How Two Credit Union CMOs Are Leaning into Individualized Marketing
For financial institutions, the path to making personalization a reality runs through every department, not just marketing. Here's how CMOs at two large credit unions are orchestrating their personalization strategies using data-driven strategies from geotargeting and retargeting to propensity modeling.
By Matt Doffing, Senior Editor at The Financial Brand
Marketing has become more of a cross-functional collaboration as personalization efforts at financial institutions ramp up.
The chief marketing officers at both EastRise Credit Union and Lake Michigan Credit Union stressed this point in discussing their progress on personalization.
Asked to highlight one key tactic that has yielded notable results, they had a similar response: They are working more closely with others throughout their organizations — from the chief information officer to those who implement digital applications — to serve up data-driven messages targeted to members and prospects across multiple touchpoints.
"We have gotten much better at inviting more people to the table in the beginning of marketing strategy development from cross departmental functions," says Yvonne Garand, the chief brand and marketing officer at the $3 billion-asset EastRise in Williston, Vt. "We’re just beginning to tap into customer behavior data to refine our personalized marketing campaigns and we wouldn’t be successful without the help of these stakeholders."
LMCU is using propensity models to personalize its offerings and messaging. That required first tying together all of its platforms, marketing campaigns, and other data sources to get a holistic view of its members.
"Bringing this to fruition has been a broad effort across many functions," says Christi Cowdin, the chief marketing officer for the $14.6 billion-asset credit union in Grand Rapids, Mich.
Both institutions are also using a multichannel approach when serving up their marketing messages, with the understanding that it takes repetition to prompt action.
The mantra at EastRise is: "Three to eight to motivate."
"From the inside it might look like it’s overkill, but it’s not, given the extraordinary number of consumer touchpoints today," Garand says.
In the following Q&A, these two executives offer more detailed insight into how their credit unions are rising to the personalization challenge and share some advice based on what they’ve learned along the way.
New Website Gives EastRise’s Personalization Efforts a Boost
Yvonne Garand
Chief brand and marketing officer
EastRise Credit Union (Williston, Vt.)
Asset size: $3 billion
On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is just starting out and 10 is having achieved your ideal level, how far along is EastRise Credit Union in the effort to personalize its marketing for members and prospects?
Currently our personalization is at a 6 or 7 for both members and prospects. Much of what we do for personalization today is manual. We’re good at it! But it’s a bit painful, time consuming, and can sometimes impede our ability to do agile marketing.
Like many credit unions, we understand that being able to seamlessly integrate more sophisticated martech stacks and utilize a data-driven approach to personalization is imperative to meeting consumer expectations. We’re getting better at it primarily because we are collaborating earlier on in the process with other internal stakeholders, such as the chief information officer.
Let’s face it, there’s nothing especially sexy about bank marketing, and it doesn’t come close to marketing experiences for consumer-packaged goods where big brands have nailed personalization to keep their customers coming back for more. Think Netflix, Elf Cosmetics, and Shopify. The experiences these brands deliver are the experiences we should all be striving to deliver — meeting our members where they are along their journey with relevant, personal and, yes, intimate content that make them feel special and unique.
What are a few ways that EastRise Credit Union has improved on the personalization front in recent years and what is on the wish list for the future?
One of our most recent improvements to personalization was with the launch of our new website in 2024.
We utilize personalization functionality on our website to display a member homepage and a prospective member homepage to tailor content and offers to those vastly different audiences.
We have geotargeting in place to further personalize the website homepage by updating the homepage hero image based on the visitor’s IP address. This allows us to create a closer connection with the different target markets we serve by showing imagery that feels more local to that audience.
We also have onsite retargeting enabled so that our website can track which visitors have gone to certain key pages, and based on those cues, it will then automatically swap out content on the homepage.
Can you highlight one key personalization tactic that has shown notable results?
Without going into specifics about current and near future initiatives that might give away too much, what I can share is that it’s imperative for the CMO to foster an open, inclusive and transparent relationship with the CIO. Forge relationships between your marketing team and other teams across business intelligence, data, digital applications and business solutions. As financial institutions, we are sitting on a plethora of data about every customer and should be utilizing this information to provide more personal content-related offers, instead of making customers hunt, peck and input information we already have!
Additionally, marketers need to skill up and become marketing technologists to understand and influence more data solutions and usage for improved marketing personalization, from CRMs to ancillary technologies designed to empower customers to self-serve, such as online application solutions.
What type of growth does your credit union consider to be its priority right now? How is it investing to facilitate that growth?
Understanding what kind of growth an institution needs or wants is important for the marketing team. If net new-customer growth is the objective, then there’s an assumption that a strong sales-enabled environment will support bringing in new members. The last thing you want to create is a successful membership growth campaign filled with promises that your workforce, workflows and internal environment cannot support.
At EastRise Credit Union, we are balancing the need to grow our membership and deepen relationships with our existing members. It’s really going to be critical for us to do both in the future.
With growth in general being the priority, there are a few things we’re prioritizing to accomplish this goal:
- Member experience and relationship development throughout every touchpoint.
- Advanced and automated marketing tools for a hyper-personalized experience.
- Exploring digital banking improvements and future integrations to enhance convenience for our members and put more personalized tools and resources at their fingertips.
In targeted communications with your current members, what combination of engagement across channels generates the best results?
Marketing’s number one job is lead conversion. Our marketing tactics must be firing on all cylinders simultaneously in multiple channels to create awareness and, more importantly, to create action.
We’ve used a mantra in our marketing at EastRise Credit Union: "three to eight to motivate." This is to reinforce the importance of using multichannel and redundancy to capture that number one rung in a consumer’s mind. From the inside it might look like it’s overkill, but it’s not, given the extraordinary number of consumer touchpoints today.
Instead of focusing on deploying any one channel over another to drive engagement or growth, we focus on the "type" of marketing content and let that inform the channel we use. For example, digital channels are where we experience impactful performance marketing, whereas brand awareness marketing performs better in TV and radio (whether that is traditional or streaming).
Some products perform better in certain channels. This is why we will typically A/B test content when we can or start small with segmentation so we can learn and optimize before pushing to the masses. Test. Learn. Optimize. Then deploy more heavily in a multichannel approach.
There’s no secret ingredient to multichannel marketing. Consumer behavior continues to evolve, and they want to define their own experiences, consume content through the channels they choose and seek out information on their own to problem-solve. We must be ready to meet members wherever they are and however they choose to engage. It’s ubiquitous marketing.
Read more:
Personalization Adds to the ‘Magic’ at LMCU
Christi Cowdin
Chief marketing officer
Lake Michigan Credit Union (Grand Rapids, Mich.)
Asset size: $14.6 billion
How far along is Lake Michigan Credit Union in the effort to personalize its marketing for members and prospects?
At LMCU, we will probably never be satisfied that we have achieved an ideal level of personalizing our members’ experience. We will always seek to do even just a little more to connect with and support our members’ financial needs.
Today we are probably somewhere in the middle — around a 5 out of 10— with several initiatives underway at various stages of implementation.
What are a few ways that Lake Michigan Credit Union has improved on the personalization front in recent years and what is on the wish list for the future?
Increasing one-to-one member touchpoints wherever possible. Whether it is reimagining team resources for in-person interactions, expanding technology use, refining our audience segmentation strategies, or just overall enhancing the digital experience, personalization has been a big driver of those efforts. If we’ve learned anything, it’s that we cannot stand still and must continuously improve every opportunity to interact with and support our members.
Here are a few examples of what we’ve been working on:
- We have refocused some of our team to more effectively reach members where they are. We have a hybrid approach that includes a high-touch member experience coupled with a digital focus. LMCU has expanded and continues to expand our video appointment option with members. They still get the care, individual focus, and expert consultation they need, and it can be from the convenience of home or wherever else works best for them. This has been a meaningful and effective approach.
- We are increasing the opportunities and spaces to serve our members in person. At a time when many financial institutions are consolidating physical locations, LMCU has and continues to open new branch locations every single year. Even if members may not regularly visit a branch, having a location within three miles of work or home and having that option for additional support when needed, is powerful. Younger credit union members have been shown to take advantage of and appreciate an in-branch consultation, but then they might complete their application, transaction, etc., back in the online environment.
- Financial education is a differentiator for sure, and it is a strategy for greater and more meaningful in-person interactions with members. With in-person education opportunities like fraud seminars, first-time homebuyer seminars, and home construction seminars, many, many members have learned things like how to improve their credit score, develop strategies to save for downpayments, and understanding the ins and outs of the process. Providing this access and partnering with members to achieve their goals has been a rewarding endeavor for both LMCU and our members.
Can you highlight one key personalization tactic that has shown notable results?
A key initiative for our team has been tying all of our platforms, marketing campaigns and other data sources together to create a clear picture of our member groups and our members as individuals. Bringing this to fruition has been a broad effort across many functions, especially ensuring that we are all aligned and can understand how our collective efforts are bringing benefits to our membership. As we continue on our journey, turning on and expanding more functionality in the tools we use — HubSpot, for example — will allow us to focus our marketing efforts to pair our members and potential new members up with the products and services that are personalized to their specific needs.
We also use propensity models to personalize our offerings, education, and messaging. This has involved cross-functional teams that include our marketing team, IT, our business intelligence group, as well as our business team leaders and frontline staff. Using propensity models and persona profiles is the foundation to our personalization efforts that is interwoven into everything that we do.
What type of growth does your credit union consider to be its priority right now? How is it investing to facilitate that growth?
At LMCU, we are focused primarily on two key areas of growth: deepening our relationship with existing members and identifying look-alike audiences and opportunities to serve new members and communities.
As a credit union, giving our members the best rates when they save and when they borrow is a key driver, but how we do that — through a personalized and a "we really care about our members" approach — makes all the difference for us. How we walk with our members through all their life stages is where we are focused, what is the next best product or service that is going to make a difference for a member and how do we do our best to give them the support and access they need for their financial growth and overall financial wellness. When we are considering new approaches, new needs, and new enhancements for our members, it is always with the lens that we treat our members like neighbors, not numbers. It really grounds us and is a strong reminder of why we do what we do every day and that we are doing it for the awesome members in the communities we serve.
Bringing new members into LMCU is the other primary focus for our team. We work collectively across our organization to make sure we have the right products and services to attract new, potential members. We are also active in our local communities and focused on promoting financial well-being. We know that combining these things with our marketing efforts is what gets them in the door, and then it is our member experience and exceptional team focus on delivering a personalized experience that makes them want to stay. It all makes sense, but it is magic to see it all come together and see the difference we can make in our members’ lives.
In targeted communications with your current members, what combination of engagement across channels generates the best results?
From a marketing perspective, we know it can take up to 20 different touches with a brand, product, or service, before those interactions lead to a desired outcome. There is a lot of noise out there in the marketplace and if we are not everywhere we can be, effectively reaching both existing members and potential new members, we are likely missing out on great opportunities.
We are curating a brand story — why LMCU, the LMCU difference, that you can bank with us for all of your needs, and that we are going to care about you every step of the way throughout your lifetime. Of course, the quality of our messaging, our use of data for relevance and personalization, and the partners we work with to reach our audiences are almost as important.
