sense of what CUs are up to all over the country. Right here in Northern Virginia, Belvoir FCU has teamed up with Cell Phones for Soldiers to provide our service men and women with cell phones to call home. 

 

 

This was something I'd heard of before, but the full story of Cell Phones for Soldiers is really quite impressive. 

From Belvoir's marketing email: 

NARFE Premier says "Get on board!"

by Ron Daly 

[Read all about this story on CUTimes.com or at CUNAMarketingCouncil.org] 

NARFE Premier FCU in Alexandria, VA started using the Automatic Relationship Builder last summer to bring new services and products to members' attention. 

Wanting to branch out into the world of email marketing, NARFE Premier marketing director Jessie Dederer turned to the team at DigitalMailer. Our recommendation? An on-boarding program aimed at new members who may not have been aware of everything NARFE Premier had to offer. 

On-boarding campaigns are aimed at members that have just joined a credit union. The Automatic Relationship Builder takes in new member lists and sets up a series of emails to be sent to those members across a few weeks. A simple welcome email is followed by information about loans, mortgages, HELOCs, credit cards, checking accounts, money market accounts - anything the credit union thinks would be of interest to new members. 

NARFE Premier's own campaign proved to be a great success. Deposit accounts increased 24%, while loan accounts increased 190%. From the CU Times article on NARFE Premier's on-boarding campaign:

"This helped trim our marketing budget by 40%, and we are looking at finishing the year spending 50% less," said Dederer. "It's a win-win for everyone. We save money and are still able to deliver the same message with better results while reaching our members the way they want."

Want to get started with your own, customized on-boarding program? Click here to contact us.

Your chance to join the NACUSO Technology Advisory Board

From the CU Soapbox and Robbie Wright of the Life and Times of a CU Employee comes an exciting new contest - read more below!

Most everyone in the credit union industry has heard of NACUSO.  The National Association of Credit Union Service Organizations is the trade association for CUSO’s across the nation and has been doing great work in encouraging collaboration between credit unions.  NACUSO has a number of advisory boards and I happen to sit on their Technology board.  As is the norm with advisory boards, our membership is fairly fluid and we are always looking for new talent and news ways of using technology to further credit unions.

We currently have an opening on the Technology Advisory board and will be looking to fill that position by the end of January.  In the same vein as Young and Free and Forum Solutions‘ search for a speaker for their symposium, we will be hosting an online video contest for our vacant spot.

If you think you have what it takes to encourage credit unions to collaborate,  adopt new technologies, and want to be on the bleeding edge of financial services technologies, bust out that video camera.  The submission deadline is January 15th and we’ll announce the new member on January 29th, 2010.

To submit your video, upload it to a video sharing site such as Vimeo, Viddler, or YouTube (anyone with robust sharing capabilities) and shoot an email with the information .  I’ll post your submission to the NACUSO website.  We’ll throw a poll up on the website beginning in January to let everyone start voting and give us some insight before we make a final decision.  Feel free to leave a comment with any questions or shoot me an email.

Oh, by the way, you might want to know what you are getting yourself into.  At this point, we have a monthly conference call that lasts less than an hour and tend to trade emails back and forth throughout the month.  This may change slightly in the future as new projects come along, but that’s about it.  Ideally, one should be able to attend the NACUSO Annual Convention each year, but it is not mandatory.

We’re looking forward to everyone’s submissions!

Where are all the Credit Union saplings?

by Ron Daly

There are two things I never want to do: 

1) Become President of the United States,

2) Start a credit union.

I guess I'm not alone on #2, since only two credit unions were started in 2009 (click here for the story). Only two?!? That seems...well, not too far off, given what we know about the past year. Failures, mergers, and acquisitions in the financial industry have become part of the territory. While banks have failed at a much higher/faster rate than CUs (106 bank failures to ~20 CU failures, according to this story), credit unions still have cause for concern.

Does that mean that the need for credit unions is waning? I don't think so. There are underserved communities that could really benefit from a credit union. Consider forestry - when a tree is cut, dies, or is destroyed by fire, a new sapling must be planted to bring the forest back to life. But where are all the credit union saplings?

Part of the problem is in scale. How do small, newly-formed CUs gain ground when they have to deal with competition from a decades old, multi-million (or billion) dollar credit union or bank? So much goes into bringing services to members that many startups are hamstrung by the "need" to bring everything members want the moment your charter is approved. "Start small", it seems, is no longer an option. 

One possible solution was put forward by Robbie Wright over at "Life and Times of a CU Employee" came up with an interesting white-paper called "Outsourced CU". His suggestion? A CUSO that starts credit unions. They manage facilities, they provide training, they handle marketing, they provide insurance, etc. This basic skeleton of services would be brought in to support the chartered CU and help it find and serve its market. Is now the right time for a service such as this?

I don't know whether this CUSO would prompt more folks to start up CUs, but I will say this: I do know WHAT the future of an industry is when new players don't enter the industry.

Your comments/thoughts are appreciated, as always.

What do you MEAN, all your marketing's spent on calendars?!?

by Ron Daly

Came across this article on the brand new CU Water Cooler blog. It's called "Top Five Myths You Hear Credit Unions Say" by Mark Arnold. It's worth the read, and it made me want to speak out on two of the five "myths". 

(2) We can’t afford to do __________________

Insert your own project, new product, technology, marketing idea or anything else that gets pinched in a tight budget. Let’s be honest: the truth is you probably can afford to do the initiative, you are just choosing not to do it. So don’t blame money: blame your priorities. If you really want to accomplish your goal then you might have to tweak other areas.

I tend to agree with this. True, many CUs have been dealing with diminished budgets and a smaller staff, but that might just be the right time to bring in a creative solution. Such was the case recently with Northwest FCU's member relations department and their collection email series (click here to read about this). DigitalMailer gave a hand, saved them some money and continues to streamline collections calls.

(4) We have to reduce the training and marketing expenses because of the budget 

 Every year is a tough year on the budget. But if you continually cut the training and marketing budgets in the short term, you only harm your organization in the long run. Stephen Covey said it best, “If you have to cut things out you just cut people; you cut training and development; kill the goose that lay the golden egg; for a short term period of time you improve your profits. But then you’ve liquidated the human resources…in the long run you have to live with the consequences of a dead goose.” The truth is you don’t have to cut training and marketing; now is the time to invest in these key areas.

When it comes to marketing, cutting back is always a heartbreak for the folks that make it happen. 

Denise Wymore has been writing about the death of "traditional advertising" on her blog for the past week or so (click here to read her "RIP" series). Lots of folks have had to readjust, pushing and pulling from print, billboard, and even phone book (that post is a funny one) to get into email marketing and other forms of electronic marketing. Creative marketers find ways to MAKE their budgets work - even in a recession. 

One thing that was (and is) a pet peeve of mine is branded calendars. Calendars are expensive to print, exhaustive to get rid of and are useless to most working professionals. When your phone can plug into your computer and share a common calendar that sends you little messages when your to-dos are coming up, a little pocket calendar doesn't mean much to you. There are whole stores that just sell calendars with whatever you want as the month-to-month theme, why bother shoving stock-photos of mountains and grass at people? Giving away calendars is a money dump for your marketing budget - period. Let's put that money to better use. 

Come on, I KNOW you people have your pet peeves about what your marketing budget "has to have" every year. Tell us all about it, and what you'd do with that money if you could spend it how you wanted.

In Defense of Email

by Ron Daly

I had this article dropped on my desk earlier this month - "Why Email No Longer Rules..." by Jessica E. Vascellaro at the Wall Street Journal. I sat on it for a while, trying to figure out what to say about it.

Long story short: Wrong. 

Now, I can't disagree with a few key points brought up by Ms. Vascellaro. These are: 

1. Twitter, Facebook, and Social Media are set to "profoundly rewrite the way we communicate" - I'd argue they already have. You don't have to do ALL your communicating through email, the way we had to in the 90s. We've got blogs, Facebook walls, Twitter feeds, Flickr streams, etc. 
2. Social media is a constant stream of information that, often, can't be squelched or silenced, and can cause "communication overload". Email can be guilty of this, too - if you let it.

But some of Ms. Vascellaro's observations left me scratching my head. For one, the statement about email being "better suited to the way we used to use the Internet", and how that doesn't cut it anymore. Why, exactly? Because we don't "log on" and "log off" and we're always patched in to our inboxes? I'd think that makes email MORE important. The first thing that happens when you get a smart phone after it's set up by your carrier, they enter your email accounts so you can read emails as they come. We're walking around with our inboxes in our pockets. That somehow makes email less important or less useful than Twitter? I don't buy it. 

The article goes on to say that Nielsen Co. put email users at 276.9 million people in the US, Europe, Australia and Brazil, whereas there are 301.5 million using social-networking and community sites. Not knowing which study was which (maybe one of our many marketing-focused readers can leave us a link in the comments?), I'm curious about what qualifies as a "community site". Is a blog one? How about a personal web page? Are they counting multiple addresses for single users? I'm not sure how they're qualifying accounts and users, but I do know this - there are few (if any) online services one can use without an anchor email addresses that the administrators of said service can send emails to for confirmation, announcements, complaints, etc. Like bank accounts, your social media accounts need your "permanent address", somewhere they can reach you when you need to be alerted to something. Email addresses are likely fitting into their place - as the "if all else fails" means of communication online. 

I mentioned earlier the thought of "squelching" social media. In the article, Vascellaro talks about how "more sophisticated" filtering systems are necessary and how certain sites like Facebook are letting you choose who you read when you log in, and who gets left out of your communication flow.

 How to you suss out who's worth listening to and who isn't? Twitter recently announced they'd be adding "lists" - ways of sorting your followers/followees so that you only have to read the posts of select users (side note - you can share these lists with other users, which I think is kind of neat). Want to know the easiest way to sort out what you want to read/don't want to read and who to contact or avoid? Put those people in your address book IN YOUR EMAIL ACCOUNT. Seems simple to me, but hey, I'm no "new media guy". 

Finally, there's the security issue. Yes, maybe your email account can be hacked. But there's a history of stronger and stronger security around email accounts as the need to transfer data has become greater and the kind of data being transferred via email has increased in size and importance. The same can't be said of Twitter, which is scaling but still behind the curve on security. Not that Twitter is completely unsecure or unaware of their security issues, but they've been slow to let people verify accounts that they use for business communication (a bitter pill for some of our associates - read here). Also, so many "companion sites and services" are being made for Twitter every day that passwords and usernames are being thrown around like confetti.

This article seems critical of Social Media in this respect, noting that personal information is flowing more freely these days. At best, personal info can be insightful or entertaining. But it can also be downright annoying ("Great, you had oatmeal for breakfast. Thanks.") or even compromising to your online security. Remember Sarah Palin's email breach last year? It all came down to a password that hackers found fairly easy to guess based on public information about her. All that loose information that people treat as "unimportant" can actually be used against you. 

The article gives a person a lot to think about, but I think it's overshooting when it says that email doesn't "rule" anymore. Email still has its place - the cornerstone of online communication, the best way to reach someone who you just can't get ahold of otherwise. 

While Some See Red, Old Hickory Credit Union is Seeing Pink.

by Ron Daly

I'm sure football fans have noticed all the pink surrounding their favorite teams, cheerleaders and even stadium equipment the past few weeks. Sports Illustrated even "went pink" in its most recent issue, all to acknowledge the fight against breast cancer. I saw a great program go across the DigitalMailer production line this week and wanted to share it with everyone.

For the month of October, which is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Old Hickory CU is working hard to increase awareness and contribute to cancer research. Their approach, outlined here in their monthly "Money Memos" newsletter, which by the way is pink this month, is threefold:

1. A team of Old Hickory CU employees will be participating in the Nashville Making Strides Against Breast Cancer event on Saturday, Oct. 24. Their goal is to donate $2500 to the American Cancer Society;

2. Old Hickory CU is selling pink umbrellas for $15, with $7 of that going to the American Cancer Society. These umbrellas also come with a set of coupons for credit union services that benefit members; and

3. All branches are offering information on breast cancer awareness, as well as supplemental cancer insurance policies.

Anti-Social Media

by Ron Daly

Back in April of this year, Jimmy [my Creative Media Director] pointed me to this story that unfolded on Twitter. It was the story of "The Credit Union Receptionist", a young lady kept a personal blog and wrote a lot of unsavory things about coworkers and members in one particular blog post. That post was read by several credit union muckity-mucks, who launched into a lengthy analysis of the situation. 

After a long list of thoughts/feelings shared on the subject and a LOT of cross-talk on Twitter, someone called the credit union to speak with the young woman who wrote that blog post and informed her that it was probably a bad call, public-relations-wise, to talk about people's bad breath and call them stupid. She took the blog post down and apologized, and everyone learned a valuable lesson. 

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. 

One Spot, One Thought

Most think that the opportunity for credit unions to grow market share and deepen member relationships has never been better. After all, banks and other financial entities (i.e., CIT) have been falling down for over a year now. 

Shari Storm - Chief Marketing Officer for Verity Credit Union, blogger and author of the book Motherhood is the New MBA - is a fan of making the message simple, clear, and focused. We were very excited to have her as this week's guest author, and we think her advice is very sound. 

You fill your direct mail pieces with every offer available. You mail them twice a month. Your numbers barely shift. What gives? Maybe there is such a thing as "too much to choose from".  

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Throughout my 15 year marketing career, I have had some sort of variation on this conversation at least one million times.

Me (or my team): "Our plan is to tell our checking account holders about our VISA card."

Someone else: "Why don’t we tell them about our car loans and mortgages too?" 

Someone else: "We should send them a menu of products we offer so they can choose from all 64. Who knows what they need right now?"

You can swap out the target and swap out the product, but the suggestion is always same – send as much information as possible. The more words, the better. 

Most marketers know that the opposite is true. There is an old adage, "If you tell them three things, you’ve told them nothing". Or, like Currency Marketing said when we were producing a radio commercial with them, "One spot, one thought".