Credit unions are already doing a great job in improving the levels of member satisfaction. They have a tremendous opportunity to drive more business from existing members. In a recent survey, an estimated $30 trillion in wealth will transfer from baby boomers to millennials over the next 30 years. Superior customer experience across the whole customer journey—from an initial digital touchpoint to the in-branch experience is key to engaging members towards converting opportunities into sales.
Through member engagement efforts, financial marketers need to address challenges such as lagging adoption rate, member retention, low attention span, and getting to know their members.
So, how should financial marketers succeed with productive member engagement? Here is what the savvy credit union marketers apply.
Ways to Engage your Members.
Research states that ‘satisfied members will just own account with the credit union, but ‘Engaged’ members would come to open another account in the next 6 months’. And, here is how you can achieve an engaged member community.
Personalized Customer Experience
33% of consumers who abandoned a business relationship did so because personalization was lacking. Hyper-Personalization is the only success mantra that can address the disjointed banking demands from prospective and existing members.
Creation of tailored experiences for each member across all touchpoints is only the aftermath to better knowledge and understanding of the member. It is not just data, but also insights that matter. It would soon be a state of ‘No Personalization. No Brand Existence.’
Insightful data is critical because members are moving away from traditional banking systems to a self-service environment. This means they would now interact with machines than the people servicing at credit unions. Only gathering as much relevant data as possible to understand your members would help in creating a better and more personalized experience for them.
Cross-channel Customer Journey Engagement
Take advantage of cross-selling opportunities that can grow operating revenue from existing customers. Cross-channel Customer Journey Engagement
Knowing facts about channels using data would increase sales conversions through relevant engagement. Apparently, research confirms that the channels with the highest cost to the bank (speaking to someone in the branch or a customer service representative over the phone) provided a relatively smaller lift in sales conversion even though they are primary sources of information for potential customers.
Only knowing more about the members using data that reveals their behavior across all chosen marketing channels and every corresponding touchpoint would enable better engagement. Using customer journey mapping combined with Predictive Analytics would help you pre-empt customer expectations to very close conversion possibility.
Credit unions need to manage multiple communication channels and also engage on every channel to effectively and efficiently to move potential customers through the sales funnel.
A survey report confirmed that while less than 45% of ‘satisfied’ households said they would consider their credit union the next time they needed a product or service, and that consideration increased to 83% among customers who were both satisfied and ‘engaged’. It also confirmed that customers who are engaged said they were more likely to open a new account, add ancillary products and services and/or obtain planning advice than those customers who are just satisfied.
Member engagement is imperative to add additional sources of revenue. Research also shows that customers who are ‘fully engaged’ with a financial institution are much more likely to buy an additional product from the bank or credit union than those who are just ‘satisfied’. This is a representation of why members have an account with a financial institution but do not do anything with it. That is the difference between ‘satisfied’ and ‘engaged’.
Take Action
The primary agenda to blend the marketing strategy of Credit Unions with technology is driven by the goal to increase member base and loyalty among the existing members.
Delivering an exceptional user experience across channels requires deep insights of your members, and only by having the right combination of marketing and tech can you create highly refined target segments based on a multitude of attributes that are mapped to personas. This is the secret sauce that powers effective marketing campaigns that accelerate member acquisition, drive customer loyalty, and effectively cross-sell and up-sell.
