LEESBURG, Va.-When it opened a new branch in a dense residential area with little commercial development, Northwest FCU turned to direct marketing to get the word out-very direct marketing.
The multi-pronged effort and resulting success has earned NW FCU a Credit Union Journal Best Practice Award for 2011.
Before opening its Leesburg branch this spring, NW FCU employed all the traditional drivers to spread the word, including member referrals, e-mail blasts, robo calls, radio ads and more. But the CU also asked DigitalMailer, Inc., its direct mail provider, to refer a company to help target potential members in the area. DigitalMailer turned the CU toward ScoreLogix, which drew upon consumer information, credit scores, employment history and more to determine an "Income Stability Score."
"They basically tell us of these prospects that live in a certain area," explained Karyle Thornton, Northwest's VP of marketing. "These folks, based on their score, are more likely to buy specific products."
The data from ScoreLogix included approximately 20,000 households near the new branch.
Northwest has conducted a number of direct mailings since utilizing the ScoreLogix data, and Thornton said that the CU has seen a 6% overall response from all of them. She noted that initially the mailings were just to alert the community to the branch's grand opening, and the CU had more than 700 attendees at its grand opening ceremony. "We have about 100 new members in Leesburg just from these lists, said Thornton, adding the CU is now beginning to drill down into the specifics on cost-per-new-member and how the mailings have affected loan volume and overall membership growth at the CU.
Catching Prospects' Eyes
Northwest has also implemented eye-catching strategies with its mailings, including football-themed mailers and scratch-off mailers with incentives of $25-$100 for the prospective members, who are the primary target. Occasionally, existing members do receive the mailings. Rather than offer any kind of preferential pricing for these members, for now the credit union is merely alerting consumers to its existing product and rate offerings.
"Really getting that PFI usage has been our main focus," said Thornton.
Many credit unions run direct mail campaigns, but don't always find them to be successful. Thornton credited ScoreLogix with having fueled NW FCU's good fortunes. "Because of ScoreLogix and their data, I wasn't just buying a list of names that's just within two or three miles of my office," she said. "The way they combined the data to let us know who they thought would be a better target just helped us in the targeting."
Aside from the different ways ScoreLogix has been able to segment data, Thornton said that the overall quality of the lists Northwest has received has helped drive its success. "One of the things that's been very nice is it's a very good list; it's not just one of those things where you buy a list...and, in my experience, you always end up getting almost a quarter to a third of the list that are bad addresses. ...The quality of this data has been very, very good, which has helped us in terms of controlling costs and what we're spending."
