What’s your credit union’s Rotten Tomatoes score?

In the summer of 2016, Warner Bros. released Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The marketing was extraordinary, the trailers lit up social media, and the hype machine worked exactly as designed. Opening weekend delivered $166 million in domestic box office revenue, the highest March opening of all time.

By the second weekend, ticket sales dropped 69%.

The film did not fail because the marketing was bad; the marketing was exceptional. The film failed because the experience inside the theater did not live up to the promise that brought people through the door. Critics and audiences said the same thing: the story was disjointed, the pacing was off, and nobody felt compelled to come back or tell a friend to go see it.

Hollywood has a term for this. They call it "legs." A movie with legs holds its audience week after week. A movie without legs collapses after opening weekend, no matter how brilliant the trailer was. The industry learned long ago that the opening weekend is a measure of marketing, and everything after that is a measure of the product.

Credit unions have not learned this lesson yet.

Every credit union celebrates new-member numbers, board decks report accounts opened, and marketing teams are evaluated on how many people they bring in. And in isolation, those numbers can look impressive.

But here is the uncomfortable question nobody asks in most board rooms: how many of those members are still active 90 days later?

NCUA data from early 2025 shows that credit union membership grew by nearly 2.9 million over a twelve-month period. That is a strong opening weekend. But roughly 64% of those new accounts showed no meaningful activity beyond the initial sign-up. No deposit, no direct deposit, and no consistent use of any service. The accounts were opened and then abandoned, like a movie ticket torn at the door by someone who walked out before the second act.

Industry benchmarks tell a consistent story. Between 44% and 50% of new checking accounts go dormant within the first year. That is a second-weekend drop-off that would get a studio executive fired.

And yet, when credit unions confront these numbers, the most common response is to look at the marketing team and ask: "What can we do differently to keep these people engaged?"

That question has the right intention but the wrong target.

Think about what marketing is being asked to do in most credit unions. It carries the full weight of awareness, differentiation, and persuasion, moving a person from having never heard of your institution to choosing it over every other option available to them. That is a significant amount of work, and when someone fills out an application, it means the work succeeded. That is the equivalent of buying a ticket and walking into the theater.

Marketing cannot control what happens once they sit down.

What happens after the account is opened is handled by digital banking, operations, lending, the member experience team, and leadership. These are the director, the screenwriter, and the production crew. They are responsible for whether the film has legs.

Here is what the experience looks like at most credit unions today. A new member opens a checking account on a Tuesday evening and wakes up to a pleasant welcome email. That email is the last meaningful communication they will receive.

Over the next 30 days:

The member is sitting in a theater where the projector never turns on, and there is no usher in sight.

Compare that with what a neobank like Chime delivers. Twelve emails in the first fifteen days. Each one explains a specific next step: set up direct deposit, use fee-free overdraft, refer a friend. The member is never left wondering what to do. The experience has a script, a sequence, and a purpose.

Chime did not grow to 22 million users because it had better billboards. It grew because the post-sign-up experience was designed with the same care and intention as the pre-sign-up marketing.

In Hollywood, audiences leave before the credits roll. They do not think about the editor, the sound designer, or the second unit director. But those are the people who determined whether the movie worked.

In credit unions, the same invisibility problem exists. Nobody outside the organization sees the digital banking team, the onboarding workflow, or the data team responsible for knowing whether a member has funded their account. Members do not think about those functions. They just know whether the experience felt thoughtful or felt like an afterthought.

Here is where responsibility tends to land versus where it should land:

In every row, the same pattern repeats. A structural problem exists in the member journey, and instead of redesigning the journey, the organization asks marketing to write better copy about it. That is like asking the trailer editor to fix a movie that has a bad script.

Gallup research found that 73% of credit union members who felt their institution genuinely cared about their financial well-being were fully engaged, meaning they had a rational, emotional, and psychological connection to the brand. Among those who did not feel that care, engagement dropped to 20%.

Think of that as the Rotten Tomatoes score for your credit union. Members are reviewing the experience and telling each other about it. No amount of paid media can override a 20% audience score.

J.D. Power's 2025 U.S. Credit Union Satisfaction Study found that while overall satisfaction remains steady, satisfaction among members under 40 declined year over year. Younger members are not disloyal by nature. They have simply seen what a well-designed experience looks like in every other part of their lives, from food delivery to streaming to fitness apps. When their credit union does not meet that standard, they do not complain. They leave quietly, the same way a moviegoer just stops showing up.

Gallup's generational data reinforces this. Millennial engagement with credit unions sits at 27%, compared with 38% for boomers and 46% for the Silent Generation. That is not a messaging problem. It is an experience problem that compounds with every generation that grows up expecting more from their digital interactions.

Steve O'Donnell, COO of One Nevada Credit Union, framed it well: "Opening an account is a transaction. Becoming part of a credit union is a relationship."

Deb Dietz, CEO of Family Financial Credit Union, put it in operational terms: "We need members to activate their checking accounts and stick around, not just open and disappear."

Both are describing the same thing. The movie sold tickets. The audience showed up, but the theater experience was not designed to keep them there.

So what does a credit union look like when the whole organization owns retention, not just marketing?

It looks like a new member who logs into digital banking the morning after opening an account and sees a guided pathway: fund your account, switch your direct deposit, activate your card, set up bill pay. Each step is explained. Each step can be completed without leaving the platform. Progress is visible.

It looks like the data team knowing, in real time, which members have funded and which have not, and routing that information to the right people.

It looks like the lending team recognizing that an indirect auto loan member has never been introduced to the credit union and building an onboarding journey specifically for that person.

It looks like the executive team reviewing not just accounts opened but accounts activated, funded, and progressing toward primary status.

It looks like the marketing team being freed from the impossible task of fixing a broken experience with better subject lines.

If your credit union is losing a significant share of new members in the first year, bring these to the table. None of them should be aimed at marketing alone.

Cornerstone Advisors found that 62% of credit union executives now rank new member growth among their top three concerns, up from 41% three years ago. That anxiety is real. But growth without activation is just a bigger opening weekend followed by a steeper drop-off. It is a sequel that costs more to produce and performs worse than the original.

The credit unions that are building durable membership growth in 2026 are not the ones running the best ad campaigns. They are the ones where every department treats the first 90 days as a shared responsibility. Where operations, digital banking, lending, and member experience all understand that marketing got the member to show up. What happens after that belongs to them.

Your marketing team brought people into the theater. The question worth asking is whether the rest of your organization has made a film worth staying for.

Marketing can fill the theater. But the members who stay, who fund, who make your institution their financial home, they stay because of what happens next. If your organization is ready to own that experience across every department, let's talk.