Posts by Brian Wringer
CU Budgets in Strange Days: Put Your Money Where Your Monsters Are
You can’t just build a CU budget for your marketing and website based on “oh, whatever we did last year“, and that goes double when times are getting Strange.* *(In last week’s article, we pointed out that strange days and weird times are here, and things are only going to get Weirder in 2020.) Fortunately,…
Read More
Budgeting for Weird Times: It’s Opportunity Season for CUs
Whatever your personal, political, or economic beliefs, we can all agree on one thing: things are Weird, with a capital “W”, and they’re getting Weirder. Any way you slice it, 2020 is going to be one wild ride. In this series of “Weird Times” articles, we’re going to explore how credit union marketers can shape…
Read More
Tinker, tweak, and try | CU website best practices
What can you do right now to start getting more out of your CU website? It’s simple: tinker, tweak, and try. Try stuff. Experiment. Maybe even twiddle. Make some tweaks and see what happens. Poke around for things you can fix or improve. A credit union website is sort of a living thing. It’s never…
Read More
The truth will set you free
Some of our favorite “shop talk” with fellow credit union marketers over relaxing beverages are tales of losing clients because we told them the truth. You might say that one of our traits as a company (and, honestly, as individuals) is bluntness; we’ll say and ask about things that make people uncomfortable. It’s a gift.…
Read More
Building a Killer CU Landing Page | Digital Marketing Best Practices
You’ve built the perfect marketing campaign, a perfectly orchestrated symphony of traditional and digital media, targeted to a nice juicy list of hot prospects. People are clicking and tapping, but without a great landing page, you might faceplant at the finish line. Here’s how to build a credit union landing page that turns a list…
Read More
Why you’re crazy if your head marketer isn’t a VP
I’m just going to come right out and say it for all the credit union CEOs and Boards out there: If the person in charge of Marketing and Brand is not at least a Vice President level executive reporting directly to the CEO, you’re doing it wrong. We’ve worked with hundreds of credit unions over…
Read More
Culture vs. cost: how to find the right CU partners
A good fit between your credit union’s culture and your agency’s culture is the single biggest factor in success – far more than pricing. In fact, compatible cultures will minimize your costs and maximize marketing and brand effectiveness. There are lots of good companies out there doing great work for credit unions. While none of…
Read More
How many seconds to get a human?
Two extraordinary things just happened to me: An actual human picked up the phone when I called a large corporation with a technical problem. The human quickly resolved my problem. A few days ago, I found myself locked out of my Square account. (Among other things, Square allows regular folks to accept credit cards.) I…
Read More
Why credit unions should simplify absolutely everything
We already know that you should pay attention to simplifying copy to lower the reading level on your credit union’s website. It’ll make your site more understandable to everyone, not just brainiacs, and could even give your site an SEO boost. But that’s just a start. Simplifying the language you use shouldn’t begin and end…
Read More
Slaying the Sludge Monster
He’s covered in sticky tentacles of frustration, endless inescapable globs of pointless paperwork, ridiculous rules, and cruel barbs of rejection and fees. The Sludge Monster is clogging up your membership growth, and he’s costing your credit union members and money left and right. So what is sludge, anyway? Sludge is anything that creates friction, frustration,…
Read More