SAN FRANCISCO – Fredda McDonald, EVP and chief creative officer at PSCU, encouraged every credit union to embrace mobile technology as a tool to reach a larger audience.

To demonstrate the demand for mobile technology, McDonald said during her America's Credit Union Conference best practices session that the amount of iPhones sold in the U.S. has exceeded the number of births.

“Access means everything,” she said.

McDonald said PSCU launched a direct digital messaging initiative called “Make Your Money Matter,” which discovered the surprising statistic that yoga enthusiasts are eight times more likely to join a credit union.

She told the audience that analytics from online initiatives are currently more useful to credit unions than traditional advertising through radio and television.

Amber MacArthur, president of the digital agency KONNEKTNOW, delivered an address in a separate session about the importance of marketing online through social media and mobile websites.

“I'm standing here today telling you, yes, you should use Twitter, you should use Facebook, you should use LinkedIn and all of these different tools, but the reality is you don't own the experience there,” MacArthur said.

“Overnight many of these companies are changing the way that they do things. So yes, definitely take advantage of them, but at the end of the day, you should be driving everybody who is going to those social media sites to your own website, because that's the only piece of real estate on the web that you own,” she added.

Since consumers are increasingly checking websites on their mobile phones or tablets, MacArthur said credit unions should brainstorm ways to improve their official website's appearance.

“I encourage many of you – if you haven't already – to use your phones at some point and take a look at your own website to see how it displays on mobile,” she said. “See some of the challenges and the experiences.”

She suggested that credit unions strip down all of the “pretty stuff” on their sites, and highlight key facts and information instead.