Solving The Case Of Single-Service Member

I was talking with a friend the other day who had a real life marketing challenge. I call it "The Case of the Single Service Member."

Last week, after a spirited conversation in the conference room, my friend's credit union decided to undertake a review of its cross-selling activities. Many viewed this effort as a pointless exercise since the credit union was there to serve everyone regardless of the number of accounts they had. In the end though, those who wanted to know won the debate. But how would they go about getting the answers? For this reason, I was called. You see, I solve marketing mysteries.

Tools of the Trade

Using the tool of my trade, an MCIF, I undertook a cursory exam of the crime scene. I investigated householding, which meant looking at all of the members and relationships within the credit union and producing a cross-sale report. Householding automatically brings connected member accounts into a single household relationship, instead of treating them as individuals. This proves to be an even greater indicator of the depth of sell through to each member household. It was there I found the breakthrough I was hoping for. In fact it was right there all along - right there in front of my eyes. That's usually how it goes in my business.

It seems that in this case, we identified over 50% of the member households that had only one account with the credit union. This was troubling. And what was worse, we discovered the single share accounts had extremely low balances. Taking this information to the next step, we learned that these single service households were extremely unprofitable... now that is a crime. With this knowledge, my friend said he could handle it from there. I thought so too.

About the Author:

Jay Kassing is the President of The Centrax Group, a marketing, CRM, and compliance software and consulting firm. He can be reached at 800.365.4274 or jayk@centraxgroup.com

Feedback can be sent to fdiekmann cujournal.com.

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