Credit Union Email Marketing Strategies That Drove $10.5M in New Deposits

Even if your members love your credit union, it doesn’t mean they’ll open your emails. And it’s not because they don’t want to hear from you or need your financial products. It’s because the volume of emails hitting their inbox is crushing.

The number of emails people receive has steadily increased every year since 2017. Globally, people send and receive about 361 billion emails each year, and that number is expected to reach 424 billion by 2026. Additionally, Gallup research shows that the engagement advantage credit unions once held over banks is shrinking. In 2014, they enjoyed a +21% engagement premium and a +29% higher Net Promoter Score (NPS). By 2021, those numbers had dropped to +11% and +17%, respectively.

So if you think it’s tough to capture members’ attention now, just wait. It’s only going to get harder.

But it’s worth it.

For example, one credit union built an automated email program that captured $10.5 million in new deposits over a seven-week campaign. And that’s just one example of what’s possible with credit union email marketing. We’ve gathered some of our favorite strategies to help you serve your members in new and creative ways.

Credit Union Marketing Ideas: How Can We Expand Member Relationships?

This isn’t a new question, but it’s one that credit unions have been working really hard to answer for years. Interestingly enough, a recent J.D. Power survey shows that credit union satisfaction is 74 points higher than that of banks.

So why are credit union members still keeping parts of their business elsewhere?

In many cases, they just haven’t built a relationship deep enough to get customers to bring everything over. The good news is you can change that, and a solid credit union email marketing program is a great place to start.

Here are a few of the credit union marketing strategies we’re seeing our customers use right now that are getting results:

Onboarding and welcoming new members with purpose

Members come to you through many different channels. Some got a great deal with your credit union at a local dealership when purchasing a new car. Others started a new job and learned from HR that credit union membership is a perk of employment. Either way, their relationship likely isn’t as deep as it could be—at least not yet.

An onboarding series (aka nurturing automation) that educates new members about how to get the most from their membership can help close that gap.

For example, Georgia United Credit Union automated a new-member onboarding sequence that shares educational content and resources new members are most likely to need. The credit union team partnered with its member experience team to identify pain points, learn what members were calling about, and address those topics in their onboarding emails. The series was well received, earning a 77% open rate on welcome emails, and set the stage for a highly valuable cross-selling program.

Cross-selling with “next best product” emails

Imagine that a member rents their home but receives a credit union email marketing message about refinancing programs. They aren’t likely to be excited—that’s a given—but more importantly, they’re probably less likely to open future emails.

That’s why, in addition to starting the relationship with an automated welcome email series, you can create a personalized “next best product” program. Georgia United did just that, using member profiles and data like current products and credit scores to trigger more personalized email offers.

The emails produced a 96% spike in application volume and thousands of new products sold. Beyond the success metrics, members felt more known and understood by their credit union, leading to deeper and more meaningful relationships.

Turn your data into easy wins

A credit union marketing plan that includes strategic email marketing can also help you launch new programs that educate members about products that align with their needs. For example, Centra Credit Union audited and cleaned its data to create a more accurate email list and remove unengaged contacts. The team then sorted the remaining contacts into segments based on behavioral history and past email engagement.

As a result, Centra’s marketing team captured a better understanding of members’ existing products and identified the best areas to target for new growth. They found that more than half of its members, over 70,000, didn’t have a certificate of deposit with Centra. As a result, they decided to target this opportunity using demographic and behavioral data for this group.

They sent these recipients a three-email educational series over seven weeks, and the results were significant, generating $10.5 million in new deposits. Even better, the process is repeatable, so the next time the credit union marketing strategy includes driving certificate of deposit growth, it can simply rerun the same campaign.

How to Plan Automated Campaigns and Nurtures

You likely have many opportunities to grow member relationships within your data, but finding them can be challenging. One of the easiest ways to uncover these opportunities is by using a marketing automation platform. In fact, for every dollar spent on marketing automation, companies see an average return of $5.44 within the first three years.

When using this approach, here are a few steps to get started with your credit union email marketing strategy.

Map your member’s journey. Before building any automation, take a step back and map the journey that your members take. From joining your credit union to applying for a loan or opening a certificate of deposit, each member has their own needs. When you outline these key moments, you can create an email series that meets members where they are, using segmentation to reach the right people.

Also, take time to get familiar with your marketing automation platform and build nurtures around the opportunities it reveals. You can organize your emails in a way that makes it easy to track results later, whether you’re pulling analytics from the software itself or another source.

Trigger emails based on member behaviors. Automation gives you visibility into member behaviors so you can respond quickly. If a member clicks on mortgage rates but doesn’t apply, you can automatically send a follow-up email with additional homebuying resources. Or if a member stops opening emails, they can be exited from the program.

Also, as you build your list, think ahead about how you want to segment and personalize future emails. Consider adding extra fields to your sign-up forms to learn more about members, and use that information to personalize your content. Keep your lists more organized using consistent templates and naming conventions, so managing campaigns stays simple.

Find early wins. You don’t have to automate everything at once. Start with one high-impact sequence, like Centra did when identifying members who didn’t have certificates of deposit. Test it, measure it, and refine it until you’re confident it’s delivering the results you want. Once you experience success, you can expand to other credit union email marketing programs.

Before you launch broadly, also consider running tests on a small internal segment, such as your marketing team. This helps confirm that everything works correctly, looks great on both mobile and desktop, and that your CRM is tracking campaign data accurately.

Be thoughtful about member consent. As you map these journeys, it’s also important to distinguish between marketing and transactional emails. Marketing emails promote products or services and require opt-in consent, while transactional emails share essential account or service information and are typically sent automatically after a member action. As you grow your marketing email lists, make sure members have clearly opted in to receive communications and can easily opt out at any time.

Do you feel like you could use a little more guidance to support your credit union email marketing?

We’ve broken it all down for you in our marketing automation strategy guide. It will help you connect with your members, provide them with value, and build deeper relationships to win more of their business.

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