Welcome!

What is CU market place?

This blog is a marketing and business development resource for credit unions in the Virginia Credit Union League.  It’s a way for the Credit Union Marketing & Business Development Council of Virginia* to reach out, offer fresh perspectives, and get conversations started around important topics.

We’ll feature short, timely articles related to the issues we face in CU marketing. Initially, we’ll be publishing the ideas of Council members (click on the tab above to learn more about us), but we’d love to hear from you as well!

We invite you to read and comment on the articles, ask questions, disagree, support and expand on ideas, etc. Our goal is community and cooperation – another venue for sharing thoughts, ideas, problems etc. similar to the discussion portions of our marketing conferences.

*The Credit Union Marketing & Business Development Council of Virginia is a committee appointed by the Virginia Credit Union League (www.vacul.org).

Community Involvement at Your Credit Union

By Stephanie Bailey

THE CHALLENGE
In 2012, our credit union decided to host a food drive for the Foodbank of the Virginia Peninsula. Our goal was to double the pounds of food donated the previous year. We put a challenge out to all of our branches and departments to see who could raise the most food donations during 2.5 months.

We placed bins in each branch for the community and members to make donations. To build excitement, we held contests for colleagues. One was a Mac-n-Cheese contest: for two weeks, colleagues raided stores for every last box of the item. By the end of that contest, we could build a tower from the Mac-n-Cheese we had collected. We also had a peanut butter and jelly contest. Once again the colleagues went to all of the local stores, bought all they could and we could build a tower.

THE RESULTS
Over 2.5 months, our members, community and colleagues were able to raise over 3,000 lbs of food for the Foodbank. This was more than we could have ever asked for but most of all it brought our members, community and colleagues together for the common purpose of volunteering to raise food for those less fortunate than ourselves.

This story brings is a reminder of who we are as credit unions. Since the beginning, credit unions have practiced the “People Helping People” philosophy. An important part of that philosophy is the long history of social responsibility, including volunteerism and the support of charitable and community causes.

Where to start? Each credit union begins their volunteerism with their board of directors. From there it’s a domino effect within the organization.

Credit unions have a variety of different volunteer opportunities. Some offer community outreach coordinators, others sponsor volunteer teams or hold credit union-wide volunteer days, etc.

THE PHILOSOPHY
No matter how each credit union chooses to serve its membership and communities, they are showing the world that credit unions are not just about improving our members financial wellbeing, but also about partnering with the non-profits in the communities that they serve.

So be sure to be get your colleagues and members involved in your community outreach activities - it’s what being a credit union is all about!

 

Stephanie Bailey is Marketing Coordinator for 1st Advantage Federal Credit Union in Hampton Roads, VA. 1st Advantage has a community charter to serve the Virginia Peninsula and is part of the Hampton Roads chapter of VACUL.

Channeling Your Inner Graphic Design Superhero

By Whitney Mathers

As Marketeers in the Wonderful World of Credit Unions, not all of us have the luxury (or budget) for an in-house graphic designer with all the bells and whistles and the know-how to create the most innovative and out-of-the-box marketing campaigns to boost our institution above and beyond the competing banks in our areas. Usually, it’s just two of us (if we’re lucky) with Microsoft Publisher and a deadline of last week.

When it comes to marketing your products and services, the biggest thing you want your members to take away from your material is your PRODUCT and/or SERVICES. Some of the most eye-catching promotional pieces are primarily text based. All you need to know are the basics in font pairing, color choice and brand identity, and you’ll have a knockout marketing piece in no time!

Let’s get started on the basics:

Font pairing is essential to creating an ad that grabs attention and directs where draw your focus. When pairing fonts, remember that opposites do attract! Match up serif (Georgia) with sans serif (Calibri) and elaborate with simple. The idea is that one font will dominate your main idea, such as your rate, and the other font will serve as the filler with your details. It’s usually safe to use about three fonts within a single ad. You want consistency within your work.

 

Color choice is another major (and obvious) factor when creating a design project. Color creates emotion within your text. Just like the Golden Rule for fonts, limiting your amount of color is just as important. You don’t want to overdo it and lose your “wow factor” in a rainbow of text. It’s also important to refer to the color wheel and complimentary colors. Using complimentary colors, or different shades within the same color helps add a punch to your already awesome idea.

 

Brand identity. The final thing to remember when creating a marketing piece is that you want it to be unique to YOUR credit union. Think about your credit union’s identity. Look at your logo. Do you have a style guide with colors and fonts that help to maintain your “brand”? Without making all of your material look the exact same, try to maintain a familiarity that lets your members know where these genius promotions are being generated. At Beach Municipal FCU, we’re obviously all about the beach! Within all of our promotional material, we maintain our  identity through similar colors, stock photos and even use the same family of fonts for most pieces.

So, what do you think? Graphic Design 101 isn’t as bad as you thought, is it? A few of the right fonts and  a color family that attracts the eye, and
you’ve just boosted your loan portfolio. Your welcome, VP of Lending.

Be a graphic design superhero. Here are a few links to be even more amazing:

Free Fonts (www.dafont.com)
Color Palettes (www.design-seeds.com)

Whitney Mathers is coordinator of Visual Marketing/Business Development at Beach Municipal Federal Credit Union and a member of the VACUL Marketing & Business Development Council. Her work was recently honored with a Diamond Award from the CUNA Marketing & Business Development Council, which recognizes outstanding marketing and business development achievements in the credit union industry. Beach Municipal FCU won the Membership Packets, Brochures, or Booklets category for work designed by Whitney.

Get the Details: East Coast Marketing Conference

The planning committee from the North Carolina League’s marketing council has released a beautiful pdf brochure with details about the East Coast Marketing Conference 2013 coming up in September. Download it and start making plans!

Save the Date: East Coast Marketing Conference 2013!

Be sure to clear your calendar for the 2013 East Coast Credit Union Marketing & Business Development Conference - coming to Ashville, NC on Sept. 11-13!

Here’s the link to the conference flyer – stay tuned for more info!

Click here to download the “Save the Date” Flyer

Got Good Stuff? Tell Them About It!

By Kelli Ragland

The last three years have been tough!

Our members have suffered job losses, cost-of-living increases, the steadily (maybe not so steadily) rising cost of gas and other items that makes “keeping our heads above water” hard.

My team members and I met to discuss how to “market” to these individuals. Pushing car loans or citing that “we have great checking accounts” didn’t seem to be the answer to our members’ needs. Not only did product-pushing not sit well with us, we didn’t have the financial resources to advertise as we had in the past. We needed to find a way to help ease our members’ financial burdens – and do so with a minimal marketing budget.

Then it finally hit us – why not showcase the credit union difference? We know that we save members tons of money when they bring their loans to us from those other guys (who shall not be named). We developed the “Honest to Goodness” savings program. This program simply shows the savings that members can see when they refinance a loan with us or when they begin their checking account relationship with us and pay lower fees. We started tracking the savings and at the end of the year we publicized these savings.

Being that this was a new concept, we started out with a $1.5 million savings goal. We not only reached this goal – we slam-dunked this goal with over 4 million dollars in savings!

We decided this was something to shout about…so we did! We launched a micro-site, bragged on Facebook, and used our employees and branches to share. This was a wonderful, inexpensive approach to advertising our products, specifically our loans. Since we’ve started this program, we have seen our loans steadily rise (even in this challenging economy).

To sum it up: If your credit union has “rock star” quality in something – let consumers know. It may be something that they need!

 

Kelli Ragland is Vice President of Marketing at ABNB Federal Credit Union, based in Hampton Roads.

Surviving a Merger

By Linda Broughton

In 2012, Henrico FCU ($125 million) won NCUA approval to merge with Bellwood FCU ($55 million). In a statement, Bellwood said “combining these two financially sound credit unions will result in a credit union with more than $180 million in assets, serving over 30,000 members with a potential of 1.2 million throughout 15 counties as well as the cities of Petersburg, Colonial Heights, Hopewell and Richmond.” (www.cutimes.com)

In credit unions, as in any business, the word MERGER sounds huge and threatening to many people. Plans for a merger did inspire fear in many members at our credit union in Richmond, Virginia. As employees, we were instructed to calm member fears and assure the members that it would be fine. Truthfully, in some ways we were just as scared as our members. Change is always scary – it’s the fear of the unknown.

When mergers are considered, members of credit unions are given the chance to vote. Before they do, they can attend a meeting of the membership to ask questions. For our members, the questions were fairly simple: yes, account numbers would change slightly and yes, some employees would be moving to a new office.

Questions from the staff were a little more complex. Immediately following the merger approval, the President and three members of his “team” held a meeting with the staff at our credit union. The question of the day was this: “Will the name of the credit union be changing?” From a marketing perspective, a name change is very significant. It impacts the corporate identity – the logo and colors – and also affects the members and the community. In our case, it was decided to keep our name since it has been in the community for 61 years!

Merging both credit unions’ data into one database took eight months to complete. It took long hours spent by many employees in both credit unions, but it also helped the employees begin to work together. One Henrico employee described their experience this way: “I was selected to help with the data tracking before the official date of merging. I also helped train and support the Bellwood staff the first week of the merger. This gave me an opportunity to meet and engage with the Bellwood staff and members.” Although there were many days of hair-pulling stress, the job was completed before the end of 2012!

Mergers might inspire fear, but they can also inspire hope for better things. When a Bellwood employee was asked how the merger affected them personally, they responded this way: “I came out great! When I was with Bellwood before the merger, my job was a dead-end. With Henrico there were lots of new positions and opportunities available. I now have plenty of room for further promotions.” Employees at Henrico also saw possibilities. One said: “I think the merger was good for Henrico employees because it allowed us to see firsthand how another credit union works. It has opened up potential for new ideas and a sharing of successes and not-so successes.”

Here in 2013, the New Year welcomes us as a merger completed! There are still areas needing attention and work remains to be done. Even so, change is good. Although it brings new challenges, it has created a better credit union!

 

Linda Broughton is the Marketing Assistant at Bellwood Credit Union, a division of Henrico Federal Credit Union in Richmond, VA. Henrico, as the Richmond-area’s first community chartered credit union, we can serve those who live, work, worship or attend school in Henrico and the greater Richmond area from Ashland to Chesterfield County to Goochland to Powhatan to Prince George, Petersburg & Sussex County. In addition to serving on the VACUL Marketing & Business Development Council, Linda serves on the Richmond Chapter Community Involvement Committee and the Richmond Chapter Workshop Committee. She served on the award winning “What if Credit Unions.com” committee and the VACUL Financial Education Committee. Linda is also involved in the community with the Jefferson Davis Association refurbishing the Route 1 corridor. She is also involved at DSCR, the military base next to Bellwood, bringing credit union awareness and helping the community. In 2011, Linda received the 2011 CUNA Diamond Merit Award for Financial Education. She reached over 1,000 students and adults teaching about savings and credit unions.

It’s All About the Relationship!

By Susanne Waltemyer

I have been in the relationship business for over 20 years.

What I mean is: I have always worked for companies where I am selling intangible services.  In the credit union world, where you have both tangible and intangible products and services, having a relationship with your SEG’s primary contact is of the utmost importance.

THE VALUE OF RELATIONSHIP
When you have that strong relationship with your contact, you can leverage that to develop new contacts, gain new business and establish new partnerships, thereby allowing your credit union to grow and prosper.  If you don’t have that key relationship in place, the first time you hear of a problem or learn of any member dissatisfaction will most likely be when your SEG severs their relationship with your credit union and even then, you may never know that there was an issue.

In the last ten years, it seems that the whole idea of personal interaction has lost importance in many businesses. We drive people to do business with us using “convenience” as the draw, but never develop the personal aspect that will help create loyalty.  Our technology, delivery systems, email, and voicemail discourage personal interaction.

Call me old-fashioned, but my experience has been that people I have met and regularly interact with are likely to continue doing business with me for a very long time even if problems occur. My husband calls it being a professional friend and in a sense he is right.  I genuinely care about my contacts and want to know when things are good or bad with them or their employees’ relationship with our credit union. Otherwise, how can I fix it?  

CLUES
In many cases, key contacts will clue you in on how they want or expect the relationship to develop. Rest assured that each one will be a little different. Some prefer regular visits to their sites, some want follow-up every month and some a little less, or are only interested in discussing business and prefer the email/voicemail type of contact. The important thing is to remember each one is an individual. I have a nearly 100 SEGs, so I use a database which keeps me on track. Not only do I enter information about our business conversations and meetings, but I also keep limited personal information such as birthdays, hobbies, how many kids and what sports they are involved in.  That always helps start a conversation. It also serves as a reminder to them that they are important. You remembered to call or send them a card on their birthday or you asked about their son’s soccer game last week. This is all part of creating a relationship that is comfortable enough for them to communicate the good and the bad as it relates to their (company’s) relationship with your credit union.  Knowing your contact also fosters trust that you will be their advocate at the credit union and will make sure that their staff is being well served by this relationship.

CONNECTIONS
Other ways to enhance and extend these relationships and networks is through the use of both social and professional online communities. Many use LinkedIn and Facebook to help sustain relationships through the internet. In addition to online communities, attend networking and community events that your contacts also attend. It is always nice to talk to a friendly face at these events. It is also a great way to get introduced to some of your contact’s contacts and expand your professional network.

Ultimately your goal is to develop loyal credit union supporters and cheerleaders within your SEGs and encourage constructive feedback from your contacts. Treat them with fairness and respect and as a result your contacts will help your credit union grow. In developing these relationships you will find that your key contact will not only take your credit union with them to their next employer, but refer their colleagues to you as well. This has happened to me on many occasions.

That’s why I am still in the relationship business after 20 years. 

Susanne Waltemyer is Business Development Manager at Commonwealth One Federal Credit Union based in Alexandria, VA. Commonwealth One has a Multiple Common Bond charter and serves groups in Washington D.C., Harrisonburg, Warren County, Clarke County and parts of Alexandria, VA. COFCU is part of the Northern Virginia Chapter of VACUL.