The Top 3 Ways your Website can Grow and Retain Credit Union Membership
| October 21, 2016 | Posted in Credit Unions
The top goal at most credit unions is growth – for both your membership and loan departments. However, we see many credit union marketers ignoring one of the best tools in their arsenal for not only growth, but also retention. That tool is your credit union’s website and online presence. Your website, when utilized correctly, will grow credit union membership and improve member retention. It does this in three major ways:
- Positioning Your Credit Union as their Financial Expert
- Collecting Member and Potential Member’s Data
- Motivating Visitors to Act
Positioning Your Credit Union as Their Financial Expert
A primary tool to member growth and retention is to build trust. One of the best ways to do this is to use your website to highlight education more than blatant sales tactics. If the first time a visitor lands on your website you have a pop-up banner telling them to apply for a car loan, what motivation do they have to comply? They don’t know you and they don’t trust you – yet.
You can build trust by becoming that prospect’s go-to resource for financial information. If you are able to continually provide them with unbiased, relevant, and helpful financial advice they will see you as a trustworthy expert in the financial market. When they are ready to apply for a loan, who are they more likely to go with? Their financial expert or the bank barraging them with marketing collateral?
Use your blog and resources sections to help prospective members find your website when they ask Google and other search engines for help with their financial problems, and continue using it to draw them in and win them over.
Collecting Member and Potential Member’s Data
Every time a visitor reads a product page, comments on a blog post, or shares an infographic – they are giving you vital clues to their wants and needs. A key inbound marketing strategy is to understand the member and be able to sell them on products and services that are relevant to them. Your website is the ultimate way to track what they consider relevant and cross-sell effectively. If they are frequenting blog posts about buying a car, then it would be smart to send them an email about your car loans.
Tip from the Experts
Does your website have Google Analytics set up? This free service allows you to track the demographics and flow of your site’s visitors to make the most of your website’s marketing capabilities.
Besides monitoring what pages they are visiting and interacting with, you can use your website to actively collect data like email addresses. You can do this by asking them to subscribe to your blog or giving them access to a guide, book, or calculator in return for their email. These addresses can be used to create various email campaigns that are segmented to directly appeal to specific personas or interests.
Not only can you collect email addresses and traffic flow information, but you can gain social media followers through your website as well. Make your social media pages easily accessible through links and encourage the sharing of your content with highly visible share buttons throughout your blog and site.
Collecting website data is the best start to any future member or prospective member communication, as it will allow you to personalize the message for a more impactful marketing strategy.
Motivating Visitors to Act
Once you understand your member and potential members through data collection, and you’ve earned their trust by becoming their go-to financial resource, its finally time to seal the deal. Your website should have calls-to-action (CTA) throughout its pages to help guide those visitors to taking the next steps toward a specific action. Calls-to-action can have varying levels of intensity and appeal to prospects in every step of the sales funnel, whether it is awareness, consideration, or the decision stage.
Use Hubspot’s list of brilliantly done CTAs to inspire you.
Important Takeaways
Your website can become your top sales and marketing tool if you utilize it effectively. It can attract new visitors through online search engines, it can impress prospective members, and it can delight current members with its ease of use and the anticipation of their needs.
Tie in your website’s theme and marketing with the rest of your strategy to create an integrated approach. Too often credit union marketers think of their website only as a landing page for product information. Use it to its full potential and become the Amazon or Google of the financial world!
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