How a top 100 CU stays leading edge

As the number of branches diminish, the way banks and credit unions connect with depositors and prospects is changing rapidly. For credit union marketers, adapting from a world of offline, in person tactics where campaigns are episodic in nature to the fluid, data driven world of online marketing can be challenging.

With more than 200,000 members and over $2.5 B in assets, Chicago-based Baxter Credit Union (BCU) knows this challenger first hand. Primarily an employer seg based credit union, BCU serves its members in an ever increasingly digital capacity. As the organization continues to adapt, they reached out to Lake One to understand the role of social media and review their marketing tech stack as they worked through strategic planning.

Competitive assessment

The beginning of our engagement with BCU started with a deep dive into current performance of their social capability, reviewing BCU against banking competitors locally in Chicago, Credit Unions of similar size and Credit Unions of similar SEG strategy. From here we uncovered insights into social trends and behaviors not just with banking customers but also unlocked insights into what was working and what wasn’t working across the banking industry, insights BCU was able to immediately implement in their social marketing efforts.

Opportunity analysis

After reviewing competitive sets, we dug into an analysis of BCU’s social data unlocking sentiment analysis and insights from BCU’s own member data including the content context that most moves members and insights into drafting social forecasts to help BCU staff their online servicing as their social efforts scale and the audiences grow.

Technology assessment

Additionally, we review existing and new technology to provide insight into marketing tech stack and opportunity for BCU to leverage tools strategically to achieve their goals. Our multi-month research engagement concluded with an onsight, guided discussion with senior leadership and a playbook for ongoing social and digital enhancement.

“Lake One brought a whole new level of energy, expertise, and empathy to a complex topic during our engagement. . . Anyone looking to ‘up their game’ in social strategy would benefit!”

– Jill Sammons AVP, Communications & Brand Strategy, BCU