In this episode of the podcast, I explain why credit unions need to expand their email marketing to speak to non-members.
Listen here:
Watch the Faberge Organics commercial, if you’re not familiar with it: https://youtu.be/brC_jK6stBs?si=Xn_EwjhrzpW184rk
Or check out the video episode on YouTube:
Book an email marketing audit.
And sign up to get a short e-book on how to write more engaging social media posts as well as updates and new episode notifications at https://artisanal-musician-9431.kit.com/b55c643ce5
Got questions about whether your marketing is aligned? Email me at jennifer@jennifer-roland.com or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Transcript
Hi everyone, and welcome to the CU Social Strategy YouTube channel and podcast. I am your host, Jennifer Roland-Cadiente, and I’m also your credit union copywriter. And today I want to talk about the big mistake that I see a lot of credit unions making with their email marketing, and that’s only talking to their current members.
And as someone who worked to move that printed member newsletter to email, I know exactly how it happened. We have that member communication piece that we did. We either stuck it in statements, or we sent it separately, or we did a combination of both.
Some were quarterly printed and monthly in the statements. But a lot of us just never move past that. And so we just keep talking to the same people over and over again.
And our membership is a circle. If we don’t talk to people outside of it as attrition, that circle just gets smaller and smaller and smaller. And so we’re not getting new members, and we’re not using what is such a powerful tool.
And email marketing is such a great way to make sure that you’re getting to the people that want to learn more about you. We’ve got so many different channels. We’ve got our printed things that we might still be sending.
We’ve got ads that we’re sending through online or local television. We’ve got our work in the community, our sponsorships of local events. When we get booths, when we go out there and volunteer at things that are happening in the community, when we do our financial education classes with local organizations.
And that’s great, but that might just be one time that someone’s seeing you. And with social media, you never even know how often someone’s seeing you. I know that I have people that I follow that I know are posting every day, and I see maybe three, four posts a month.
One in particular, I know she posts five days a week every week. I like posts when I see them, and they resonate with me. I comment on things.
I interact. I’ve shared posts of hers before, but I know she’s putting out 20 plus posts a month, and I’m lucky if I see three. So you never know who’s actually seeing your posts, even if you’re posting all the time.
And you don’t know who those people are. If they interact, if they comment, you can see who they are. But you can’t download the list of followers.
You can’t do things specifically to them a lot of times. And you don’t know who is coming, who’s going, who’s actually seeing what you’re putting out. It’s a powerful way to get in front of people, but it’s not powerful for you.
Whereas, with your email marketing, you can see who’s opening, who’s clicking, who’s forwarding. You can download that list so that you have it off of the platform on a periodic basis. So you have a backup in case anything happens.
If you were to lose all your social media followers, you have no way of getting back in touch with them. Whereas if something happens to your email list, you’ve got a backup copy, you may not have all the newest people, but you can still reach out and get in touch with them in a new platform. So that’s why I think credit unions need to be talking outside.
Instead of that ever shrinking circle, as member attrition happens, you can be increasing that circle. I know on a previous episode about how people are not just chasing rate when they choose a financial institution. I hate to say that it’s vibes, but it’s kind of vibes.
They want someone that they feel like they know and they trust. And you may be able to get that across at your booth at an event or during a financial education seminar or even during an ad, but it’s not very likely. Whereas with your email, if you keep reaching out to them, you keep showing what you have to offer, how you’re helping.
Then when they see that ad and they’re like, oh, that’s the thing that I need. And these are the people that I already trust because they’ve been giving me great information. That’s how you get them in.
Obviously, we’re all making sure that we’re offering good rates and we are comparable or better than what other financial institutions are doing in our area. But that’s not going to be the way that most people actually come in the door. So now that I have made this argument of how amazing it is to send email marketing to non-members, I know a lot of you are thinking, great, how am I going to find the time? Because that’s the biggest thing is marketing staff never has time to do everything.
That’s why they hire services and why they hire freelancers like me. Because the staff just is stretched really thin and as we get more channels and more things to do, more ways to measure, more tools to integrate, it just gets harder and harder. So I do have some easy strategies that I have used as a staffer and as a freelancer.
So if you’re doing that monthly member email newsletter, the easiest thing is it’s got your promotions. It’s got whatever financial education you want to share. It’s got the important dates and your workshops and all of that in there.
You can just take out anything that is highly member specific like annual meeting or voting because non-members can’t vote. Just take that out and send a duplicate copy to your non-member email list. If you have the capacity to break it down, if you’re wanting to do something weekly or you have specific interest groups, say someone who wants only to know when your workshops are, send out, just pull the workshops out, send that to that list, pull out the auto loan stuff, maybe add in some educational pieces.
If you’re using a service like CU Content, they should have things there that you can pull. If you partner with a service like Balance, they should have articles that you can send out. Send that to people who say they want to learn more about autos.
If you have the capacity to write them yourself, that’s also great, but things like how to buy a car, how to maintain your car so that you don’t have to buy a new car soon, how to get a great rate, how to prepare for an auto loan, things like that that are highly educational and extremely helpful combined with your rate or your promotion. That is really useful for people who say that they’re interested in learning more about auto loans from you. Same with mortgages, how to buy a house, how to maintain your home, what you need to think about when you’re thinking about buying a home, all the extra costs that you need to plan for, things like that.
Again, your services will have those. You can partner with freelancers, you can have your staff if they have the capacity, can write pieces. There are all kinds of ways to take what you’ve already created and package it a little bit differently so that it’s speaking to non-members as well.
And I know if you were a child in the 70s, you probably saw these ads for Faberge Organics commercials or shampoo and it was the person had used the Faberge Organics shampoo and they had great hair and they’re like, and I told two people and they told two people and so on and so on and so on. And that works really well for shampoo. It works less well for a financial institution because it’s not a topic that comes up a lot in a lot of friend groups.
People don’t talk about money all the time unless something really big has happened. And there’s still a lot of taboo about talking about money. So if someone has a problem, they may not want to share how they solved it unless it’s someone that they’re really close to, someone asked specifically, maybe very hush-hush about it.
So it doesn’t work the same way that it might with shampoo, whereas no one is mad if you tell them, hey, your hair looks terrific. And they might tell you, oh, it’s because I switched to Faberge Organic shampoo. So word of mouth is powerful and it’s wonderful and you’re going to have people who will share your message from the rooftops, but it’s not going to be as common or as easy as that Faberge Organics ad made it seem.
So think about ways that you can use your email marketing to talk to non-members also. If you have questions, feel free to email me at jennifer@jennifer-roland.com. Visit my website at cucopywriter.com. Click like and subscribe on this video if you’re on YouTube or subscribe and download the podcast. And I look forward to hearing from you.
See you next time.
Be the first to comment