Are YOU Connected?

 Gallup has a method of assessing customer loyalty for a variety of industries based on factors that go beyond traditional satisfaction. They ask questions about things like whether or not the brand treats you fairly, delivers on its promise, can be trusted, treats you with a sense of respect, makes you proud; whether you could even imagine a world without the brand. These questions aren’t just about whether or not a customer’s needs are being met; these questions are about connection and passion.

When a member connects with your credit union’s culture, they are more likely to grow into a true loyalist. 

When a member experiences a disconnect with your culture, there’s often an equally high level of negative passion. Who’s usually the make-or-break factor here? You got it: your staff. Whether or not you as a leader have taken the time to understand and shape it, your internal culture is impacting your credit union’s success right now- both internally and externally.

(source for all statistics: CUNA’s 2010 Credit Union Member Satisfaction, Growth and Loyalty report)

Culture Is Everything

“ The thing that I have learned at IBM is that culture is everything.”   - Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. former CEO IBM

Internal culture encompasses the personality of your credit union – what you collectively value, how you do things, your commonly held beliefs and expectations. It manifests itself everywhere: in how your employees treat one another, the care they take in performing their jobs, and the way they treat your members.

 An organization’s senior leadership is directly responsible for defining its culture and typically has a significant influence on the organization's culture- but remember that culture also reflects the collective mindset of employees. When your employees understand and embrace your organization’s culture, it translates into a better and more consistent member experience. Consistently good experiences build trust and loyalty, which in turn build business.

The Good News... and The Bad News...

THE GOOD NEWS... 

The number of credit union members in the U.S. has increased byalmost 4.5 million over the past three years, thanks in part to the well-publicized bad behavior of banks.

THE SO-SO NEWS.... 

 Only 33% of all U.S. adults are credit union members.

THE BAD NEWS... 

About 8% of members leave their credit union each year.

According to a recent CUNA study, if fewer than 20% of your members have joined within the past four years, your growth may not be sufficient to outpace your attrition or to see any gains in product usage. To strengthen your credit union, you not only need to focus on attracting new members – it’s also crucial to find ways to improve retention and increase share of wallet among existing members. That means finding a way to increase the number of members who are loyal to your credit union. This is where internal culture comes in.

Stay tuned… 

Why Credit Unions Should Use LinkedIn Groups

So you have your very own LinkedIn profile and you are connecting to people! Bravo! What now? How can you further utilize this free tool to connect to businesses and professionals?

LinkedIn groups are a great way to connect to your community and other credit unions. Why should you be active in a group? (hopefully you would be in more than just one!) Several reasons:

• Staying active this way online gives you a chance to live out your cooperative principle of “cooperating cooperatives.” When you join a group (especially a group such as “credit union professionals” or “credit union hub” on LinkedIn), you have the opportunity to start and share in discussions with you credit union colleagues and with the community. (it all depends on what group you are in!)

• You never know what you can gain. Groups give you the ability to give and to receive. I recommend you do both.  Not only is there a possibility of gaining knowledge from other credit union professionals but you have the chance to give something back to when you add to the discussion.

• Stay informed. Keep up to date with what is going on in the credit union space. Do you have the opportunity to do this through CUNA newsletters and Credit Union Times? Sure! But the thing about social media is you get your information immediately. You don’t have to wait for next month’s (or next week’s) issue to come out to find the latest.

• Catch trends as they are happening, not after. If social media does anything, it is catching trends before they are happening and as they are happening. When you are participating actively in a group for your community, you can see where the pain points are and where your credit union can step in and help. You can help your credit union stay connected to community concerns and know which products and services to advertise.

So go ahead, search out some credit union groups and some community groups. Get active, get involved and connect!

You're Linked, I'm Linked, We're All LinkedIn

Now that you are aware that you, as a credit union marketer and business developer should have a LinkedIn account, what’s next? How does a credit union marketer use LinkedIn to help their credit union?

A NATURAL CONNECTION
As I mentioned earlier, credit unions attract some great people- credit union professionals are usually friendly, sociable and smart. That being said, you tend to make friends pretty easily. In his book “How to really use LinkedIn” Jan Vanmeiran lays out the technical aspects of how you can use LinkedIn to connect with others you have met and some that you haven’t.
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THE ART OF LINKING-IN
According to Jan, it is all about the 2nd connection network. Your first connections are the people that you already know; those that are already “linked” to you. If you have been on LinkedIn, you’ll notice that LinkedIn will often “suggest people you might know.” These people are 2nd or 3rd connections that are linked to your first connections.

FIRST STEPS
So, back to how a credit union marketer or business development officer like yourself can use LinkedIn to increase your SEG base and community charters. You want to approach company X to garner their interest in linking to your credit union but you just can’t get past the gatekeeper (we hear about this from credit unions of all sizes quite often). Credit Union marketers should be using LinkedIn to connect to the people they need to talk to through the people they already know in their network.

SEARCHING ON LINKEDIN
There is a search option on LinkedIn as well as an advanced search option. Click on the advanced search option and type in the company as well as the department or title of the person you are looking to talk to and their location information. Make sure you indicate you want CURRENT employees.

START THE CONVERSATION
The search will pull up everyone in that company that is on LinkedIn and related to that company and the position/title you listed. From there, you can see whether or not this person is a 2nd or 3rd connection. What you are looking for is a 2nd connection; LinkedIn will show you who you know that knows the person you are trying to get in touch with. Now, depending on how well you might know that person, all you have to do is give them a call (I would suggest calling them if you know them well) or shooting them an e-mail and ask them to make an introduction; either through LinkedIn, e-mail or even in person.

WINDOW WITH A VIEW
Jan drives home the point that “you never know who your network knows” and LinkedIn is the window that gives you a view into your network’s network. Use it. Give your credit union colleagues a chance to live out one of their seven principles: Cooperation among cooperatives.

Grow Your SEG Base With LinkedIn

I’ve never come across a credit union marketing or business development professional that I didn’t like at some level.

Why?

Credit Union people are just friendly. They care about their members and their community. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be working at a credit union, they’d be at a bank. (while that was meant as a joke, we all know it is true to some level)

YOU AREN'T THE ONLY ONE
Third Degree hears from many credit union marketers and business development officers asking for help with increasing their community charter opportunities and SEG base. We don’t have to tell you why this is so important for credit unions. Your charter is your current and potential membership base. The more members you have, the more you grow and the more you are able to help your members and in turn, your community. And that’s what being a credit union is all about. People. Community.

GET CREATIVE
While we believe that telling your story in a unique and compelling way with inspiring materials is the best way to show you are a great organization worth supporting and joining, there are other ways that can support your brand, products and services while helping you reach your goals.

YOU ARE POWERFUL PEOPLE, PEOPLE
Before we go into the “what’s” and “how’s” let’s get something out on the table: credit union people are humble and they have a hard time tooting their own horn. (just ask @CU_Cheerleader, Amy Lawrence) Credit union professionals  struggle with touting the “credit union difference” to the audiences they would like to reach. Third Degree helps credit unions with this every day by developing strategic campaigns targeted to not only increasing that membership base but share of wallet as well. And we’ve seen our credit union clients experience great success. But I’m not here to talk about us. I want to talk about you.

LINK TO POTENTIAL GROWTH
A great, easy additional tool to help increase your SEG base is social net-working. Specifically, LinkedIn. LinkedIn is growing by leaps and bounds more and more each day and is becoming a utilized resource among business professionals. Many of you are probably already on LinkedIn and that’s great. But are you utilizing it to achieve your credit union’s goals? Are you using LinkedIn to help grow your SEG base? You should be and we’re going to show you how!

Are You Ready For This? Credit Unions Dive Into Twitter

Your credit union decided to take the big step and get a twitter account. Now what? Do you just jump in and write whatever the first 140 characters that come to your mind are? Probably not the best idea.

Have a plan
 If you know Third Degree, you know we are always telling credit union marketers to have a plan. Strategize. This is the foundation for every campaign that Third Degree launches for each of our credit union clients and for good reason. We get great results because of our strategic creative process.  If you have just started your Twitter account, think of the specific followers you want to follow you and target your tweets toward them. Want to get a Gen Y following? Tweet about social media, college sports, college events, etc. Boomers? Tweet about parental advice, family activities, etc. You get it. Put yourself in their shoes and think: “If I were a _____ (Boomer, Gen Xer,etc..) what would I want showing up on my Twitter feed? What information would be helpful for me?” Take your answer and bend it towards information relating to your credit union. For example, if you put yourself in a Boomer’s shoes,(maybe even get more specific with a female boomer – hey, they have a lot of influence) you will probably want to receive tweets that relate to family, your kids, grocery shopping, household spending, etc. How can you turn those topics into something that relates to your credit union? Simple—put a financial twist on it. Link to articles about financial literacy and education for teens  or better yet, teens and money.  You can talk about community events like Dave Ramsey coming to your town. This brings us to the next point….

Know your followers
Make sure you know who is following you so you can tweet what is relatable to them. Analyze the list of your followers to see who your tweets are attracting; this way, you know what needs tweaking and what needs to stay the same. This is also a great opportunity to think of more programs to better fit the needs of those who are truly interested in your credit union and increase your share of wallet. Survey your followers and ask them what perks they absolutely love (that free coffee in the foyer), what additional services they want to access (maybe financial planning?) and what your credit union could do better. People want to be engaged and this is a great way to encourage that.

A Little Bird Told Me: Social Media Tips

Third Degree has said it before and we’ll say it again: social media is an avenue for connecting you to your credit union’s membership and potential membership. Is this a scary step? Yes. Will it be worthwhile? If you do it correctly, it will most certainly be.We’ve put together some helpful Twitter strategies and tips to make this process more manageable.

Social Media Tips
Know what is going on! If you aren’t using a social media/Twitter management tool like TweetDeck or HootSuite, you should be! Not only will it help you stay organized but you can open up a “search” column to seek out mentions of your credit union. In fact, make sure you have a search column open at all times with your credit union’s name in it! This way, you are updated immediately when anything good or bad is said about your credit union. Not only will you be able to provide better customer service and know who is saying what about your credit union but this will provide you with a FREE analysis of where your credit union may have some challenges.

First Response 
Respond as quickly as possible to what we like to call the “3 C’s of Twitter”: Comments, Compliments and Complaints.  We know… who would ever complain about a credit union? But it does happen on Twitter (hey, everyone has their bad days, right?) and the best customer service you can give is letting these people know their credit union heard them… and cares! Maybe there is nothing you can do about the complaint, but sometimes a simple “I’m sorry” is all that is needed to mend a broken bridge.  You can also keep a log of the Tweeters who complain, so if there is an issue that the credit union is working on, you can let them know. If you needed more encouragement to do this, remember the followers of those who mention your credit union- every time you have a conversation with these Tweeters, it is an opportunity to advertise your credit union. Being consistent and keeping your credit union’s brand out and about and in front of a large audience (like Twitter) will keep you at the top of a potential members’ mind when they decide to ditch their bank and go with a credit union.

Stay tuned. More credit union social media tips are coming your way..... 

Serving It Up Fresh, Right and Friendly On Paper: Third Degree Writes a Book!

Third Degree Advertising is writing a book! It’s not full of shameless self-promotion (although Roy’s bio is pretty awesome!) but it does contain case studies from credit unions that have been super successful. (We just have to brag on our clients— they are awesome!)  We simply want to share with you what we’ve seen first-hand as the most successful credit union marketing programs.

WE <3 CREDIT UNIONS
In short, we want to share our experience and expertise with YOU, credit union marketers and CEO’s. You have a tough job and we know every little bit helps. That being said, each paragraph and page of Credit Union Savvy was written with YOU and your needs in mind. Since we can’t work directly with everyone (Hey, our research, creative and media teams can work some pretty amazing marketing magic but our powers can only stretch so far!) this is a natural step in our efforts to further the credit union movement.

THE SAVVY-NESS CONTINUES

So, here it is! Credit Union Savvy  A compilation of our best thought leadership pieces to date in an easy-to-read, short story format.  Just for you. Our hope is that not only will our brightly-colored cover look great on your desk or bookshelf but that it will inspire you and your people both creatively and strategically. There’s a lot of smart stuff in Credit Union Savvy and we hope you put the information to good use!

FREE FRIDAYS
When you are the author of your own book, you can do all kinds of cool stuff like give one away every Friday, which is exactly what we are doing! Every Friday (until the book releases in May), you can follow us on twitter @thirddegreeadv or @CU_Cheerleader and we’ll let you know how you can win a FREE copy of Credit Union Savvy!  You can go to credit union savvy  for a link to buy the book on Amazon.

We wrote a book and hey, we’re even giving some away from free. Now, there is no reason for your credit union to NOT Read On and Fight On!  And never forget, you are powerful people, people.