Thank you, Bank of America, for implementing new and uncomfortable fees for your members. That is the impetus behind Bank Transfer Day, which has garnered national media attention for credit unions. This in turn has led to a large surge in inquiries about EverythingCU’s pioneering Online Switch Kit, which helps new members transfer their accounts from a bank to a credit union.
Happy credit unioning!
Wow, all the publicity over Bank Transfer Day is so fantastic for all EverythingCU’ers! We’re also thrilled to be getting a flood of new inquiries about our Online Switch Kit lately… including being mentioned on CUESnet. We’ve been helping people switch from a bank to a credit union for 8 years, so it’s fun to see this getting such great attention from mainstream media.
I just spotted this ABC News clip being shared by a CU on Facebook:
The CU shown towards the end of the clip, where the young man makes the switch, is Charlotte Metro CU. They use a set of static PDFs to help people make the switch. ABC News reports this takes 12 minutes. Imagine how much faster it would be if they used EverythingCU’s Online Switch Kit!
Props to the more than 100 CUs who are already making it easier for their members! If you already have our Switch Kit, today is a great day to take another look at it and make sure everything is working perfectly with it.
This morning, I saw several credit unions share on Facebook this video clip of CUNA President Bill Cheney appearing on CNBC:
I can’t help but notice that Mr. Cheney states that many credit unions have Switch Kits… my only question is: Does your credit union have a Switch Kit, and is it an automated Online Switch Kit, or an old-school static PDF? 
With a grass-roots Bank Transfer Day approaching on November 5, now is a great time to implement an Online Switch Kit to make it easier for potential new members to make the switch to YOUR credit union!
We here at EverythingCU are thrilled that there is renewed, extra interest in helping more and more people leave their megaBanks (like BofA), and join their local credit union. I just ran across this article on the Bold Progressives web site, where they are calling for signatures to help pass legislation:
Bold Progressives: Petition Congress to make it easier to switch
Of course, if you already have EverythingCU.com’s online switch kit, you know that it doesn’t take an Act of Congress to make it easier to switch.
If you don’t already have it, find out what 111 other credit unions have discovered– you can make it easier to gain new members by making it easier for them to make the switch….. without waiting for the gridlock of Washington to untangle. (That might be a very long wait… don’t hold your breath!)
There has been a long-running topic on EverythingCU.com about how to get management on-board with social media when they are dead-set against it. Over the last couple of years, many suggestions have been offered about ways to accomplish this objective.
My favorite so far comes from Andy Anderson, a credit union marketer in Atlanta this morning. He quotes Edward Filene:
“If you are going to do business, you will have to do it in this new world; and I haven’t lived in this new world any longer than you have. It is stranger, in fact to me than it is to you.”
Andy informs us: “This was his speech before the School of Business Administration of the University of Buffalo in 1936.”
These words that Edward spoke 75 years ago are as true and relevant today as they were then. I think that had Ed Filene lived in this day and age, he would have whole-heartedly embraced social media, and used it to spread the word about credit unions throughout the land.
Thank you for sharing this with us, Andy!
HellllllllOOOOOOOOO GNOMES!
Guess what?
“What?” you say.
We’ve got a brand-spanking new upgrade to the Online Switch Kit that you’ve grown to love over the past 6 years. We like to call this new edition the Online Switch Kit Premium.
“What is so premium about the new version?” you may ask.
Thank you for asking.
The new premium version starts with the same online switch kit you (and more than 100 of your CU colleagues) may already know, PLUS it captures the member contact information so that if a member starts to make the switch, but then does not complete the kit, YOU now have their info so you can follow up and help them get to the end goal of having YOUR CU as their new primary F.I.
But wait! There’s more! In addition to this major new feature that many of you have been asking for, there are a number of other improvements too. Here they are in handy bullet format:
So there you go!
If you are a current Online Switch Kit client (we’ll call this version “Regular”), and you want to upgrade, we’ll give you the prorated price for upgrading. Just shoot me an email, and I’ll be happy to calculate your prorated upgrade price.
Any other questions, feel free to shoot me or Matt an email!
Here is the Online Switch Kit Premium info/ordering page.
Happy Cinquo de Mayo!
Right now, it’s a little bit more than a month away, but I’m nevertheless already excited for EverythingCU’s next webinar, How to Determine Your Credit Card Portfolio’s Marketing Needs which will be presented by Ondine Irving, creator of the nationally recognized Credit Card Connection program.
Ondine is an expert in credit union credit cards and her consulting branch is Card Analysis Solutions. Because of her deep knowledge of this arena of CU business, she routinely saves her clients tens of thousands of dollars by eliminating unnecessary and redundant charges coming from the card processor.
In this webinar, Ondine will show you how to analyze YOUR current card portfolio to determine what course of marketing action will maximize your ROI. Sometimes your card processor wants to sell you something that will benefit your credit union, but sometimes they are trying to sell you something which is in their best interests, which is not necessarily yours. Attend this webinar to gain the knowledge to put yourself in the driver’s seat of your card portfolio. You might even end up being able to save your CU some money on the expense side as well.
In the meantime, make sure your credit union is listed in the national database of the Credit Card Connection by registering here (which is FREE). Suze Orman continually promotes this site through her latest book and tv appearances, and credit unions that are featured get a steady flow of new card applications.
To learn more about the webinar including pricing, or to sign up for it, register yourself on EverythingCU.com (which is quick, free and easy) if you haven’t already, and check out this webinar’s detail page here.
We here at EverythingCU.com have built up quite a library of recorded webinar workshops on social media. In fact, taken together, you could say we’ve created a Social Media University for credit unions.
Here are links to the full curriculum. Take them either individually, or as whole, for a thorough understanding of marketing your credit union via online community channels:
Spiderweb: This foundational 101 webinar covers creating your Facebook account, Facebook fanpage, setting up an event on Facebook as well as twitter basics. Also covered in this webinar is using both twitter and Facebook to drive traffic back to your credit union’s web site.
Twitter 101: This foundational 101 webinar covers setting up a twitter account the right way, things to keep in mind when choosing your twitter handle, how to find other twitterers within a specified radius of your branches, and how to drive traffic back to your credit union’s web site using Twitter.
Bring Your Binoculars: This advanced 301-level webinar assumes you have the knowledge covered in the previous two webinars, and shows you how to tie your social media efforts together for greater impact. You’ll learn about tools to monitor what’s being said about your credit union online, and how to promote your credit union event using a number of free online resources.
Look Who’s Talking: This 101-level webinar covers how to handle responding to negative comments made online about your CU, and is geared for both CUs already participating in the online conversation as well as those on the fence who are looking for reassurance that diving in will not bring the end of the world.
Click on any of the links or graphics above to order and instantly download these recorded webinars!
Watching an 8-minute video created by St. Mary’s Bank Credit Union, the first CU in the United States, about its history (thank you again Andrea!), I learned that from the very early days, the credit union had a kids savings program. Children walking home from school could stop at the credit union and deposit their pennies into a tin cup, and the savings were carefully recorded.
Here’s an idea: How about if in your credit union kid’s club, you paid a FANTASTIC rate of return for these tiny balances…. say they got a quarter back in one month for two dollars deposited as a term deposit. Yes, that’s a sky-high rate of return, but the credit union would cap this great rate on a maximum of $10 or $20, and limit it to only kids 14 years old or younger. Kids would be incredibly eager to save their money, and probably track the date of maturity like a hawk. What a boost, and good life lesson.
You could give this term deposit a fun name like the Lollypop Certificate, and explain to the kids they can use their quarter earnings on anything like, or of course, to reinvest it in more savings.
We know that kids have a very short attention span, and one week seems like a year to them. One month feels like a decade. And psychology 101 tells us that the sooner the reward comes after the desired behavior, the more connection there is between the two.
Let’s help our kids develop better savings habits by rewarding them big, and relatively swiftly. They will be thrilled with their earnings of a quarter, and the credit union will be paying out a relatively tiny amount.
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Where I'll Be: CU Tech Technology Research Consortium Spring Forum Look Who Is Talking – Monitoring your Brand in the Web 2.0 World Boston Park Plaza Hotel Boston MA Wednesday 5.12.10 Places I've verbalized Info on my World 2.0 Workshop. |
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