A not for profit organization, Baxter Credit Union (BCU) is one of the nation’s top 100 credit unions and fourth largest in Illinois. With over $2.2 billion in total assets, the Credit Union provides SEG and community banking to over 200,000 members in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. The fastest growing credit union in the last 30 years, BCU is noted for setting new standards in bringing together technology and member service in the fast-changing world of financial services. As an organization, BCU is committed to improving members’ financial well-being through the brand promise We’ve Got Your Back. Membership is open to several prestigious employers around the country and those living or working in Chicago-area communities.
Previously, BCU relied on an aging campaign management system that lacked a single source for member information, making it difficult to coordinate member interactions and campaigns, and limiting reporting capabilities. The system did not offer automation—it could not send emails, nor could it initiate printing and distribution of direct-mail pieces. Launching campaigns was a slow process requiring significant lead time. In addition, campaigns could only target one or two broad segments such as members pre-approved for a BCU credit card. Meanwhile, trigger campaigns (those that initiate automatically based on a predetermined set of criteria), were not possible to execute. Even the first step—establishing the distribution list—could take days. Lastly, because BCU representatives across more than 40 branches did not have a single view of each member, their ability to advise clients and present relevant products and offers was limited.
Recognizing the need to improve marketing returns with better campaign management capabilities, BCU began looking for a multichannel campaign management solution through an in-depth evaluation that included business, marketing, and IT requirements. Marketers and business users wanted to drive and automate campaigns without the need for IT involvement, while the IT side sought the ability to easily integrate with BCU’s custom-built SQL-based data warehouse containing member information. BCU unanimously selected Adobe Campaign due to its ease of integration with its back-end systems, marketing automation capabilities, and intuitive interface that would allow marketing to drive campaigns on their own.
Today, data flows from BCU’s custom data warehouse directly into Adobe Campaign, so everyone has immediate access to the latest member information. Marketers log in to an intuitive interface to set up member segments that can be based on a virtually infinite set of parameters. Adobe Campaign then handles distribution of emails or initiates printing and delivery of direct mail. With Adobe Campaign, BCU can send personalized communications and offers to highly targeted segments, at scale, reaching members on their preferred devices.
Across the board, the marketing team is achieving its goals for business growth, depth of engagement, and brand loyalty. They are also seeing synergies across channels. For example, information from Adobe Campaign is supporting outbound calling efforts in the organization’s call enter. With improved insights, agents can be more helpful to members and cross-sell relevant products throughout the member journey.
BCU achieved a return on investment within a year since Adobe Campaign enabled it to put its members’ needs at the center of its marketing efforts.
BCU has met several significant milestones since moving to Adobe Campaign, achieving the following ROI:
- Rolled out 31% more batch campaigns in 2014 compared to 2013, expanding outreach to members substantially and distributing roughly a million emails annually;- Managed 20 real-time campaigns triggered by events in 2014, reaching almost 120,000 highly targeted and timely prospects; note real-time campaigns such as these weren’t possible in the past;- Built meaningful experiences and increased response rates by .05% to 4.5% through finegrained personalization that delivered the right messages to the right members via the right channels;- Experienced a boost in product uptake, with new accounts in one product area growing by 76%;- Increased attributed account balances 28% from 2012 to 2014 as a direct result of the more targeted campaign strategy.
BCU utilized Adobe Campaign, one of eight solutions in Adobe Marketing Cloud, which specializes in cross-channel campaign management, marketing automation and email marketing. Adobe Campaign gives marketers an intuitive and automated way to deliver one-to-one messages across online and offline marketing channels. The technology ultimately can give customers what they want, before they want it, with experiences determined by their habits and preferences.
The financial services industry has been greatly disrupted by technology – most notably keeping pace with the rapidly increasing experience expectations of customers. Unlike most credit unions and banks, the majority of BCU’s customer base has no access to a brick-and-mortar branch; making relationship building and depth of engagement an increasingly digital challenge.
Resistance to progress also came from within. Although a strong, centralized marketing function driven by customer intelligence was supported in concept, BCU’s historic dependence on traditional marketing (primarily direct mail) and decentralized management of product development and growth strategies made for predictively strong headwinds for implementation. Nonetheless, over the last four years John Sahagian has incrementally pushed the vision forward by implementing powerful and scalable digital marketing tools, adding modern marketing skillsets to the centralized team, and amassing a string of small but impactful successes.
As a result, BCU has built into its 2015 5-year strategic success roadmap a commitment to invest in and expand data-driven marketing capabilities which are responsible for driving a more frequent, relevant, timely and valuable (and ultimately, more profitable) digital relationship with its customer base.
Shortly after taking the reins of BCU marketing in 2011, John and his team were asked to pitch one of the largest retail employers in the U.S. A Putting together a winning proposal, BCU landed the account and began serving the retail giant’s employees nationwide from December 2011. Since then, BCU has used strong corporate relationships and modern marketing techniques leveraging workforce segmentation data, to now serve more than 35,000 employees and their families.
