Don’t look now but credit union members and prospects are tuning out. And who can blame them, really? They’re busy, distracted and numb to the thousands of impersonal, irrelevant messages that bombard their senses daily. Credit union marketers can keep trying to connect the way they have been. Or, they can engage and move prospective and current members into action with growth strategies including cross-media marketing, omnichannel marketing and multichannel marketing.
This article will compare these different tactics to help distinguish which can best integrate marketing messages and strategies into your credit union’s transactional communications like member statements, bills and electronic statements.
What is Cross-Media Marketing?
Cross-media marketing integrates the same marketing message into a variety of media sources. This eliminates spending your entire marketing budget in one place, but instead, testing numerous communication tools. This will also provide a greater scope of data to analyze, test and implement into your next campaign. Examples of different media sources for credit union marketing are listed below.
Different Types of Marketing Media:
- Television commercials
- Radio ads
- Video marketing
- Email marketing
- Web ads
- Social media marketing
- Offers on website or mobile app
- Direct mail postcards
- Print brochures
- eBooks
By using multiple media channels, credit unions can reach a wider target audience and increase the chances that a potential member will see their message. Another effective marketing strategy credit unions can leverage is omnichannel marketing.
What is Omnichannel Marketing?
Omnichannel marketing is similar to cross-media but goes beyond just using media for marketing and creates a seamless experience for customers across all channels. This can involve visiting a physical branch, interacting with the credit union through a phone call, website or mobile application. By providing a consistent and cohesive experience, credit unions can build trust and brand consistency with current and potential members, increasing retention and new members.
Different Types of Marketing Channels
- In-person experience at branch location
- Voice calls
- Website and blog
- Email marketing
- Web ads
- Print ads
- Mobile apps
- SEO
- Social Media
Credit union marketers can get even more specific with targeting audiences by combining omnichannel marketing with multichannel marketing.
What is Multichannel Marketing?
Multichannel marketing uses multiple marketing channels to engage with the same audience. However, unlike omnichannel, these channels are not necessarily integrated with one another. Multichannel marketing creates multiple personalized touchpoints to engage a target audience and keeps your brand top of mind, but the content and style of these messages may be different from channel to channel. For example, credit unions can create fun and light video ads on TikTok for younger audiences and simultaneously target an older demographic, more serious in tone, with printed letters and direct mail postcards.
Examples of Multichannel Marketing
- Social media ads + print ads
- Television commercials + in-person member events
- Offer letters + targeted Google ads
- Radio ads + mobile app marketing
- SMS offers + email marketing
Combing all three growth strategies to create personalized and seamless marketing campaigns that improve brand identity and member experience is a powerful tool for growth and retention. Credit unions can use a few additional strategies to stand out against their competition.
Growth and Member Retention Strategies for Credit Unions
1. Focus on the Member Experience
Build trust and loyalty among members by providing a personal experience and making it easy for them to manage their accounts and make transactions in-person or online.
Example: Credit union members often desire the ease of communication that large banks and conglomerates may not be able to offer them. The ability to speak with live staff over the phone, a simple submission process for questions and concerns online, or friendly and responsive employees at a physical branch location, go a long way.
2. Cross-Sell Products and ServicesThe cost of selling to existing credit union members is much cheaper than the cost of acquiring prospective members. Use data to understand member wants, needs and current financial situation.
Example: Credit union members often desire the ease of communication that large banks and conglomerates may not be able to offer them. The ability to speak with live staff over the phone, a simple submission process for questions and concerns online, or friendly and responsive employees at a physical branch location, go a long way.
Choosing and deploying the marketing strategies best fit for your credit union’s brand can be a daunting task. Partnering with an expert team with experienced specialists can make the process much easier.
For more questions about outsourcing for credit unions, read our FAQ.
How FSSI Helps Credit Unions Increase Growth and Member Retention
Whether you serve a local, regional or national member base, FSSI’s full-service statement printing and mailing services can custom-tailor a statement processing solution to fit the needs of your credit union. We make it seamless to send business-critical documents, like financial statements, monthly invoices, regulatory notices, secure checks with MICR, and even marketing mailers. We’ve partnered with banks, credit unions, auto finance, mortgage lenders, utility companies, healthcare and other heavily regulated industries.
Ultimately, our main goals are helping your credit union increase effectiveness and ROI while improving member retention. By combining our statement mailing services with industry best practices for layout, color usage, on-page messaging and more, our Development and Creative Services teams help you redesign statements, invoices and other documents for maximum readability, impact and value.From full-color variable data printing to commercial document printers, FSSI can help you produce all types of business-critical documents.
We have two production facilities that provide high-speed printing and inserting equipment designed for the financial industry. We can accommodate high-volume jobs, with the technology and security guarantees in place to compose, print and insert all your sensitive confidential documents.
When you outsource transactional print and mail, you hand off the production and delivery of statements, invoices, bills, direct mail marketing letters and other business-critical customer documents to a mail outsourcing provider like FSSI. Visit our credit union outsourcing page for more information about our custom credit union solutions or call 714.436.3300 to speak with a document specialist today!
Originally published at https://www.fssi-ca.com on February 10, 2023.
