Optimizing member onboarding and cross-sell with marketing automation

Intelligent and timely member onboarding can be one of the most effective growth strategies for credit unions wanting to improve engagement, brand recognition, cross-sales, retention and the lifetime value of a relationship.

A significant benefit to applying marketing automation to onboarding is the education of the large percentage of members who are acquired through the indirect auto channel. In many cases, the member is seeking a new car and not a new financial relationship, so connecting timely and intelligently with these new members is critical to cross-selling additional products and services, deepening the relationship, and ultimately, contributing to increasing revenues.

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation involves “triggers”, which can be activated automatically. Automatic triggers can incorporate any data field or combination of fields, including dates, amounts, yes/no decisions, workflow actions, and much more. Triggers are then used to execute on pre-defined automated steps. These steps, in the case of onboarding and cross-selling are specific, pre-edited communications, such as an introductory letter explaining the benefits of credit union membership, and delivered via email within an hour of an approved indirect auto loan. Because credit information has already been provided for the vehicle financed, the borrower can also be qualified for additional offerings, such as a credit card or GAP insurance. Marketing automation provides credit unions with key analytics associated with email campaigns, from click-tracking, to open-tracking and forward-tracking statistics, to maximize the effectiveness of onboarding and cross-selling efforts.

Why is Intelligent and Timely Marketing Important?

A recent report from Gallup revealed that 66 percent of the most engaged customers at banks believe the marketing communications they are receiving are ‘general in nature’ and not at all personalized. Even worse, 53 percent of the households surveyed said that the offers they receive are for a product/s they already owned.

“Despite the fact that banks and credit unions have talked about the importance of cross-selling for decades, few institutions have a disciplined process to take advantage of cross-selling opportunities that can grow operating revenue from existing customers. For those organizations that do have a process in place, studies show that many are not targeting the offers to reflect insights readily available, thereby annoying some of the best customers.” — Jim Marous, Publisher of Retail Banking Strategies for The Financial Brand

To improve both efficiency and effectiveness, credit unions should look at integrating a marketing automation platform into their consumer and mortgage loan origination systems. This tool will enable the ability to drip information and offers to engaged members, and provide individual members with real-time acceptance offers. The greater the personalization and the more targeted the offerings from the credit union, the higher the rate of acceptance.

What Kind of Success Are Credit Union’s Experiencing?

Credit unions that apply automated marketing tools and strategies to enhance their onboarding efforts and improve member engagement experience a number of key benefits. In particular, Intuvo clients have seen:

• Increased pull-through on loans funded. Digital Credit Union has seen pre-approved mortgage pull-through double, since implementing an automated marketing strategy.
• Measurable improvements in Net Promoter Scores. Baxter Credit Union has experienced a 20 point increase in their NPS.
• Reduced calls seeking product information and processing status updates. Digital Credit Union’s mortgage status calls dropped 15%.
• Lower new member and product acquisition costs. Increasing the percent of loans funded drives down marketing and product costs per loan.

Marketing automation has become increasingly vital as a driver for loan growth in today’s highly competitive marketplace, and is being implemented by credit unions of all sizes, seeking to innovate and create not only customer-centric products, but intelligent, timely and actionable offers for those products and services. Incorporating marketing automation tools will help to ensure that a credit union’s offering continues to keep up with the ever-changing demands of its members.