Your Good Work. Your Videos. $ for Your Charities.

Credit unions are all about giving back to their communities. Now they can prove it through a new video campaign that invites credit unions across the country to showcase their good works for a chance to earn tens of thousands of dollars for a chosen charity.

The contest is called Share the Love. The goal is to exponentially increase random acts of kindness across the country through encouraging credit unions to create and share videos that tell the story of the impact of small acts of human compassion while supporting charities in a big way.

How it works:

Credit unions across the nation create videos demonstrating how they care for their communities. Credit unions upload those videos to LoveMyCreditUnion.org/CUSharetheLove. The public will be invited to vote on their favorite videos in each asset category - small, medium and large. The credit unions that submit the videos which garner the most votes will each choose a charity to receive a $10,000 donation. By the campaign’s end, up to $105,000 will be awarded.

In addition, members of the public who vote throughout the campaign will have an opportunity to win $15,000 in prizes.

2015 Timeline:

• August 1st –  credit unions begin uploading videos 
• October 1st – public voting begins
• October 1st – December 24th – Each month $10,000 is awarded to the chosen charity in the name of the  winner in every asset category
• The video with the most votes at end of campaign – regardless of asset size – receives another $15,000 for the chosen charity

Starting thinking about all the great ways that your credit union gives back to the community, and how you would best capture it in a video. Complete submission guidelines and Share the Love campaign details can be found at: LoveMyCreditUnion.org/CUSharethelove.

Gotcha! April Fools Highlights the Effectiveness of Social Media Marketing

With the first week of April now in the books, it is a good time to reflect on the fun and innovative ways that we can rouse our membership base through social media. There were some great April fools pranks by a number of companies that utilized blogs and social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube among others.  Here were just a few:

• Alamo Rent A Car introduces monster truck rentals!
• Goodreads blog’s KINDLR dating app linking singles with similar reading preferences (not a bad idea!)
• Honda Motors HR-V Selfie Edition vehicle.
• And to go with it, Miz Mooz Selfie Shoes.
• And Petco’s pet selfies???
• Apartment Therapy blog revealing Ikea’s KAT friendly sofa with corrugated cardboard sides.
• Pizza Hut’s pizza beer: the Pepperoni Pilsner. Yum...
• Microsoft’s super throw-back MS-DOS smartphone operating system – so retro!
• Fiat’s even smaller micro-car, the 499.

Digital Advertising and Social Media

Social media advertising has a great reach and allows access to many dedicated users. Facebook alone boasts 1 billion registered users, and almost 700 million daily active users.  Twitter reports 500 million tweets sent per day, and YouTube, also with more than 1 billion users, has more than 300 hours of video uploaded every minute!

It’s no wonder that some marketers feel overwhelmed when stepping in the sphere of digital advertising and social media, but when done effectively and efficiently, the benefits are well documented. It is a cost effective method when measured against traditional marketing, offers a great deal of flexibility, can reach targeted audiences and is easily measurable in terms of ROI.

CU Solutions Group has been helping credit unions grow and develop for over a decade and can help during every step of your marketing campaign. Whether you need assistance with a content marketing concept, a digital method of execution or an easy and identifiable way to measure results, we are able to help through every step of the process. Contact us today.

The "Real" ROI of Credit Union Social Media

by Amy Neale, Content Marketing Manager

Let me introduce myself. Not only am I the main blogger here at CU Solutions Group, I also manage all of our social media platforms and consult with credit unions on their social media strategies. 

Why am I telling you this? Because a recurring comment I hear from credit unions when I’m talking to them about their social media is: “My boss doesn’t think it’s worth our time. He doesn’t think there’s enough ROI.” I’ve explained to my clients the real ROI of social media enough times to decide the topic needs its own article. So, here we go …

Defining ROI

If you check out Investopedia, they give this formula to calculate ROI:

When you’re talking about more concrete, black and white business investments this formula works. But when you’re talking about something more intangible like member loyalty and member service, it’s too gray for the formula to be relevant.

When your credit union hands out suckers its members’ children or pens to its members, does it use this formula? Or, if it takes part in a community event like a cancer walk or holiday fundraising, ROI is never a concern. That’s because all of these touch points fall under the public relations umbrella and are meant to boost goodwill and loyalty, not necessarily ROI.

If you haven’t guessed it, I tend to liken social media to public relations or sometimes member service if a member seeks out your social media platforms with a concern or issue. PR and goodwill can’t be measured concretely enough to be put into a formula. 

Measuring Social Media

All this is well and good, but you still need to appease your management with a measurement even if it doesn’t fit into the ROI formula. A great article in Forbes, Why ROI is Often Wrong for Measuring Marketing Impact includes this statement from Dominique Hanssens, a professor of marketing at UCLA Anderson School of Management and a co-founder of MarketShare:

“Marketers rarely mean ROI when they say ROI. ‘Plain’ ROI is certainly an important metric for managers. But it falls well short of helping us understand marketing’s contribution to business goals, or how those contributions can be improved. ROI is too limited.”

We usually recommend tracking member engagement, which doesn’t always mean Facebook likes or Twitter follows. It means following up with member comments or complaints in the social arena so other members or even potential members can see that you take member service seriously. It means interacting with members when they comment on your posts. It also means keeping track of what posts get the most engagement and going with what works. 

Final Thought

Not everything we do as marketers can translate into real ROI. A final thought you might want to share with your managers should they ask about social media ROI … Why wouldn’t you use social media? It’s where your members live, no matter what demographic you seek and it doesn’t take much time/money to implement. Millennials, soccer moms, high-paid execs – they’re all on social media somewhere. Let them know your credit union is current with the latest marketing channels by engaging with them on social media. And if you don’t, I’m sure your competition will be happy to.

If your credit union needs a little help with social media and is interested in having a channel audit or social media strategy done, please contact CU Solutions Group today.

2015 Mobile Trends of Credit Union Members

by Chris Steffes, Remote Services Consultant

The mobile disruption is far from over. In fact, the speed to market for digital innovation will likely increase in 2015. BAI Banking Strategies surveyed financial services leaders, including credit union executives, and identified the top banking trends for 2015. It is no surprise that consumers’ heightened use of digital channels, especially mobile, rank high on the list, along with an amplified focus on the member experience. 2015 will be the year in which consumers shift their view about banking at credit unions - from being an obligation to a preferred lifestyle of convenience and mobility - due to the latest trends in mobile.

Their insight includes the following trends:

• Expedited deployment of digital branch delivery.
  Whether it's pushing member-driven functionality to your mobile channel or changing your branch experience to a self-service model with kiosks and advisory services, providing a digital experience will continue to transform the way credit unions serve their members. Getting out from behind a desk and meeting a member in a newly created space, similar to a lounge or café setting with a tablet, will continue to improve member perception as long as credit unions continue to present themselves as visually appealing, technically savvy and millennial-friendly. This is particularly significant in the middle and up-market demographics, as members will gauge a credit union’s value and progressive vision by their commitment to using digital tools for member convenience and business efficiency.
  
• Mobile-First design.
  According to the BAI article, banking and credit union executives believe 2015 will be the year when banks and credit unions will use mobile design strategies as the basis for all customer touchpoints. Their goal is to position mobile not only as a full-service delivery channel, but as the flagship channel for member engagement. Their strategy of increased revenue-generating functionality on mobile, along with member servicing tools like mobile video chat - especially popular with tablet users – will attract and drive new membership.
  
• Increased digital and social selling.
  Compared to 2014, Forrester Research predicts that twice as many customers will research financial products on their smartphones and tablets in 2015. And as millennials’ appreciation for all-things-social continues to grow, credit unions that transform their marketing tactics from traditionally static ads to more intimate engagement on digital channels and social media will see more success in revenue generation. This requires credit unions to make a fundamental change in how to communicate to members along with developing new strategy for optimizing digital media to engage consumers.
  
• Mass acceptance of mobile payments.
  With Apple Pay setting the benchmark in the mobile payments space, 2015 will be the year when mobile wallets will likely become the differentiator for attracting new members. According to Cap Gemini Research, m-payments are projected to grow by over 60% in 2015. While experts in the wallet space caution credit unions to carefully conduct regulatory due diligence in the payments space prior to selecting a vendor, it is wise to start analyzing device types of your current member base and begin a vendor selection process for a wallet provider that not only provides an agnostic solution among device types, but will feature your credit union debit and credit cards as a payment device within the wallet.

Gearing your digital strategy toward this year’s emerging trends will position your credit union to weather the demands of increasing member engagement and provide a better member experience at every stage of the member lifecycle. 

If your credit union needs help navigating the mobile world in 2015, contact CU Solutions Group - we've got mobile experts that can keep you moving forward.

Pinterest Etiquette for Credit Unions

By far the fastest growing social media platform today is Pinterest. What is Pinterest? Pinterest is a web and mobile application platform that’s a visual discovery, collection, sharing and storage tool. Users create and share the collections of visual pins, an image that has either been uploaded or linked from a website, to boards that are saved based on how the user organizes the content.

If your credit union isn’t already utilizing this social media tool, it should. Pinterest is another way to reach your audience, especially considering how many people are using it. According to Semiocast, a Paris-based social media research firm, Pinterest has over 70 million active users. The platform is a great way to connect to members and potential members by providing them with information they care about, but in a more visual – and impactful – manner. When getting started on the social media platform, there is a style of etiquette to follow. Here are some important things your credit union should keep in mind when using Pinterest.

Give credit – Never change the link on someone else’s pin. Give credit where credit is due. Similarly, when you are repining things to your board, you want to check the source of the pin to make sure it doesn’t lead to spam or anything unsavory.

Pin often but not all at once – Your pinning activity should be throughout the day and not for hours at a time. When you pin at various times of the day, it means that there’s a higher chance your pins will reach a larger number of people. It also means you won’t be flooding people’s home gallery page.

Create boards with substance – Every board you have should have at least 20 pins on it. If you can’t initially find five pins for your new board, you probably won’t use it and people will not find the board interesting. The goal is to pin things that are interesting to current and potential members.

Be organized – When creating boards to organizing items, you’ll need to decide how complex or simple to make them. In some cases, it can be better to break up a topic multiple ways. For example, “saving tips” is a great category for a board for a credit union to have. However, a better idea would be to break up saving tips by age to make it easier for people to find the exact saving tips they want to find.

Follow the right people – As a business, your credit union should follow leaders in the credit union industry. Another suggestion for people to follow are the community organizations that you partner with in different activities throughout the year. You don’t have to follow everyone who follows you. In fact, there are many users on Pinterest that were created purely for spam purposes, so be sure you are not just following an account because it started to follow you.

Pin relevant content – The content you are pinning to your credit union’s profile should be relevant to the industry. That goes for the content of the pin and the picture. Pinterest will automatically set an image for you when you pin something. The image might not be relevant to the content. Edit images as you see fit. Remember, your pins and the images that go with them should be related and should tell a person what it’s about so they won’t have to guess.

CU Solutions Group can help your credit union create an impactful footprint on social media. With a dedicated social media team, we can work with your credit union to either fully build out your social media profile if you don’t have one or take your existing profiles to the next level. We make getting social on social networking a breeze.  

5 Marketing Trends for Credit Unions in 2015

We are heading to the end of 2014 which can have many of you already looking forward to 2015. This can be the year your credit union can really capitalize on the new marketing trends that have emerged. Here are the top five marketing trends for 2015.

1. Social Media: As the social media landscape changes, so should your credit union’s social media efforts. Facebook is slowly losing its Millennial demographic, however, recently it has seen a boost with the Baby Boomer generation. Instagram has seen high numbers in the Millennial category, but has yet to see an increase with Baby Boomers. Twitter still ranks as one of the most widely used social media platforms from all age groups. It’s important for your credit union to diversify your social media efforts to build your brand and make it easier for members to recognize and connect to you. Instagram and Pinterest can seem like unlikely social media outlets for your credit union to use, but it is consistently growing in users. Having an active profile on each can boost your credit union’s member base.
2. Content: Content still remains king through 2015. With each Google algorithm update you can expect Google to favor content over most anything else. Having regularlyupdated content on your site establishes authority and helps your credit union gain member trust. The best ways for credit unions to use content is with its website, newsletters, videos and articles and or blog posts.
3. Mobile: Mobile is quickly becoming an important tool for credit unions. If your credit union does not have a well-developed mobile app on every operating system, now is the time to focus your efforts. According to Forbes, 87% of connected devices are engaging in some form of banking. Mobile banking for your credit union needs to give the user a positive experience. Your mobile design should be in a format that is commonly referred to as responsive design. This means that your site provides an optimal viewing experience-easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning and scrolling-across a wide range of devices.
4. YouTube and other video platforms: If content is known as the king, videos can be considered the queen. According to the Social Science Research Network, 65% of people are visual learners. YouTube and other video platforms have made it easy for companies to create and share content with their members.
5. Micro-targeting – when it comes to spending on marketing; you want to get the most bang for your buck. Many credit unions are turning to micro-targeting to increase their member base. Micro-targeting gives credit unions the ability to use consumer data and demographic reports to identify individuals or small groups of the like-minded individuals. By micro-targeting your audience you can increase your member base quickly without the large spend that comes in other forms of marketing. One simple product can be used for micro-targeting is Gas Station TV.

CU Solutions Group has the tools to help you make your marketing the best in the business. If your goal is to improve your website or launch a social media campaign, we have what you need to reach your members.  With our helpful website compliance review, content management system and website design and development products we can help you stand out for all the right reasons.