Best Practices

How to attract new credit union members

For over a month now, we’ve been publishing articles that focus on the lifeblood of credit unions: member retention. In our first installment of this series, we explained the reasons  why member retention is even more important than member acquisition. In the next article, we examined some of the leading causes of member churn (and the best ways to avoid them). After that, we recommended some ways your marketing department can lead the charge on member retention. And most recently, we published some additional strategies for increasing retention. Of course, many of the member retention strategies and ideas that we’ve recommended also have the benefit of encouraging new member acquisition. For example, if your credit union launches a friend and family referral program (as we advised), it will delight existing members who receive an incentive for their referral, while also increasing the number of new members. It’s one of many “two birds with one stone” strategies that simultaneously boost retention and acquisition. So for the final piece in this series, we’d like to expand our focus “beyond retention,” and list some of the additional ways that credit unions can attract new members (while still keeping the old ones). After all, while retention may be more important than acquisition, both are critical concerns for modern credit unions, and they have a tendency to go hand-in-hand. Offer competitive rates and fees One of the most effective ways to attract new credit union members is to offer (and advertise) competitive rates and fees. Credit unions have the […]