Want to go to Inauguration Day ceremonies AND save the economy? Take advantage of Omni Hotels' "Commander-in-Chief" package in DC and get tickets to the event, a makeover, presidential cologne and...get this...a PUPPY! Sign up now!
And your "this counts as news" story of the week?
Police post want ad for people to become snitches. From MSNBC.com.
Can I Be In the Club? Your potential members don't know whether or not they're welcome
by Ron Daly
Read an article the other day in the Credit Union Journal about Belvoir FCU, one of our clients. They've taken great pains to make sure that people that are elligible for membership can take the right steps to manage their finances at the CU. It's been helping them get new members and reach out to people who have been shorted in the past or who have never managed their money at all.
Jimmy [Marks, Creative Media Director] had no clue when he started working with me what a credit union was. He had been using a bank all his life. In his small home town, his community bank was run by people whom he had known, literally, all his life. But when he got to the big city...well, let's just say he didn't have a great relationship with his financial institution. He had no clue he could become a member because he was working for my company, which is an SEG. He wouldn't have, either, until I MADE him to sign up so I could put him on direct deposit. But he's happy with our credit union and recommends them to his friends and peers.
What's stopping people from becoming members at your credit union? Maybe it's that they just don't know they can. What are you doing to reach out not just to members but to your average joe? You DID know that, as of right now, credit unions have positive press coming at them from all angles from the media, right? People want to know their money is safe, secure, and going places other than "down". You can make your members very happy, you know that...but first, you have to make them MEMBERS.
It's come to the point where everyone - credit unions, banks, Henry Paulson - are tightening the belt on spending.
It's not uncommon. People don't spend during recession, which means businesses don't make money during a recession, which means companies that run businesses aren't making money. And the first thing they usually cut? Jobs. Which means people have less money to spend. It's a system.
So you want to cut costs, too. Your business needs a boost, you like your employees, and your members/customers need your support. What do you cut?
Look at your numbers on postage. Go wake up your customer reps/BusDev people/marketing department and tell them to get you the cost of printing statements/direct mail.
If you don't know these costs already, I'm betting you're shocked. There's lots of money in getting all that printing/shipping/postage going, which means you have a perfectly viable option staring you in the face.
Cut out your paper. Tighten the belt in a way that makes sense and doesn't sacrifice your employees/members/customers or their respective satisfaction with your company/bank/credit union.
Slots for our "Do You Want Fries with That?" Webinar are filling up quick, so if you want to learn about cutting out paper and using email to reduce cost, click the french fry icon at the top of the page to find out more.
When we bring in a new client, we try and convince them that using email to on-board members is faster, easier, smarter and more effective than other methods. Email's great for building and strengthening member relationships. And we're not the only ones who think so.
BAI just published this article (click here to read) about E*Trade's on-boarding email practices. What's more, they presented this graphic representing the results of a Javelin research study.
[For details, click the image.] People are asking for email statements/communication. And for just the reasons I stated:
1) SPEED - Why wait on paper mail to get in touch with people? Two weeks to make one statement say "hello and welcome" to a new member? 2) EASE - One campaign can roll out within a matter of hours, not weeks worth of printing and prep. 3) INTELLIGENCE - Know who to send to, when to send and what to say. Don't waste time blanketing every member when you can target specific members and groups. 4) EFFECTIVE - You want $1.4 Million in new loans? Want to boost ROI? We've got the means.
Our ARB can do for you what E*Trade does for their new customers. To learn more, sign up for our webinar "Do you want fries with that?" by clicking the icon at the top of the left column.
My Very First Webinar (SPECIAL: The "Jimmy Challenge" Update!)
by Jimmy Marks
Seminars stink.
I mean it, they do. I've been to my share and they're mostly the same. Sure you get to network, you get to eat cheap bagels and find the newest features of your Blackberry, but then you wake up from your nap in the middle of the THIRD slideshow presentation about "boosting ROI" (whatever that means) and you realize you're trapped at a convention somewhere in [INSERT BORING STATE HERE].
Which is where Webinars are awesome. There's no driving, there's no bagels (unless you buy bagels on your own), and the notes are usually provided post-webinar so you don't have to do a ton of writing.
Recently, I sat shotgun on my first webinar here at DigitalMailer. The "Do You Want Fries With That?" webinar (the first in a series, anyway) was a ringing success - lots of attendees, lively conversation, and me as the emcee. Ron Daly, Greg Crandell, and super-awesome Account Manager Carolyn Johnson fielded questions and got to the nitty-gritty of our ARB, which builds relationships with members and cuts down on the high cost of printing/posting/mailing.
It's sort of strange, at first - it feels more like radio than an online seminar. But unlike radio, the people calling in/texting aren't trying to win hockey tickets. They're there to learn about your products, your expertise, and your opinions regarding the industry. So its your duty to put out the best presentation you can and to help people come to an understanding about the subject. I think we can expect more on this front in the future for a few reasons. For one, the rising cost of travel/fuel/space is going to put a dent in seminar attendance across the board. For another, with more and more businesses taking advantage of relatively inexpensive internet communication tools like Skype and GoToMeeting, the ease of this kind of connection is increasing. So why not take advantage of it?
We've got some slots left for the rest of the webinars for this year, so go sign up now! Click the "Fries" icon on the left column to get going!
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THE JIMMY CHALLENGE:
How much have I saved to date?
$256
I think this might disappear soon as I have a car payment coming up, but hey...maybe I'll get lucky. Stay tuned to see how much more I can sock away!
With tomorrow being Election Day (shocking, I know), we know we can expect two things from the whole process. One, lots of waiting. We wait and wait and wait. Lots of it.
Two: trouble. With a capital "t" and that rhymes with "e" and that stands for "electronic voting".Click here for examples.
For some reason, we can figure out how to make a robot land on Mars and dig up soil samples. We can make a piece of software the size of a pocketsquare that can access the internet, download songs and turn on your TV. We can make a program that lets you NOT email drunk (go to clickconnectcommunicate.com for that little gem). Why can't we figure out a way to record votes? The truth is we could. Personally, I think the future lies online. Everyone does their banking, monitors their kids and gets their degree online these days...why not use the Internet?
See, we do it all the time at DigitalMailer. For credit unions, it's important to get member participation going to make decisions that affect the CU as a whole. And we get good results, because everyone has their own voting link to click and everyone gets their say without drawn out processes and aggravating paperwork. How long until the whole country gets a clue?
Personally, I blame a lot of the problems on the machines - or rather, their makers - who haven't proofed this stuff accurately and haven't ensured we don't have another "Florida" in every state in the union. Hopefully the lack of sanity won't drive people away from the polls tomorrow. And if it does, we'll know who to blame for the whole month of December and then forget about for three years.
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