Credit Union Sustainability-Marketing Planning for 2011

My Marketing Strategy Nicolette Lemmon, President & Founder Continuing our discussion on Credit Union Sustainability, here is another marketing consultant’s perspective – mine! As President of LemmonTree Marketing Group, a strategic marketing consulting firm for credit unions, I am here to stress the important facets to keep in mind while planning your marketing strategies for 2011.  All things must be considered such as having a multi-layered plan that considers the lifetime value of a member, as well as, creating a marketing flywheel that touches all of …

A Fresh, Fun Perspective on Loans

My Marketing Strategy Nicolette Lemmon, President & Founder To teach my daughter about money management and the meaning of a loan, my husband and I had her take out a loan to get her iPod Touch. Here’s her take on what the loan meant to her… One day I was inspired to get an iPod Touch so I went on the Internet and found how much an iPod would cost. In my piggy banks I only came up with half …

What Do You Know about Your Gen Y Members?

My Marketing Strategy Nicolette Lemmon, President & Founder There is so much talk about the “new age wave” of Gen Y, that I decided to find out more about what impact this generation was having in the memberships of client credit unions. In picking seven clients of sizes ranging from $90 million to over $500 million, it was interesting to see the profiles of young adults that opened accounts at the credit union. Take the time to review the young …

Part 3 of 3: Understanding the New Age Wave – Who Is Influencing Gen Y for Banking?

My Marketing Strategy Nicolette Lemmon, President & Founder As a Boomer, I continue to wonder how different the Gen Y Age Wave will be than our consumer wave. As a young adult, I opened my first checking account at age 16 at a nearby community bank. My parents did not take me to their bank to set up my first checking account when I started working a part-time job. They really didn’t influence my decision nor did they show an …

Part 2 of 3: Understanding the New Age Wave – Gen Y

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 …

Part 1 of 3: Understanding the New Age Wave – Gen Y

My Marketing Strategy Nicolette Lemmon, President & Founder They Think Differently In reading Grown Up Digital, by Don Tapscott, there was a chapter on the 8 Net Gen Norms that created discussion in various areas of my personal and professional life. The eight Net Gen Norms are: Freedom, Customization, Scrutiny, Integrity, Collaboration, Entertainment, Speed, and Innovation. An interest example in his book was how “Integrity” swings two ways with Gen Yers. When buying a product, significant numbers of these young …

Using Social Responsibility to Engage as a Marketing Tool

          My Marketing Faves Heather Wilhelm, Client Service Coordinator Focusing on social responsibility as a marketing tool can be a useful strategy for not only contributing to society, but in turn also contributing to the core of your Credit Union: your young members. Support not only charity and community events, but also larger organizations and ideals.  For example, Foothill FCU created a youth calendar “Sketch & Save” contest. The contest encouraged youth members to engage with …

Is That Target Market Worth The Money?

My Marketing Strategy Nicolette Lemmon, President & Founder How are you determining the justification for expenditures on special target initiatives? While working on a marketing audit for a new client recently, reviewing lots of demographic data about their market made me reconsider some initiatives that had been mentioned from the senior management. For example, I was looking at the percentage of youth in the updated American Family 2005-2007 community study. My next step was to confirm how these statistics of …

Combating an Aging Membership with Gen Y

My Marketing Trends Kelly Kressner, Marketing Specialist What gives with youth marketing? CUNA’s National Credit Union Youth Week starting next week has attracted more than 400 credit unions for their savings challenge! Why? With 47 being the average age of a credit union member and the Boomer generation moving into saving and fixed income mode, now is the time to capture more youth market share. And Gen Y is estimated to be as large or larger than the Boomers. Research …