Everyone can provide a plain old ordinary checking account or car loan for plain old ordinary average people.

Go find some weirdos

Quick, tell me about your members. No, not the average members. They’re boring. And you already know plenty about them. And so does everyone else. Find some weirdos. People out on the fringe. The ones who were in New Guinea last week, and are currently somewhere in Kazakhstan. The family thinking seriously about what kinds…

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As long as they feel they're getting some real benefit in return.

Would your members pay a premium?

We’ve written before about the idea of charging for CU membership – what you’d have to do to make yourself feel like an exclusive club worth joining, a la Costco and Sam’s Club. We know people will pay club membership fees – AARP, AAA, social clubs, professional associations – as long as they feel they’re…

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What will you always do, no matter what?

Mission Statements are boring. What’s your Manifesto?

When we start on a branding project, one of the first things we usually see is the credit union’s “Mission Statement”. About 99.999% of the time, a committee has very carefully stripped it of any concrete meaning or use and it says the exact same things as every other mission statement. What I’m more interested…

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Take the challenge. Your members will thank you.

Is your home page a welcome mat or a clown car?

I challenge you to go to a site you’ve never visited before. To make it even more random, ask a coworker or friend what their favorite site is, and go check it out. Now I’d like you to be objective and ask yourself the following questions as you look at the home page: Does it…

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A great website is a screaming bargain.

Five things to expect when building a new web site

Since we build new websites for credit unions all the time, we’re pretty familiar with the process. But most of our clients are only involved in a website project once or twice in a decade. Sure, it’s exciting and exhilarating, but it can also be exhausting and unfamiliar. Here are five things to expect when…

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change the objective of your marketing from selling to helping

Would your members pay for your marketing?

What’s that you say? Pay? To receive our direct mail, emails and statement inserts? Uh, I don’t think so. Okay, then let’s look at this a different way. Would your members be willing to pay, say $5, for some information that would teach them how to save $50/month on a car loan? Absolutely. Over the…

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No one gets the toxic title until it becomes a pattern

Taming the toxic client

In my last two articles, I discussed iDiz Inc’s perspective on Building the ideal credit union marketer and Helping the not-so-ideal credit union marketer. Now it’s time to dish up some dirt! With some people, it’s almost impossible to develop a productive business relationship. I’m sorry to say we’ve encountered all the red flags below,…

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marketers who get the best results have a lot in common.

Building the ideal credit union marketer

Over the years, I’ve noticed that our most successful clients — the credit union marketers who get the best results and make this job a lot of fun — have a lot in common. In fact, several years back, I started compiling a list of traits for our ideal client as a way to define…

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make sure you know where your domains are

Divert domain disasters

Are you really good at something you’d rather not even do in the first place? Maybe you’re a champion dish washer, or a nimble-fingered diaper-changing ninja. I have the same problem with domain names. I’ve been building credit union web sites for a long time, and over the years I’ve developed a lot of unwanted…

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Don't neglect the human basics of security just because it's not a transaction system.

DDoS and web site security: what CU marketers need to know

We’ve had some questions from clients about DDoS attacks on credit union web sites, what they mean to their website’s security. Here’s what CU marketers need to know: What does DDoS mean? In a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, a malicious hacker or group of hackers attempts to overwhelm a web server with a huge…

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