Best Practice: In E-Mail Marketing, Timing and Targeting Are Key

Ron Daly
December 31, 2008 | COMMENTS

As the year draws to a close, it's a good time to look back at some successful marketing programs initiated by credit unions over the past 12 months. These best practices can provide valuable lessons and encourage new ideas for planning your credit union's marketing activities into the new year.

Case in point: Northwest Federal Credit Union, where timing was everything when it came to its auto-loan promotion that netted $1.4 million in new loans in less than a week.

Last spring, in response to the Federal Reserve's drop in interest rates, NWFCU decided to pass the rate reduction on to its members through lower auto-loan rates. The $1.5-billion credit union, based in Herndon, Virginia, serves more than 96,000 members. Its message—“We've slashed our new auto loan and lease rates!”—was reflected in a promotional campaign highlighting rates as low as 3.5%.

While the media was still buzzing about the Fed's springtime move to lower rates, NWFCU took advantage of the headlines to launch the promotion touting its own low loan rates, using in-branch and online marketing activities. One of the key tactics was e-mail marketing.

“We knew using our collected e-mail addresses was the fastest, most cost-effective way to reach a third of our membership,” said Gerrianne Burks, NWFCU president/CEO. “Working with our e-marketing firm, we queued up a ‘special offers' e-mail alert using their automatic relationship builder (ARB) program.” This program targets members with customized e-mail messages based on their in-market actions, needs, or customer profiles.

Staff carefully crafted the e-mail, ran the template through the ARB's e-mail spam checker (to give the message its best shot at reaching members), and then delivered it to 32,000 member e-mail addresses in the credit union's database using the warranted e-mail system.

Because NWFCU knew the value of its member e-mail addresses, the credit union only sent pertinent messages to members who opted to receive special offers. The strategy worked: Over the first four days of the auto-loan program, some 8,000 members opened the e-mail and read the offer, with nearly 2,000 members clicking links back to NWFCU's website to learn more about it.

“The e-mail promotion did exactly what it was supposed to do,” said Burks. “Not only did it raise awareness and bring members to our website, it resulted in $1.4 million in new loans in less than a week. It was definitely worth the effort.”

And, said Burks, “out of the 32,000 members who received the campaign's e-mails, only 35 of them clicked on the unsubscribe link to avoid future e-mails from us.”

Along with bottom-line results of its successful auto loan campaign, NWFCU's e-mail program also generated valuable member information. The ARB program helped create credit union reports that analyzed members' actions, such as who opened the e-mails, who clicked on the specific links, and which members applied for loans—information that will help improve the messages of future NWFCU e-mail promotions.

Ron Daly is president/CEO of DigitalMailer. For more information, contact DigitalMailer at 866-994-4900. Contact Daly at rdaly@digitalmailer.com.