My Marketing Strategy
Nicolette Lemmon, President & Founder
What do you know about your Gen Y members? Do you know if your youth marketing is working or do you even have any youth marketing in place?
I have always been a big proponent of children’s savings programs and teen programs for their ability to engage parents with the credit union. Yet, often I hear a client’s concern of what the impact really is of low balance children’s savings accounts and then low balance checking accounts for teens as they get their first jobs.
Two things have struck me recently. First, I found that most young adults follow their parents’ advice about where to do their banking. The second thing was how many young people already had relationships at our client credit unions before age 18.
Using MCIF (database software analysis), it was interesting to see that for larger credit union clients, 30% on average of the young adults opened account prior to age 18! Now, what does this have to do with youth marketing? Those credit unions mentions all have some form of youth savings account or program to encourage membership.
| Gen Y’s Impact on Membership | Average Client CUs $200-$500 million | Average All Client CUs $75-$500 million |
| All Retail Mbrs | 48,799 | 44,171 |
| Total Retail Mbrs 18-30 | 8,986 | 8,056 |
| Percentage | 19.14% | 18.39% |
| When did the Gen-Yer Open Their First Account? | ||
| Under age 13 | 14.09% | 12.95% |
| Between ages 13-17 | 16.12% | 15.36% |
| After age 18 | 69.78% | 71.68% |
So while it is good to attract more members ages 18-30, it is also a good practice to have them “financially grow up” doing their banking in the credit union!
Craving more information about Gen Y? Check out our white paper, Understanding the New Age Wave: Gen Y.