Is ‘Open Your Eyes’ Working?

The future survival of the credit union industry may depend on five words: “Open Your Eyes to a Credit Union.” Those words headline CUNA’s massive, three-year, all-digital marketing campaign to dispel credit union myths among consumers so that they will consider joining the movement.

But will it be enough to keep the industry alive and well in the years to come?

The results, recently released by CUNA and credit unions in Minnesota – the first state to launch an OYE campaign in January 2019 – showed the marketing messages are resonating with some consumers. However, independent credit union marketers said OYE lacks a strong call to action to encourage non-members to join after that consumer consideration is captured. A CU Times review revealed that nearly 68% of Minnesota’s credit unions showed a range of meager to substantial membership gains after OYE’s first full year, while 32% of credit unions in the North Star State showed a range of small to moderate membership losses.

In 2017, CUNA President/CEO Jim Nussle publicly sounded the alarm about the future of credit unions at the Southeast Credit Union Conference and Expo in Orlando. Since Nussle took over CUNA’s helm in 2014, he recalled conversations with industry leaders who also expressed their serious concerns about the future of credit unions, asking their new leader to “keep in mind that we might be going away if we are not careful.”

“The good news is that [we have] about 110 million members with $1 trillion in assets, but we’re not moving and we’re not growing,” he said. He noted at the time that the credit union industry’s market share grew but only by a paltry 1.2%, from 5.6% in 1992 to 6.8% in 2016. Currently, the industry market share is about 7%, according to CUNA. Moreover, 50% of the nation’s credit unions had fewer members in every quarter from the second quarter of 2014 to the third quarter of 2019, according to median annual membership growth maps posted by the NCUA.

And while the total number of members stood at 119.6 million at the nation’s 5,281 credit unions at the end of last year’s third quarter, it has been estimated that 30% to 40% of those members use credit unions as their primary financial institution.

To grow the industry and to keep credit unions relevant, particularly among young consumers, Nussle said it was imperative to continuously build public awareness about the credit union difference. To that end, he informed the conference crowd that CUNA was undertaking a huge research project, which would lead to the Open Your Eyes to a Credit Union campaign unveiled at 2018’s GAC. The research revealed that there were two prevailing myths among consumers about credit unions.

The first was that many consumers believed they could not join a credit union and the second was credit unions didn’t provide all or most of the products, services, technologies and convenient access to their cash offered by other financial institutions.

The OYE campaign, now underway in 21 states, is apparently succeeding in dispelling those myths, which may lead consumers to consider joining a credit union.

One of OYE’s primary marketing messages includes black and white photos of smiling people from all backgrounds using their fingers or hands to draw attention to their eyes, inviting consumers to open their eyes to a credit union and visit yourmoneyfurther.com. In addition to addressing those myths, the site educates consumers about other credit union benefits that may help “move the needle” among non-members to consider joining a credit union in their community. The site also features a link that enables non-members to search for a credit union where they live.

However, CUNA Chief Credit Union Awareness Officer Chris Lorence, who oversees the OYE campaign, said the organization is not keeping track of how many consumers are clicking on that link to search for a credit union near them because OYE is designed as a consideration campaign, not a direct response initiative.

After becoming the first state to launch CUNA’s OYE campaign in January 2019, the Minnesota Credit Union Network (MnCUN) reported it has successfully “moved the needle” with nearly 200 million ad impressions from its digital and out-of-home marketing channels that included OYE promotions on billboards, commuter bus and train wraps, and events such as the 2019 Minnesota State Fair, which two million people attended last year. The campaign was also promoted in restaurant bathrooms with small indoor billboards.

According to a survey of 750 Minnesotans at the end of last year, consumers who said they are likely or very likely to join a credit union jumped from 40% in January 2019 to 51.7% in November 2019. Consumers’ opinions that credit unions provide good online banking services moved up from 33% to nearly 40%, and consumers’ opinions that credit union ATMs provide convenience increased by almost 10 percentage points from 16% to 25.6%, according to the trade group’s survey.

What’s more, OYE campaigns launched in 13 other states throughout 2019 and attracted more than 700,000 consumers to the yourmoneyfurther.com site. Eighty-six percent of the visits to the site were from mobile devices and the majority of people visiting the page are between the ages of 25 to 44. Sixty-seven percent of that consumer traffic has originated from Facebook, according to CUNA.

“I love the fact that our bounce rate on yourmoneyfurther is 9%, which means people are staying on the site,” Lorence said. “It also means the [OYE] marketing is resonating with our intended audience.”

However, while CUNA said OYE is strictly a consideration campaign, not a direct response initiative, some credit union marketers said it may not be enough to motivate consumers to sign up with a credit union. They argued that without a strong call to action to join a credit union or a follow-up with non-members who initially express interest in joining a credit union, the campaign may fail to increase the movement’s membership ranks and the industry’s market share.

“In regard to Open Your Eyes I believe their hearts and minds are in the right place. I think there’s a tremendous potential to do a lot of good to raise the awareness of credit unions, but that is where Open Your Eyes’ greatest strength of raising awareness is also its greatest weakness,” said James Robert Lay, CEO of the Digital Marketing Institute in Houston. “We haven’t taken into consideration the entire consumer journey beyond creating awareness, because we know from our research that it takes 30 to 60 days on average for consumers to make a decision to open an account, and that’s just for checking. If we’re talking about products like mortgages, we’re looking at as long as six months. We need to have some type of nurturing [process] to get people to come back to credit union sites.”

Lay recommended credit unions that use the OYE materials in their local marketing programs include a link to an OYE-themed landing page for their remarketing efforts, inviting consumers to sign up for a newsletter and showing consumers how they can save by moving their loans to the credit union with lower fees and lower interest rates.

Jim Pond, co-founder of the Leominster, Mass.-based marketing firm James & Matthew, said OYE may help increase consumer credit union awareness, but he doubts whether it will expand the industry’s market share.

While Pond contended OYE is too broad and really doesn’t say anything new, he pointed out the campaign’s vanity metrics – the number of clicks, likes, views and impressions – don’t really matter.

“What matters is whether we are driving consumer action,” he said. “Are we driving membership? Is membership increasing?” Ultimately, that is the bottom-line metric that matters most because it drives more credit union deposits, more checking accounts and more loans.

Lorence, however, said he is confident that when repeated often enough, the marketing messages, videos and images of OYE’s three-year campaign will sink in with consumers so that when they need financial products or services, credit unions will be at the top of their minds and they will be led to join.

While it will take time to determine the full impact of the OYE campaign, it appears to have been a contributing factor in motivating some consumers to join a credit union in 2019.

In a prepared statement, MnCUN CEO Mark Cummins said the state’s “results support a trend that Minnesota credit unions are seeing with new member growth across the state.”

Total membership as of September 2019 was 4.4% higher over last year – a near full percentage point over the national number, which is 3.6%, noted Andrea Molnau, MnCUN’s vice president of communications and engagement.

“We were at 3.6% in 2018, so we’re definitely seeing some enhanced membership growth here in Minnesota,” Molnau said. “Can we attribute all of that to Open Your Eyes? I don’t think so, but I definitely think that it’s playing a part.”

However, while nearly 68% of the state’s credit unions saw membership gains, about 32% of Minnesota’s credit unions saw no membership growth.

A CU Times review of NCUA Call Reports of the 102 Minnesota credit union membership numbers showed that 33 credit unions reported membership losses from December 2018 to December 2019. Those losses ranged from just seven to as many as 484. Three of those credit unions posted the same number of members in both years.

An additional 22 credit unions saw meager membership gains within the range of just two new members to as many as 84 new members.

Nevertheless, 28 credit unions reported membership increases that ranged from more than 100 to more than 900, and 19 credit unions saw membership increases within the range of more than 1,000 and more than 25,000, according to NCUA Call Reports.

New members gained through 2019 Minnesota mergers were not included in the final tallies.

Although nine of the credit unions that showed the most membership gains manage more than $1 billion in assets, the remaining 10 credit unions manage assets that ranged from under $50 million to less than $800 million. The $35 million Carpenters Federal Credit Union in St. Paul saw its membership jump from 18,924 to 20,667, while the $5.6 billion Wings Financial Credit Union in Apple Valley, the state’s largest financial cooperative, increased its membership from 262,265 to 287,624, according to NCUA Call Reports.

Molneau said she is excited that the momentum of Minnesota’s OYE campaign will continue to build even more in the campaign’s current second year and third year in 2021.

“I think that’s why we felt we could set some aggressive goals,” she said. “I think the longevity of the campaign and building on its momentum is something that we’re excited about. It’s not a one and done six-month campaign. It’s something that we’re going to perpetuate going forward and really ultimately hope to move the needle on that market share number overall.”