Using advertising and SEO to find new credit union clients can be very costly and can take a long time to see a return on investment.

While it’s still necessary to grow the customer list, there are also ways to generate revenue within the existing client base, offering them products they are most likely to be interested in.

A Better Way to Target Your Existing Credit Union Clients

You’re probably used to seeing emails in your inbox on items that you just saw while browsing the web, or seeing a string of emails over time from your favorite brands or services.

This isn’t by accident. It’s a form of digital marketing that has proven time and time again to be successful in breaking through the noise of advertising and reaching you when and where you can be reached most effectively, in your email.

Marketing Automation is a method of email marketing that delivers targeted content to your users and clients based on opt-ins for specific services or products or triggered through events on your website.

Here are just a few examples of how to use marketing automation for credit unions:

• Lead Generation through Opt-Ins on your Website to begin emailing the user based on the content of the Opt-In
• Member Anniversary reminders - Shower them with thanks for being a user for X years every year!
• Product Cross Promotion - Users with mortgage loans but not auto loans can be given incentive to add on an auto loan to their account.
• Triggered Automations - more on this below

Why Use Marketing Automation for your Credit Union?

Marketing Automation steps in to fill the voids within your member list in an effective manner.

One way to do this would be to cross promote your products to members of the Credit Union. We do this by segmenting the current member roster by what products they do and don’t have. We can then take the different segments and drop them into email workflows based on their needs.

For instance, we know that a member has an account, auto loan and credit card, but their mortgage is elsewhere. We can use this data to automatically send them emails about mortgage loans with your Credit Union and refinancing their home with you.

What is a Triggered Automation & How Should You Use It?

When is the best time to offer a product or service to a potential client? Simple, it’s when they ask for it!

The internet isn’t always that easy though. Someone looking for an auto loan doesn’t always pick up the phone, fill out a form or stop into one of their local branches to fill out an application.

Quite possibly the most effective form of marketing automation, a triggered automation, takes data from the user to create very targeted and timely messaging to another level.

With marketing automation software, such as HubSpot or Active Campaign, we can track users website usage and serve them content based on pages they visit on the website. For instance, a potential car buyer that is a member of your database visits your website and browses over to the Auto Loan Rates page or Auto Loan Calculator page. This is a pretty clear signal that they’re looking into financing a car right?

That member may not reach out to you right at that time and may get picked up by another Credit Union or Bank through targeted advertising instead. If you’re using triggered automations, then when this member visits these pages, you could begin serving them an email workflow on auto loan rates—why choose your Credit Union for an auto loan, how to get pre-qualified on an auto loan and other car buying tips to reinforce your position with them as the right choice for an auto loan.

The best part about this? Timing. They’ve basically said, “I want an auto loan” when they visited these pages on your site but did it the way most website users do, anonymously.

How Does Triggered Automation Work?

You’ve captured the user's email via opt-in, offer, incentive or through lead capture on the website. This allows marketing automation software to monitor the way that this specific user browses your website and logs events based on their interaction with emails or website page views.

You can then set up and send automated workflows or email series to this user based on events that are triggered by settings we select. Such as, if the user visits the auto loan rates page, serve them an email workflow related to Auto Loans. If the user browses information on HELOCs, then serve them information about HELOCs via email workflows.

Timing and personalization are all part of the reasons these are so successful. Being able to time when a user needs something with an effective email workflow will increase your odds of reaching them and getting them to interact with your Credit Union.

Taking Triggered Automation to the Next Level

Now to make a triggered automation even more effective. Add in your best loan representatives and you’re looking at a loan generating machine. When the client visits your website and triggers the event for auto loans, they’ll begin getting emails with high intent-based content at the right time.

But, what if a loan representative at your branch received an email too? It could let them know that a specific client is looking at auto loan products and they could then reach out to them, creating the perfect bridge between marketing and sales.

Using Triggered Automations to Generate Custom Audiences

Using a triggered event to send an email is one very effective use of marketing automation. We take this one step further to saturate your visibility to the member by pairing the email list generated by the triggered events and turning that list into a Custom Audience for advertising.

This level of digital marketing brings the timing of your message to a whole new level. Imagine that you’re shopping for a car and then visit a Credit Union website for rates and then use the calculator. You leave at this time but are still most likely in the market for a car. Maybe it was dinner time and you didn’t have time to fill out the application, or you were at work and shouldn’t have been using your time for this, whatever the reason, you still need help from that Credit Union.

A triggered event is great for this situation, because it starts sending the emails to remind and help you with your auto loan. To amplify the triggered event, your email address was added to a custom audience advertisement on multiple platforms, such as Facebook and Google’s Display Network and now you’re seeing the ad for this Credit Union...Everywhere.

It’ll be hard to forget where you got the information from when you’re in your email, browsing the web on auto buying websites and see the ad, or on social platforms and see it again.

You’ve seen these forms of ads for products that you likely wanted and/or purchased because of. Now you can do the same with your Credit Union advertising to current members.

Learn more on our Credit Union Marketing Resources page