Those of us in the field love the excitement, the thrill of a new idea, the rush that comes with starting a new campaign. It's like the fisherman flinging his net into the deep blue sea, never knowing how successful the day's catch will be. Yet the days of “let's have fun, this is great for the credit union's image, who cares about the numbers?” are long behind us. Responsibilities of today's VP of Marketing include projections, measuring ROI and tracking results. As much as marketing is exciting, you can't ignore the end in the name of the means. Marketing has to make sense. Marketing has to accomplish its purpose: more members, more loans, more accounts. If it's doing that, your marketing is successful. If it's not, your marketing is NOT successful. End of story. You're nodding your head, you know all this. Yet the never-ending quest for new ideas and new campaigns can mean you're skipping exactly what we're talking about here. You may not have considered this, but the best market research is right there in your own hands: the market research on YOUR OWN market, your own members. And that is your past campaigns. When a campaign is a complete failure, we're all quick to analyze what went wrong and resolve to avoid those mistakes in future efforts. But when a campaign is a complete success, are we as quick to analyze what went RIGHT? And are we as willing to repeat that success? Before you tell me that you can't imitate your own campaign (one marketer even called it plagiarism!) consider this: It worked. It's yours. If your members responded before, they may respond again.to the same campaign. While I realize that repeating a campaign may be taking this a bit too far, there are three things every credit union marketer can (and should) do to make sure valuable insights are not lost in the quest for new ideas: 1. Study every successful marketing campaign in the history of your credit union, and pull it apart. Dissect it. By figuring out what made it successful, you'll find lots you can copy without having to actually repeat the campaign. 2. The message of your campaign is often what carries the campaign to success. Narrow down the messages that brought in a good response. In what way did it speak to members? Can you build a new campaign on the same message? A slightly different message that says the same thing? 3. Study the medium that brought your best response. Was it a combination of marketing vehicles? Are you focusing on those mediums as much as you could be? Having made a case for studying past successful campaigns, there are times when you should welcome what's new, and recognize that what once worked may no longer be working, regardless of how successful it's been for you in the past. Here's where your credit union's marketing may benefit from some new ideas: 1. PR. It's been said that marketing is no longer as effective as it once was. Americans are exposed to over 2,700 marketing messages a day, and, like our overexposure to certain antibiotics, we've become immune. According to Al and Laura Reiss, authors of The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR, opinions are shaped by the editorial, or news part of publications, not the advertising sections. Get your credit union covered in the editorial section of the publications you advertise in and watch your marketing success skyrocket. Maybe you've never tried it in the past, but there's no excuse for not beginning a PR campaign right now. It's free, so the effect on ROI is obviously wonderful. But it does require time, focus, and work. Brush up on your PR skills by doing a quick search online for information, checking out a book or two from your local library or consider outsourcing PR. 2. Technology. Credit unions have been quick to embrace technology on the operations end, but are sadly not taking advantage of the many low cost, high tech marketing tools available to them today. E-zines, e-courses, autoresponders, podcasting, blogs and email marketing are just some of the ways technology can be put to work for your marketing department. All this sounds more difficult than it is. Speak to your tech person, or whoever administers your Web site, and find out what marketing tools are already available to you. 3. Change your newsletter and add more to your Web site. “Cool” just isn't what it used to be. You need content, and a lot of it. Your newsletter is the ideal forum for financial education, and so is your Web site. Does the content offered on either one currently reflect that? In Cashing in With Content, David M. Scott discusses the changes businesses face on their Web sites. He concludes that in order to keep people coming back, a Web site should contain excellent content. Ditto for newsletters, because if you want members to read it, you've got to give them something THEY want to read, not something YOU want to say. By studying the old before plunging into the new; by combining your credit union's past successful marketing with today's new marketing tools and fresh new ideas, you'll achieve breathtaking results for your credit union based on the market research that was already done.