Patelco CU Keeps Busy With Campaigns for New Cards, Members & Pets
“We truly believe that direct mail is an important tactic, especially from a credit union perspective, as far as generating awareness and driving interest.”
Patelco Credit Union ($7.1 billion, Pleasanton, Calif.) understands running campaigns, whether it is a massive card reissuance program; or award-winning member-acquisition direct mail and social media driven pet-calendar projects.
Erin Mendez, CEO of Patelco − which began in 1936 with only $500 assets, and a few employees at Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company and now has 37 branches and more than 355,000 members − explained the credit union flipped cards three years ago from Visa to Mastercard. Unfortunately, all the cards issued in 2016 came expired in 2019. “We really needed to reissue cards en masse,” Mendez explained they also needed in assessing their activation program as well as how to stagger cards in the future.
“The credit union didn’t really have the expertise in house,” Chris Allen, Patelco’s SVP, chief risk officer, said. They selected Memphis, Tenn.-based Strategic Resource Management, a full-service consulting firm for credit unions and banks, to help them plot out their reissuance course. “SRM has been selected by more than 700 financial institutions to advise in areas such as payments, digital banking, core processing, and operational efficiencies,” Andrew Gordon, vice president, project management, for SRM, said.
In March, Patelco received 2019 Diamond Awards from CUNA for outstanding marketing and business development achievements in two categories: direct mail and social media.
Patelco won the direct mail award for its member acquisition program, which helped the credit union gain 2,810 new members while considerably surpassing industry benchmarks for cost-per-acquisition.
Rina Johnson, vice president of marketing for Patelco, said, “We truly believe that direct mail is an important tactic, especially from a credit union perspective, as far as generating awareness and driving interest.”
The credit union earned the social media award for its “Pets of Patelco” calendar. The calendar consisted of the 12 most voted for pet photos submitted by Patelco members through an online contest primarily promoted on Facebook. As part of the campaign, Patelco donated $5 for every pet photo submission up to $2,000 for the Sonoma Humane Society in California.
Read more about Patelco Credit Union’s marketing campaigns in the August 14th issue of CU Times.