In episode 10 of Business to Human, I speak with Leigh Anne Bentley about “the data problem” and some of the other marketing challenges she’s had to tackle as Chief Marketing Officer at Leaders Credit Union. She shares the insights she gained while overcoming these challenges and tips on how marketers in any industry can overcome theirs, too.
Join us as we discuss:
- The similarities and differences between marketing at a bank vs. a credit union
- How Leaders Credit Union is successfully improving the member experience
- The data problem and what is missing from the modern marketing toolkit
Marketing at a bank vs. marketing at a credit union
Marketing for a bank prior to working at a credit union, Leigh Anne says her transition was less about major changes and more about new possibilities.
When working at an ad agency previously, Leigh Anne had various clients, including financial institutions, insurance companies, real estate firms and B2B. This which required a complete change in approach from one day to the next. Different target audiences and budgets each day inspired creative thinking and introduced strategy challenges and opportunities.
Bringing all this expertise to Leaders Credit Union despite never having worked with credit unions, Leigh Anne leaned on her love for the financial industry and its collaborative nature.
When she started working in-house at the credit union, she thought her days of multiple clients were long gone — but she was mistaken.
“The fun thing is, you can focus on multiple clients, because you have your mortgage clients, your investments clients, your frontline retail side, your digital — there are so many various aspects, that it is still just as exciting and just as complex as agency work,” Leigh Anne says.
Since a single client can have many different layers, Leigh Anne can go much deeper, discovering new data, results and details that weren’t as accessible when she was focusing on multiple clients at a time.
How Leaders Credit Union is successfully improving the member experience
Leaders Credit Union is more focused than ever on improving the member experience. Data is at the heart of that progress.
Leigh Anne and her team ensure their data is relevant and connected. Credit unions receive a lot of information from members — from income and spending, to credit scores and loans. From a marketing perspective, it’s important to know which information to use and how to best use it for the benefit of your client.
The credit union’s IT department is currently creating a “master technology sheet” encompassing their entire tech stack to get a clear, big-picture view of data at Leaders. This allows them to see what data each department is using and how to integrate that data, what can be eliminated and what needs to be added.
These efforts help ensure the best possible solutions for their members.
“When we’re talking about data, it’s for the member experience,” Leigh Anne says. “It’s to make sure our members are taken care of and feel valued, like we know who they are so we can act in their best interest.”
Looking at their data closely allows Leaders to discover what’s working and what’s not, and the team can make adjustments along the way to their media, campaigns and budgets based on where they can make the biggest impact for their clients.
What’s missing from the modern marketing toolkit
If Leigh Anne could wave a magic wand and add something new to the modern marketing toolkit, it would be a singular all-encompassing dashboard of data.
While she does currently have several dashboards and forms of data visualization, she hopes that technology is heading toward a single system where she can glean the information she needs to make clearer decisions and maximize Leaders’ marketing efforts and data use.
“We have some great visualization tools now and it’s great that different departments are able to look at how they’re doing, but we depend on multiple systems for that. Being able to pull all that together is exciting and I think we’re definitely headed there,” says Leigh Anne.
Want to learn more about marketing at a credit union, “the data problem” that many marketers are facing today and the benefits of multiple data sources? Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your podcasts.