The Act-On marketing command center includes website visitor tracking, lead scoring, a landing page development tool and a web form composer. This enables credit unions to capitalize on buyer behavior and website traffic to drive and qualify more sales-ready leads, while advanced segmentation and automated programs allows them to deliver more personalized member experiences.

Since many credit unions compete with much larger financial institutions, they need something that can help them step up their game, Adam Mertz, vice president of marketing and strategy at Act-On, communicated. "But what they don't need is more complexity, because they don't have the resources." Mertz explained Act-On's goal is to help credit union marketing teams better engage their target audience in a simple manner.

One credit union with measured results, the $767 million, Bartlesville, Okla.-based Truity Credit Union, an Act-On customer of four-plus years, saw an 80% increase in the number of leads generated after implementing the Act-On marketing automation tool.

Marc Wilensky, vice president of communications and brand marketing at Tower, explained the reason his credit union added Act-On was to help drive loans. "We've been looking for a good email marketing provider for a while that did more automation. We were using a basic, simple company to do emails, but they had limited capability. Act-On was a good fit for what we're trying to accomplish."

Tower's first auto loan campaign, which went out in late November, aimed to capitalize on the accelerated interest in vehicle loans during the holiday season.

Tower uploaded a targeted member file into the Act-On system. After its initial email to a sizable portion of its membership, the Maryland credit union let Act-On take over. Wilensky noted the system tracked whether recipients opened an email, clicked on certain links, read various articles on the Tower website and helped the credit union set up a scoring system.

Tower put leads into a sales funnel based on the user's interest in a product or service. Wilensky explained, "One [email goes out] if you were at the top of the funnel, which means you're furthest from purchasing; a different email [goes out] if you were kind of in the middle; and then another email [goes out] if we believe you are pretty low in the sales funnel, [meaning they are about to make a decision pretty quickly]." Tower completed an automated follow-up campaign a week later and sent another follow-up email a week after that.

"The initial results were great," Wilensky said. He noted although the open rate for emails for the initial run was pretty typical, they were happy because the emails went to a larger list than usual. "But what we've been most excited about is the open rates for the follow-up emails. Those open rates were some of the highest I've ever seen. I've been doing email marketing for probably 17 years. I've never seen open rates like that."

They were also ecstatic about the click-through numbers but are still evaluating how many leads translated to financing. "We're optimistic that we're going to see the same lift with actual auto loans," he noted.

Wilensky indicated open rates also signify the credit union has struck a chord with members. He added the key is whether the organization tracks user behavior on its site and sends them relevant content in a timely manner. Then individuals are more likely to take the credit union up on its offer, product or service.

Tower initiated another campaign in January for mortgages aimed at a smaller target audience. Because the buying cycle is much longer for mortgages, results will take longer to observe. The credit union plans to look at other products and services to market with Act-On's assistance, including wealth management and home equity products.

Wilensky underscored Act-On's extensive onboarding process. "We find these great products and services that we think will enhance our capabilities. And then there's very little support on making sure you're utilizing the product appropriately. [With Act-On], we had weekly calls with an onboarding person over a 10 or 12 week period. He actually helped us set up the first campaign."

In addition, the Act-On rep offered suggestions and improvements. Wilensky added the extra attention helped ensure optimal utilization of Act-On's system. "I think a lot of credit unions are scared off by systems like automated emails because they don't think they're going to be appropriately onboarded to utilize the service properly."

Mertz described Act-On's underlying platform as extremely powerful, like Facebook and Google; he said it processes lots of data very quickly and ultimately provides a response back to individuals in milliseconds. He pointed out marketing technology has become extremely complicated because there are multiple points of engagement, with marketers always trying to figure out when they reach their target audiences so they can improve interactions and conversion rates.

Act-On said it helps credit unions follow up on leads, and better understand areas of focus and where people are in the buying process. "We really just focus on when they're engaging individuals," Mertz said. In addition, their platform can integrate with any credit union CRM system, such as Microsoft Dynamics, SugarCRM, Salesforce or NetSuite.

Mertz also explained his company's approach to pricing. "While some vendors charge for every contact in your database, Act-On's pricing model focuses on when we drive value for you, which is when you engage with contacts. Why pay for contacts that you aren't interacting with?"

He added, "Act-On offers an 'active contact pricing' model, meaning we charge based on how often you engage with your target audiences as opposed to how many contacts are stored in your database."

For example, if the marketing department regularly engages 20% of its total contacts, that's what they pay for. "So, you might continue to add more and more contacts to your database over time, and with Act-On that won't equate to an increase in fees," he said. "Because our value-based pricing focuses only on the number of actively engaged contacts, you ultimately get more value out of every dollar that you spend with us. Our unique pricing model is one reason why credit unions are able to pay for their annual investment in the first month or two alone, reaping almost immediate ROI on the solution. Credit unions can get started with Act-On for less than $1,000 a month."

Mertz pointed out over the past year, Act-On has seen more interest from credit unions. "It's helping these credit union marketers better anticipate how to engage those target audiences to automate some of those functions that they wouldn't have time to employ somebody to do. But ultimately it accelerates their growth goals."