Email v. Direct Mail
Dennis Keopke, Vice President

My Analytical Side

Denny Koepke, Vice President

Seems that these times demand more data to provide more thoughtful strategy. Every CEO among our clients is concerned about the return on investment of marketing dollars. With pressures mounting about pulling funds to send to NCUA, the expense budget for marketing looks like a likely spot.

One thing I keep hearing from clients is that email marketing is so much cheaper, why not just use that during these tough times?

As I have been reviewing the MCIF reports and analysis of our clients as well as their Call Reports, two things stand out: targeted approaches using email can produce about the same numbers as direct mail.  However, the critical factor is having enough valid email addresses in your database to merit a total switch.

Many of our clients have less than 50% of their members over age 18 with email addresses, so this underscores the need to have a multi-medium approach.  We recommend not just using email since so many of the members who contribute a lot of profitability do not yet have their email addresses on the credit union’s system.

For example, one of our clients, using MCIF data pulls, have 56% of their members over age 18 with email addresses.  When we ran the top 20% of their most profitable members, 42% had email addresses.  So, if we did not segment and mail to those without an email address, there is a lot of potential business, more than 58% of profitable members that we have failed to tap by choosing only email.

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