Three steps for deepening engagement with members heading into a new year

The first quarter of the year can feel like a clean slate for many people, especially where money management is concerned. Calendar milestones like New Year’s, No-Spend February and spring cleaning create natural momentum for people to re-evaluate their spending, savings, cash flow and debt management plans.

Credit unions could be there for members during these moments of self-reflection and goal setting with personalized offers and solutions. By showing existing members how specific products and services may accelerate their unique personal finance plans, they help deepen engagement—and trust.

Over years of engagement with credit unions, our team has discovered that existing member relationships are best optimized by adhering to three best practices:

Credit union evangelists are intrinsically motivated to introduce more people to the credit union difference. That passion for spreading the movement is one of the credit union community’s greatest assets. At the same time, that passion can also generate a culture in which new growth eclipses organic growth, and the addition of new accounts becomes prioritized over optimizing existing ones. In reality, both new and organic growth strategies deliver real value to the credit union and can be run successfully in concert.

The prioritization of new growth happens frequently across industries, even though many new-business campaigns have proven much more expensive (and often less effective) than retention campaigns. In the pursuit of new business, organizations must pay for pricey marketing lists, contract with reputable identity verification vendors, and invest in staff time to deploy complex, multi-channel outreach strategies. Add to that the cost of onboarding new customers, and the most successful new-growth campaigns could easily become the costliest.

Within the credit union space, data shows new-member campaigns aren’t yielding the results credit unions expect, especially in context of the investment. For instance, a recent TruStage market research survey found that over a third of credit unions—36% of small and 34% of large—reported low response rates to new-member email campaigns as one of their top challenges.¹

To give existing-member campaigns their due, credit unions should make an intentional effort to set focused and measurable strategies for deepening engagement with existing members. And there’s a lot of opportunity on which to capitalize. Consumers today have an average of 7.1 financial products, but less than half of them are from their main financial institution.²

Modeling the low-cost-high-return potential of product penetration campaigns may get more credit union leaders excited about leaning in on organic growth strategy. When internally socializing this concept with new-growth advocates in particular, it can be helpful to emphasize the impact that positive word-of-mouth can have on expanding membership overall.

Once buy-in for existing-member campaigns is secured, strategists will want to come out swinging with the most appealing offers possible. For today’s consumer, that means tailoring messaging as tightly as possible to the individual being targeted, and importantly, reaching them at moments when they are most likely to engage.  

That takes data.

Unlike new-member campaigns, however, much of the data needed to fuel a personalized organic-growth campaign already exists within the credit union or is already being curated from third parties to run other areas of the credit union. Data from the core processing system, the customer relationship management system (CRM), established fintech partners, and the credit bureaus tell credit unions which products their direct and indirect members have, how their credit products with other providers compare to credit products held at the credit union, when they last engaged with the credit union, and even their preferred method of communication.

That’s information that could cost thousands—if not tens of thousands—to access from a marketing vendor for an external campaign. For internal campaigns, much of the data is already in-house.

Here again, the opportunity for impact is sizable. Just 25% of consumers believe their financial institution performs extremely well when it comes to being aware of important changes to their financial and personal situations.² Looking critically at the data a credit union already owns makes it possible for marketers to get the right products in front of them at the right time and at the right price.

For example, if the goal is to strengthen relationships with demand deposit account (DDA) holders, credit unions can start by segmenting members based on their behaviors to ensure offers are appealing. Offering two free overdrafts per month in exchange for setting up direct deposit would have limited value for members who rarely or never overdraw their accounts. Instead, the credit union could make the offer feel more personal to this group by acknowledging their responsible account history. A more appealing offer for these members could be a fee-free upgrade to an interest-bearing checking account, with an added incentive of an extra point for those who set up direct deposit.

Life stage, too, is important to consider. Offering the same investment product to someone early in their career and someone nearing retirement is, more often than not, a non-starter. It may even backfire, leaving the member with the impression the credit union has no idea who they are or what they are dealing with.

Just as members expect their credit union to know their life stages, they also expect their credit union to be there when they need it most. Embedded finance techniques have made this more possible, even for smaller credit unions.

Existing partnerships are a great place to start for credit unions just getting going with embedded finance techniques. The opportunity to extend a primary experience for mutual members can look one of two ways. Either the credit union embeds its financial products into the partner’s digital user experience or vice versa. By integrating things like life insurance into a mortgage experience or guaranteed asset protection (GAP) into an auto loan experience, credit unions help their partners scale while helping protect their members (and earning additional streams of non-interest income along the way).

Serving up pre-approved loan and deposit products to existing members in the digital banking channel is an example of a low-hanging-fruit embedded finance strategy. Combining credit union and bureau data to pre-screen members means only those members who qualify are presented the offers. What’s more, the qualified member is spared many of the steps in a typical online pre-approval process.

Adding in targeted partner products, like debt protection or savings vehicles, can create an even more robust and personalized experience for members. Labeling these products as “just for you” aligns with user expectations shaped by popular streaming and social media networks.

The strategies in this article can be implemented at any time. However, the increased consumer focus on personal finance at the start of a new year provides an ideal opportunity to solidify brand loyalty within an existing membership.

With successful internal socialization of organic growth strategy, affordable data analytics, and straightforward embedded finance techniques, credit unions may demonstrate their unique understanding of members. This approach helps earn them the privilege of supporting members at every stage of their individual financial journeys.

[1] TruStage, Internal/Proprietary Data, 2024

[2] Accenture, Banking Consumer Study: Reignite Human Connections, 2023

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