FAIRBORN, Ohio-Fresh MCIF data generates great reports, but it should do more-such as inspire marketing strategy, according to Wright-Patt CU here.
"Too many organizations look at ExecuTrax as a reporting tool," suggested Chris Gardner, marketing specialist at the $1.9-billion CU. ExecuTrax is MCIF/CRM software deployed at the CU in May and provided by Plano, Texas-based Marquis.
"You need to make the data part of your strategy," explained Tracy Fors, Wright-Patt's marketing and business development director. That's easier, now that MCIF data is updated nightly and includes psychographic as well as quantitative analyses. Wright-Patt huddled behind ExecuTrax to find likely candidates for auto loans and credit cards during recent campaigns, said Gardner.
"We used 'look-a-likes' to determine prospects for direct mail and e-mail. We know what our current auto loan and credit card holders look like in terms of age, income and other relationships, so we looked for members who looked just like that but didn't have the loan or credit card."
ExecuTrax will soon tell Wright-Patt how successful the campaign was, Gardner added.
ExecuTrax can help the CU determine how profitable a particular SEG member is for a member center, Gardner continued. "We can use this analysis to help make decisions about additional opportunities at that SEG. We can also make assumptions-based on the nature of the business-that there may be other 'look-a-like' employees at that business in the market for similar relationships."
Wright-Patt's new MCIF automatically sends data from the core processing system into an SQL database and then imports the enhanced data each night into ExecuTrax, Gardner said. The SQL database codes the data, which include account relationships, balances, original balances, rates, opening dates, active users of audio response and bill pay, credit socres-"hundreds of user-defined relationship fields, anything that's not transactional."
Though fresh data is the best data, for 10 years Wright-Patt CU didn't have access to it. "We were using month-old data to make decisions, and there were questions as to the validity of the information," said Gardner.
Not only were monthly reports based on old data, but the information was limited to demographics. ExecuTrax gives Wright-Patt CU the psychographic perspective as well.
"We may have known commonalities in age and income, but now we know some of the members' basic behavior and interests, which helps us with media placement," Gardner explained.
Fresh data will make member onboarding more effective, he said. "We weren't able to communicate with new members until 40 days after they joined, which is not effective. We found ourselves sending onboarding mail to members who left the credit union 35 days prior, which can impart a negative impression."
ExecuTrax will be integrated with Wright-Patt's e-mail system to fully automate the onboarding process, said Gardner. "We can identify all new members overnight and then put them on the e-mail communication track"-and monitor results daily.
E-mail is more effective and efficient than paper mail and "guarantees a very sharp increase" in sales, said Gardner and Fors.
The MCIF now contains quantitative data in addition to qualitative, said Fors. "We're responsible for growing each member center, so now we have information as to what percentage the member center is of the entire credit union, and what percentage it should be."
Next year, Wright-Patt will use ExecuTrax to shift profitability, said Gardner. "We can determine whether a member is profitable by looking at each account relationship. Perhaps most of the products a given member has are profitable, but the member's credit card isn't. We could convert that member to a different credit card and make her very profitable."
