Many of our credit unions have "Member Growth" as a core objective ... which is great! But, I'd like to make one MINOR edit. Change that objective to:
Growth of THE RIGHT Member.
When you are focusing on the RIGHT member, your universe shrinks and you can become more efficient with your budget. As a marketer, I would rather report to the Board that we grew our member base with slightly fewer productive and profitable folks than tons of "riff-raff" (using technical, professional vernacular).
You can acquire the very best prospects through mirror modeling. Focus your efforts on those people who "look like" your current best members.
Pretend, for a minute, that you could take one of your members and stick them in a Xerox machine. Who would you pick? Someone with the highest deposits? The most impressive loan balances? The most services per household? Would they have checking? Would they religiously use their debit card? With i-KNOW, we can even track profitability.
Your answer may be different than the credit union's down the street or the community bank from across town. You need to define exactly what kind of member you want.
Once you've identified them, pull an address file of every one of your current members who meet the criteria.
Think of your neighborhood. I'll bet most of your neighbors look a bit like you. Maybe it's an area with a gaggle of young families with kids. Or it's a flock of empty nesters. The socio-economic law of averages says that birds of a feather tend to flock together. And this can be a powerful tool for targeting.
By defining a narrow target and geo-focusing your marketing efforts to those zip+4s with the highest concentration of your best members, you'll have a significantly better strategic effort than if you simply target those who live within 1-2 miles of your branch network.
You can also have a message with a laser focus. Understand your best members: What are their pain points? Why did they choose you? Why do they stay with you? What life stages are they living through? What products are they most likely to have? How are they most likely to use them? Once you understand your best members, you'll better understand how to communicate to your most desired prospects: What products they are most likely to need with you. How they are most likely to use them. What their key purchase criteria is.
With a little upfront homework and a mirror modeling strategy, you can retain your best members through better understanding, you'll know where they live to find more of them and you'll know how to talk to them. That is a powerful marketing formula that will make you the "fairest of them all."
Eric Gagliano
Marketing
EPL, Inc.
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