How to harness your data for personalized marketing that drives top-line results

Credit unions are sitting on a mountain of member data. That information can be a goldmine for understanding members, their needs, and what motivates them. Utilizing that data to drive a smarter approach to marketing is the key to building a personalized strategy to engage your members with relevant products and solutions.

Personalized marketing can drive five to eight times the response of “product of the month” marketing[1]. If any of that old marketing still exists at your credit unions, kill it! Product marketing doesn’t work anymore. Members need to feel connected and engaged like their institution cares about understanding them and their needs.

Useful data can come from a variety of sources:

• Internally – CRM, website, mobile app, core processing system
• Externally – Callahan’s, credit bureaus, third-party providers, public information

It can be very challenging for credit unions to harness data from so many locations, but they can be brought together either through a data warehouse solution or more traditional data reports from your IT or Business Intelligence teams. Select two primary data categories that help you select the right members – don’t choose products as part of the data, consider looking at transaction patterns and stage of life. Who is at the top of these lists? Understanding and knowing who is the most valuable to your organization and who has the potential to be valuable is critical. Often the most active members aren’t your most profitable, and it’s easy to get distracted in marketing by trying to serve your largest segments or most active members.

 

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