By the end of the discussion, the consensus of the group is always unanimous; the pace of technology's influence on marketing is blistering and the opportunity afforded data driven strategies, enormous.

Last month I wrote about the challenges associated with creating a strategy to reach and convert your next member, and turn them into champions of your brand. The always on, hyper-connected world we live in has made a mess of the member journey. But, there is a way forward.

While credit unions turn to their core systems and wonder about the heaps of data sitting inside, there is marketing data outside the core systems waiting to be harvested, too. Not to stink of a rotten cliché, but some of this data is low-hanging fruit. For the small- to mid-sized credit union or marketing team tasked with too much to do and too few resources, these other channels can start leading you down the path towards a data- driven marketing strategy.

So how should a credit union think about data and their marketing strategy – outside of their core system?

Use Search Trends To Lay A Marketing Calendar

Generally speaking, I don't advocate the episodic marketing that has prevailed throughout the financial services industry. Marketing plans that leverage old school ideas like "in Q1, we invest marketing mortgages" unfortunately result in missed opportunity.  For example. If Jeff gets a job transfer in September, he and his wife will be looking for a home and a mortgage lender in your town.  Your credit union will miss out on a key opportunity because it's not Q1 and you're not marketing for mortgages. Not to mention, the future referrals you're missing by not helping this nice couple.

However, data can provide a tremendous amount of insight into how big your investments should be at various times throughout the year.  

Coincidentally, this knowledge can also inform a content marketing strategy and editorial calendar. When should we be posting and sharing content about smart credit use? Search data says! In November, when people start searching and ramping up holiday spending. 

Use Social Media Insights To Create Segments & Ad Hypotheses

Whether you're on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or the whole social shebang, what are you lifting out of your network's native insights data?

Every set of data will be different, but you can learn a lot from an active social media presence. Here's one query you can use:

From the overview screen: what is the largest audience? This will give you gender and age demographics. 

In the posts screen: what type of content drives the largest reach and engagement? This will tell you what topics matter to your audience.

In the actions on page screen: What are people doing? If you have set your page up properly, you can track calls, get direction clicks, website clicks and other call-to-actions.

Finally, tie all these insights into a portrait. Let's say through your social media data, you learn that your largest audience segment is women 35 – 44. They engage heavily on content around saving and most often interact with your page via website clicks.

What this tells you is there is an opportunity to promote savings vehicles offered by your credit union. So you can put together a campaign to promote CDs, your standard loan and drive traffic to it with paid media and owned media like original and curated content linking back to your site. With conversion tracking on the website, you can measure the attribution of not just your social media efforts, but across the entire effort launched with insights gained from social media.

Use AB Testing To Build Messages That Sell Knowledge

Time to build a message.

Once you've pulled together an audience segment you want to reach, don't just go with your gut. Create a few variable messages to test against your control message, the standard you'd normally run. What you think will work versus something you've not tried yet. By measuring the difference, you'll be adding to your owned data archives.

For example: Royal Bank of Canada wanted to drive acquisitions of premium credit cards, specifically reaching those interested in travel. Through analysis, they crafted a variety of variable messages to test against a control message solely focused on points. What they learned was that messages about no seat restrictions drove an increase of 28% in conversion.

Properly Tag Your Website To Drive Business Intelligence

Finally, one of the best places to pull together insights is off your marketing site. A properly tagged and marked-up website can provide a lot of insight.

Each marketing channel has a purpose and a value. Even if nothing happens. Too often, marketing tactics go flying out the door without the right systems in place to track and collect actions and events. Proper tagging and planning can create a win-win.

For example - A smartly-written communication to a loyalty email database can easily drive a successful display campaign when the right remarketing tags are implemented. Whether it's tracking valuable behaviors to helps refine marketing spend or maximizing cross channel efforts, success starts with planning and proper tagging.  

Happy  Harvesting

Data-driven marketing is a huge opportunity. At times it can feel like eating a whale. But I'm reminded of a Shel Silverstein poem called Melinda Mae. A tiny little thing who said one day, she'd eat whale. Finally, at some grand old age she did. How'd she do it? One bite at a time.

Look at what your credit union is currently doing.  From email marketing and social media to website analytics, these are all small bites that can be taken towards a data- driven marketing strategy.

Big enterprise level products that help sort out the mountains of data are awesome! But they're not always immediately realistic. If a data management platform isn't in your strategic plan or budget, there are still opportunities to make data-driven marketing decisions; and even better, deploy data-driven marketing dollars to the right targets.

Ryan Ruud is the founder and CEO of Credit Union Consulting Group and Lake One Digital. He can be reached at 612-799-0803 or [email protected].