ICYMI (In Case You Missed It)

In Case You Missed It – 3.20.24

We’re here with some FRESH takes from this week’s marketing conference! It literally just ended! We have insights about Financial education, marketing with data, using AI, setting a good marketing pace, junk fees and a surprisingly large fruit. Here’s what we noticed, in case you missed it:

Junk fees are no joke

The Biden administration recently announced it’s targeting “junk fees” for college students and student loan borrowers. The administration identified four types of fees, including loan origination fees, college banking fees, automatic charges for textbooks and losing unused funds on a meal plan. No surprise that no one likes hidden fees, especially while using required financial services. Credit union members tend not to like hidden fees either (hint, hint).

That’s a Big Berry!

The Guinness World Record for the heaviest blueberry was updated recently, as Australian farmers found a berry weighing in at a whopping 20.4 grams (or 0.72 oz) and measures more than an inch and a half across! The “Eterna” blueberry variety is supposedly just as juicy as its smaller counterpart. Imagine one of these monsters in a muffin!

Marketing Conference Hot Takes

We exhibited at the America’s Credit Unions (CUNA) Marketing & Business Development Conference in Las Vegas this week. If you were there, hope you adopted your own fuzzy little monster pal!

We’ve noticed a few trends among credit union folks, other vendors who serve credit unions, and among the amazing speakers:

Financial education and empowerment are white-hot.

Of course, these have always been strong suits for credit unions, but there’s always the question of “uh, well, how do we actually, y’know, DO that in the age of apps, attention, and AI?” There were multiple vendors here with great solutions for making your members smarter.

You gotta market and plan with data.

This has been true for decades, but really, folks; there are great solutions to fit every CU and every budget to make sure you’re strategizing, targeting, tracking, and leveraging your wealth of member data to become part of their lives. Start as small as you want, but start. Again, there were lots of solutions here.

Marketing is a marathon, not a sprint.

This has been true since the cave days, but it bears repeating: absolutely no one here was selling or talking about quick fixes and sure-fire one-size-fits-all magic buzzword-compliant marketing mojo sauce.

The AI panic is over, the machine learning hype is dying down, and we’re learning how to actually use this stuff.

It’s awfully nice to see the CU zeitgeist simmer down and dig in, and start learning how to use machine learning and AI where it makes sense.

The cooperative spirit is alive and well.

Credit union people are open, excited and mission-driven, and once again we’ve been recharged with that wonderful CU energy. It’s why we love serving the CU movement. That collaborative and cooperative spirit extends to all of us who serve CUs; we’ve made some great contacts and talked with several potential partners among the other exhibitors.

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