Category: <span>Recent Press</span>

By Frank Koechlein for the CUInsight The speed and depth of the current COVID-19 pandemic has created a once in a lifetime challenge for many credit unions. The member marketing and service strategies in place at the beginning of the year have become obsolete in a matter of weeks. How are you navigating your credit union through this turbulent time?  One tool that has proven useful is a simple topline segmentation analysis of your member […]

By Frank Koechlein, for the CUInsight Our credit union clients with member databases have discovered many of the unintended consequences data-driven decision making has on their senior team, organizational responsibilities and business partners.   Using member data as opposed to intuition or antidotal information begins to change the decision making process supporting many CU activities such as; strategic planning, product/service design, service distribution channels, sales and direct marketing campaigns to cross-sell members and to acquire new […]

By Frank Koechlein, February 25, 2019 For many smaller credit unions using their member data to create a meaningful segmentation scheme helps drive the transformation to selling people not products. Managing the assets and liabilities of your credit union in order to maximize revenue has typically come down to matching the right lending and funding products.  Financially this makes sense, however,  this product focused thinking many times gets passed down to the marketing and member […]

by Frank Koechlein for the CUInsight Credit union leadership clearly understands the business model that has worked in the past is not the formula for success into the future. Yet, community financial institutions are continuing to have a difficult time adopting data analytics into marketing decision making.  This is especially true for smaller institutions. More than 4,000 credit unions (of the total 5,637) are less than $100 million in assets and often lacking in financial […]

Frank Koechlein, Feb 1, 2019 It seems there is a growing divide between the strong financial performance of larger credit unions versus the continuing poor performance of smaller ones. While the 529 largest credit unions are showing a strong 8% growth year over year, the 1,565 smallest CUs (less than $10 million in assets) saw their losses nearly double in the 4QTR17 to $3.4 million. These smaller CUs represent only 1.2% of total members, but […]

By Frank Koechlein on Nov. 20, 2018 for the CUInsight As the price of data analytics software continues to decline and the ease of use increases, it’s a good time for credit unions to begin developing strategies that monetize their member data.  While the adoption by smaller institutions still lags behind their larger competitors; it is clearly beginning to pick up. For those credit unions looking to pilot a data project, marketing is the logical […]

Bu Frank Koechlein on August 17, 2018 for the CUInsight. When credit unions begin to look at using member data to improve their marketing, there are a wide variety of options to which they can apply their data. As exciting as this is, it is also a little daunting for credit union leadership who aren’t quite sure how to evaluate the value of their member data when applied to marketing.     There are several categories […]

The sales of data analytics software is expected to increase to over $17 billion in 2018.  This means you will be getting even more calls and emails with the offer to learn more about a new data analytics product or an improvement to your existing services.  As many credit unions have found out (some too late) there are many moving parts to designing and building an effective marketing analytics function, making evaluating these offers very […]

Consumers appreciate smart application of “usage data” with their music streaming services and online shopping. It’s no different with banking services. In fact, consumers appreciate and expect needs-based selling when it’s on target. Community financial institutions that have lagged in using data analytics but can no longer leave it to the big players. Now is the time to get started. By Frank Koechlein, President of Empower Your Analytics    This article was originally published on July 19, 2018. Financial […]

by Frank Koechlein for the CUInsight, May 16, 2018  Doing the math on data analytics There are many intangible benefits to gaining greater knowledge of your members.  Knowing your members and understanding their product, service delivery and messaging, helps you to better serve them.  Many marketing and member facing associates see the upside opportunity in using an institution wide platform for collecting, organizing, analyzing and then implementing targeted member marketing campaigns. However, when we have […]

By Frank Koechlein for the CUInsight, June 11, 2018. When did “sales” become a dirty word? A few days ago while watching TV; I had the opportunity to see the new Wells Fargo commercial.  My guess is this ad is an attempt to help repair the damage to the Wells Fargo brand resulting from their recent retail banking scandal.  The ad in addition to showing a lot of happy and engaged customers stated; “we have […]

By Frank Koechlein for the Financial Brand. Here’s what financial marketers need to do to ensure they realize the value of customer data and maximize the ROI of their marketing campaigns. Earlier this year, a bank marketer and I were discussing their latest direct marketing campaign. Unfortunately the results weren’t as good as had been projected. When I asked what went wrong, the answer was disturbing: “We don’t know.” The campaign in question was a […]

By Frank Koechlein, for CUInsight Our credit union clients with member databases have discovered many of the unintended consequences data-driven decision making has on their senior team, organizational responsibilities and business partners.   Using member data as opposed to intuition or antidotal information begins to change the decision making process supporting many CU activities such as; strategic planning, product/service design, service distribution channels, sales and direct marketing campaigns to cross-sell members and to acquire new members. […]

By Frank Koechlein,  for the Financial Brand Community banks and credit unions must harness the power of data analytics to redefine the ‘community’ they serve, and build their marketing strategy around new segmentation models. Traditionally, developing the marketing plan at a community bank or credit union has been a top-down process focused on specific products. The goals are defined by senior management, then handed down to marketing and retail teams who plan their promotions accordingly […]

By Frank Koechlein, for the Financial Brand     The adoption of advanced data analytics by banking provider directly correlates to their asset size. The larger the institution, the more likely they are using advanced analytics to cross-sell customers and steal relationships away from other (usually smaller) institutions. There is a troubling gap growing in the adoption rates of advanced analytics between community institutions and their big bank counterparts. Half the banks with $50+ billion assets […]

Frank Koechlein interviewed for an article by Marilyn Kennedy Melia. Published December 7, 2017 in the American Bankers Association, Bank Marketing Journal. After a long—and seemingly endless—period of ultra-low interest rates, an upward path is looming. Still, even if three hikes proceed in 2018 as many Fed watchers expect, rates will still be “low by historical standards,” notes Mary Beth Sullivan, managing partner of Capital Performance Group. But since rates are as central to banking […]