TOTOWA, N.J. — Thousands of credit union members in northern New Jersey are paying less for everything from restaurant meals to haircuts to clothing and even insurance and automobiles thanks to a new program from Northern Jersey FCU.
NJFCU has partnered with more than 60 businesses in the area to provide free merchandise and discounted prices with its "NJ Preferred Program."
The brainchild of VP-Sales and Marketing James Giffin and VP-lending Anthony Couzzi, the program gives North Jersey FCU members discounts — and even some freebies — at participating businesses in exchange for in-house advertisement that gets directly into members' hands or in their inboxes.
"They are able to market to our 30,000 members and in turn they will give our membership certain discounts they normally would not have gotten," said President/CEO Lourdes Cortez. "The benefit for the credit union is that... we're giving our members something for becoming a member of North Jersey FCU."
The businesses are not sold a list of members or allowed to solicit directly; instead the credit union takes their marketing materials and includes them in e-mail blasts or uses them as statement stuffers. The $166-million credit union has even co-branded with some of the business partners and shared marketing expenses for major sales events.
At first, North Jersey FCU had to do a lot of pavement pounding to find businesses that would agree to be part of the NJ Preferred Program, but that quickly changed, the CU reported.
"Since we've had it on the website and received some very positive feedback we have the vendors contacting us, because they see the potential they have to grow their own businesses by having access to our members," Cortez noted.
The credit union hopes to partner up with 300 businesses by the year's end. For now the program has not created an income stream, but with a unique program set-up to allow the North Jersey FCU to receive a small percentage of prescription sales as well as other potential income sources, it is projecting revenue in the near term.
"What we plan on doing with the proceeds is to give it back to the charities we're involved with like the Children's Miracle Network, March of Dimes and United Way... and we're allowed to do that," Cortez explained.
