“We're allocating a lot of media dollars into digital advertising,” he said. “A lot of money has come out of traditional radio and gone into Pandora (web radio). And a lot of money has come out from billboards and other traditional media and into online remarketing.”

However, he said some credit union clients also continue to get strong results using traditional marketing channels.

“Traditional media is by no means dead,” McDonald said. “We have a credit union that successfully uses traditional radio at its main driver of traffic. It really comes down to specific markets and the marketing messages.”

While many credit union marketers are expected to invest more of their marketing dollars into digital marketing, the big question often heard is how much they should spend in digital, James Robert Lay, president of Pasadena, Texas-based CU Grow, said.

Because consumers, particularly millennials, are increasing their use of digital channels for banking transactions, Lay said he believes credit unions should invest at least one third of their marketing budget in digital.

A Gartner survey showed that digital advertising spending averaged about 25% of a company's marketing budget last year. The survey also found that 51% of companies planned to increase their digital marketing budget by 17% on average in 2015.

Lay also noted credit unions should set aside more resources for education and training for their marketing professionals. An Adobe Digital study found that many marketers are learning about digital marketing on the go, but they still need to improve their understanding and knowledge about online advertising, metrics and ROI.

Making Digital Investments

Mark Arnold, a branding and marketing consultant at On the Mark Strategies in Carrollton, Texas, noted that credit unions invest more than $2 million to open a new branch and call it an asset, but they spend less than $20,000 for marketing on their website and call it an expense.

“Your members visit and spend more time on your website than any branch you have, so why are credit unions not investing more in their websites?” he asked.

Arnold believes that will change in 2015 because a website is the central point of any credit union's digital marketing strategy.

He said he expects more cooperatives to evolve their sites from glorified online brochures into a sales tool that can capture what members and non-members are looking at on the site. Credit unions could then use that information to pitch content that consumers need to help them make purchasing decisions.

One of the most effective ways to deliver that content is email despite annual predictions of the death of email.

“Everything that I am reading is that people are still more likely to respond to email than any other type of promotion offer that you have,” Arnold said.

Indeed, a McKinsey & Co. study found that email remains a significantly more effective way to acquire customers than social media.

“That's because 91% of U.S. consumers still use email daily and the rate at which emails prompt purchases is not only estimated to be at least three times that of social media, but the average order value is also 17% higher,” according to McKinsey & Co.

Additionally, nearly 45% of all marketing emails are opened on a mobile device.

Though an old digital marketing tool, Arnold said, email will remain effective in 2015 as long as credit unions leverage marketing automation solutions to customize email messages for members on products and services they may buy.

“You emails should be heavy on consumer content and light on sales pitch,” he said.

What's more, embedding an email link to a customized landing page about a product or service can increase conversion rates by as much as 25%, according to McKinsey & Co.

Other digital marketing channels such as Pandora and online remarketing campaigns can generate a positive ROI for credit unions, according to McDonald.

McDonald said Pandora has been effective for his credit union clients because it allows them to target market members and non-members by local zip codes, track click-thru and conversion rates, and adjust the marketing messages when necessary.

McDonald said he has also seen online remarketing campaigns produce good results. After members and non-members visit a credit union site to look for a product or service, remarketing tracking software codes allow credit unions to post their ads in front of those members and non-members when they visit other websites.

Predicting What Members Want

Attempting to predict what products and services members and non-members will want next has traditionally been a hit or miss proposition.

However, recent advancements in software products around the compilation of big data, or pulling consumer information from various databases, and then utilizing predictive analytic solutions, are now enabling financial institutions to anticipate the next product or service their customers are most likely to buy.

Alan Bergstrom, chief marketing officer for the $526 million Community Choice Credit Union in Farmington Hills, Mich., said he expects more credit unions will be leveraging big data, or psychographics, as well as predictive analytical solutions in 2015.

“While I worked at the CUNA Mutual Group we were very quickly moving toward big data and predictive analytics to be able to fine tune and customize our messages,” he said. “In the past, the standard approach was to take a (demographic) data base and market a product or service to members on a data base who didn't have a product or service with the credit union. That is going away.”

Demographic data explains who the member is based on age, gender, education, income and marital status. But psychographics, which pulls information about consumers from a variety of databases, can explain why consumers buy. Psychographics classifies people based on psychological and lifestyle traits such as attitudes, habits, interests and opinions.

Psychographics can help credit unions define their target markets, enable the credit union to establish a distinctive brand and allow employees to clearly communicate and deliver that brand value to members, Matt Purvis, a brand and marketing consultant in Eugene, Ore., explained.

“Many institutions resist this essential step, feeling that by establishing precise bulls-eye – even multiple targets – too many consumers will be left out of play,” Purvis said. “The paradox is that by marketing too generally, we fail to make a deep impact on anyone. Today, general brand positions and mass-market messages land unnoticed.”

Nonetheless, effectively leveraging these new tools will require the investment of additional resources.

An Accenture survey of more than 600 executives, including those in the financial services industry, showed they increased their use of predictive analytics from just 12% in 2009 to 33% in 2012. However, the survey also found there is an analytics capability gap among companies. Six out of 10 firms reported turning to external analysts or consultants, for assistance.

Even with outside help, however, there is no guarantee of earning a positive ROI.

The Accenture survey also found only 22% of executives were very satisfied with their predictive analytic results while 35% said they were quite satisfied. However, 43% of executives said they were not very satisfied, not at all satisfied or didn't know.

Making It Real With Video Marketing

Bergstrom also foresees that more credit unions will use video marketing to tell their story in 2015.

“There are a number of social media platforms that are capable of supporting video content, and I think consumers are more and more comfortable engaging with video content,” he said. “I think in 2015 we are going to see more credit union video content from a marketing perspective and from a brand-building perspective.”

More than 188 million Americans watched 52 billion videos by the end of 2013. That is projected to increase by more than 201 million by 2017, according to Invodo, a visual content company in Austin, Texas. Moreover, in October 2014, YouTube revealed more than half of all video views originated from mobile devices, which taps into a younger audience of consumers.

But in today's marketplace, it's not enough to post run-of-the-mill videos such as television commercials on YouTube or member testimonials on Facebook.

“People are responding to video that contains some element of emotion that engages them,” Bergstrom explained.

What Bergstrom sees emerging among large companies is “storymonials,” which is telling the story about the brand and how it affects or engages the lives of customers.

“There is too much marketing sameness out there,” he said. “So bringing that relevance, that emotional nature of real members dealing with real issues that we all face would be perfect to break through that clutter of marketing sameness.”

For example, what might break through that clutter could be reality-TV style videos that track the financial challenges of members and how a credit union helps address those challenges. This type of video content could engage members and non-members alike because they face similar financial issues, Bergstrom explained.

The Latino Market Is Calling

President Obama initiated executive orders two months ago that would allow nearly 5 million of the 11 million undocumented immigrants to continue living in the U.S.

John Andrade, CEO of Andrade Communicators and Lionel Sosa, founder of Sosa & Sosa Consultation and Design, said the president's new policy represents a huge opportunity for credit unions. Both companies based in San Antonio collaborate on credit union marketing projects.

“These are acculturated upwardly mobile, family-oriented, hard-working Latinos, which makes them a natural fit for credit unions,” said Sosa, who is an acknowledged expert in Hispanic consumers and voter behavior. He was named one of the 25 most influential Hispanics in America by Time magazine in 2005.

Though serving the undocumented Hispanic market has been met recently with controversy in the credit union industry, Andrade and Sosa said they believe the overall social and political awareness of immigration issues will lead some cooperatives to step up their marketing messages to attract new Hispanic members.

Coopera, a Hispanic market solutions company in Des Moines, Iowa, announced in early January a national campaign with the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions in New York to reach unbanked and underbanked immigrants in the U.S. with credit union products and services linked to immigration and legalization efforts.

The campaign addresses immigrant needs regardless of country of origin but includes a special focus on Hispanic immigrants, the nation's largest minority and one of the fastest growing. Events include webinars hosted by CUNA and roundtables in California, New York and Texas, which are states with some of the largest Hispanic populations in the U.S.

“Immigrants are a vibrant, dynamic part of our nation's economy and represent a tremendous untapped and emerging market for credit unions, particularly those serving low- and moderate-income communities,” Cathie Mahon, president/CEO of the federation, said. “Immigrant communities are quite heterogeneous in terms of their needs and interests in financial products and services. Members are consumers, homeowners, small business owners, and perhaps someday, large business owners.”

While Hispanics have the same financial needs as the general population, Sosa said credit unions still need to develop precise marketing messages because of the various cultural cues and other nuances of acculturated Hispanics who are second, third or fourth generation immigrants.

“There are a lot of cultural cues that still apply to this population even though they carry an iPhone 6 and watch “The Voice” on TV,” he explained. “They maintain two distinct cultures in the psyches. For example, when it comes to Thanksgiving, they may not have a turkey but Hispanic food. They may not watch Spanish-speaking TV but they may still listen to Spanish music.”