Posts by Brian Wringer
Master of your domain names
Millions of web sites vanished one day when GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain name registrar and web host, went down for several hours. At first, an anonymous black hat hacker (or group of hackers) tried to take responsibility, but on Tuesday the company issued a statement that the outage was caused by “a series of…
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Five numbers that make you wonder about a CU
Whenever we talk with a potential new client, we head over to NCUA.gov and check out their numbers. It’s all public data, and not all that detailed, but after perusing a few hundred of these, we’ve learned how to gain some insights into a credit union’s situation and “attitude” just from poring over ratios and…
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Disruptive thoughts I have to let out
From time to time, I get these strange, disruptive thoughts. Unconventional. Aberrant. But they’re banging around in my head, and I have to let them out… What if overdraft fees were actually reasonable? Overdraft income is down because of opt-in regulations, yet the average overdraft fee is still $29. As marketers, we hate dealing with…
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Credit unions: not for everybody
Credit unions aren’t for everyone. There, I said it. And it’s true. The latest numbers bear this out – according to Callahan, credit unions hold 6.6% of assets and 8.7% of deposits nationally. That’s a niche group if I ever saw one. Logically, a whole lot of people – the majority of consumers, really – could benefit…
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Where the wild things aren’t
A few months ago, I was talking shop with a relative who works in management at a large public library. She was lamenting the fact that libraries tend to attract introverts – the sort of person who would rather follow safe lists of rules than take a chance on interacting with other people. One of…
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What if an alien biologist landed on your desk?
The other day, I saw a very interesting phrase as I was skimming a series of random business articles: “Business is an ecosystem, not a battlefield.” My first reaction was “Well, duh.” That’s a pretty obvious worldview. A fraction of a second later, I remembered — “oh, yeah… most people don’t see business (or life)…
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First, fix your web site
Way too many credit unions have terrible websites, and frankly, I’m tired of it. I’m not talking about subtle things only geeks care about — I’m talking about some real train wrecks that make the credit unions look like amateur operations. Here’s the real problem: potential new members won’t do business with you without doing…
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Sticks, stones and names can hurt you
I don’t know about you, but before I purchase something, I always check to see what other people think about them. Most, if not all, online sites let users post reviews, so I can read what other people think before I invest my time and money. And if you’re like me, you trust these online…
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Dreams and decisions
Ultra-blogger Seth Godin points out that people are astonishingly bad at making decisions about money. For most of us, that’s hardly news. But is it, where you work? If you’re working at a credit union, you’re probably pretty good with dollars and cents. And you’re likely surrounded by people who are also pretty good with…
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Are blasts from the past holding you back?
As a Wordsmith (that’s the official title I put on my business cards, anyway), I’m a big fan of new words. I recently ran across a doozy: skeuomorph, an object or element of design that serves no real purpose, but only echoes some past object. For example, many calendar applications on modern-day computers and mobile…
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