Data-Based Content Marketing Drives Superior Results

In every industry, marketing teams struggle with a simple truth: There’s not always enough content to continually engage, educate, inform and entice consumers. Credit unions endure the same challenge. Sure, everyone rallies around the new website, e-newsletter or blog platform initiative. But by issue five, six or seven, those great content ideas developed at launch time are long spent.

Marketers today have ever-more-clever channels and touchpoints to reach members, but how do they populate all those custom conversations?

Sharp credit unions are learning to deliver the financial insight members need with highly targeted, relevant and educational content. Let’s call it data-based marketing content. While data-driven marketing is crucial to successful targeting, data-based marketing aligns content with the information members are seeking. The result is personalized marketing that doesn’t feel like marketing to members. Rather, it provides sound, thoughtful guidance from their trusted financial advisor, their credit union. Here are three examples:

1. Give members their credit score and financial advice. Thanks to mass media attention, consumer education efforts and several extremely active advertisers, the credit score has gone mainstream. Today even high-schoolers track their scores. Recognizing this wave, traditional players like the major card networks and nontraditional financial industry suppliers are seeking to disintermediate credit unions. They offer the “free credit score” to lure consumers to their online properties and swarm them with offers for cut-rate loans and cards. The score is the content – the financial insight – members crave.

Recognizing the value of the credit score, many credit unions are launching programs to offer it to members. This delivers the highly personalized content members are looking for, keeps them engaged with the credit union’s digital presence and keeps them away from upstart competitors. Some of the best programs I have seen package libraries of financial education videos, articles and tips, custom-presented to members based on their credit scores. If the credit score is low due to too much debt, then low-interest and member-friendly consolidation loan articles and offers appear only to those members who could benefit. Basically, it flips the script on the competitors’ business model – offering them more wholesome and tailored information and opportunities, all from their trusted credit union. In return, the credit union gains an outsized share of members’ attention.

2. Expand your role as trusted financial advisor with PFM. The personal financial management approach follows a similar, data-based marketing model. The credit union offers the ability for members to track budgets, payments, investments and savings goals within their credit union’s desktop and mobile sites. Meanwhile, the credit union assists with offers to help members reach their goals.

Created a goal to save for a new car? Automatically see low-interest rate banners. College savings goal for the kids? Get articles on the advantages of low-cost college loans, home refinance programs or monthly cost-saving tips.

Proper PFM tools allow for extreme segmentation and targeting, so the right content and offers reach the relevant members during those key decision points. Armed with superior understanding, the credit union can help members of all ages move through their life stages, generation to generation. The key here is to engage members and build technology-enabled workflows that allow this kind of finite, detailed understanding of members’ goals and lives.

3. Make a statement with your statements. Typically, no communication to members is drier than the monthly account statement. And yet there’s no communication that’s as universally read. Keypoint Intelligence InfoTrends revealed a full 96% of statements and bills are reviewed between two to four minutes each by consumers. It may not seem like a lot of time, but consider the average amount of time we spend on individual social media posts or online articles. It’s actually a good chunk of dependable engagement, and it’s a perfect opportunity to share relevant messages with members.

Your statement engine should allow you to personalize messaging that’s relevant to the member. For example, if you want to drive digital adoption, QR barcodes or shortlinks can introduce mobile options to paper statement recipients. It’s important to consider every channel as you build synergistic conversations with members. Used effectively and thoughtfully within the context of other data-driven marketing, even the humble statement can be a strong touchpoint.

Predictive Marketing: An Intriguing Next Step

Going beyond data-based marketing leads us to predictive marketing. Long discussed at industry events, it is finally making its entry into the credit union space in a big way. By analyzing transaction-level data, credit unions can develop a picture of a years’ worth of member spending habits and preferences. When tied to smart, multichannel content programs, this technology can provide even more relevant targeting and richer content to members. It should be noted that maintaining member privacy must be a high priority when using a predictive marketing system.

Consumer expectations for real-time personalized access to data continues to grow. Good marketing means delivering the relevant message that complements the reason the member is engaged. Fortunately, data-based marketing with tools like credit scores, PFM, statements and more provides the perfect vehicle to match members to the programs and products that best serve them. That’s a goal that matches credit unions’ aspiration to help build members’ financial lives.

Brian Bellhorn is Product Marketing Manager for Fiserv. He can be reached at 248-828-9869 or brian.bellhorn@fiserv.com.