Beyond Service and Low Fees: The Definitive Guide to Credit Union Cause Marketing

There are over 6,000 credit unions and over 5,000 community banks in the United States. What makes yours different from the rest?

Credit unions consistently fall back on six generic brand “differentiators”:

• Friendly customer service
• Low fees
• Personal client relationships
• Local origins
• The credit union mission
• Community service

But the truth is, while these qualities may differentiate your business from a mega bank, they are not enough to make your credit union stand out from other credit unions or community banks.

With the expansion of fields of membership giving consumers more choices than ever before and technology enabling more consumers to be primarily digital in their interactions, most of those so-called differentiators are increasingly becoming table stakes to earn business from your prospective and current members. So what can you do to make your credit union different than the rest?

When it comes to building a remarkable brand that will stand out in the industry and deepen employee engagement and commitment, Cause Marketing is a powerful, and often misunderstood, strategy you can use to create a remarkable brand.

Cause marketing refers to aligning a brand with a cause to produce profitable and socially beneficial outcomes.

While it is typically used to refer to a cooperative effort between a for-profit business and a nonprofit, in this article we will be defining it as a cooperative effort between your (nonprofit) credit union and one or more nonprofits towards a shared cause. You might already engage in charitable giving efforts as part of the credit union mission, but in an industry overwhelmed with tired slogans about being “part of the family,” perhaps it’s time to not only embrace a cause, but to make that cause your key differentiator.

To see how Cause Marketing can work, let’s look to the example of Northwest Community Credit Union in Springfield, Oregon, which uses bicycle-powered blenders to make smoothies at branches on Fridays.

Fun? Check. Memorable? Definitely. Buzz-worthy? Yep.

But are smoothies enough? Not unless the credit union connects them in a meaningful way to a value members care about.

When Cause Marketing is done right, your cause becomes your brand.

A lot of credit unions are actively involved in a number of causes; but they have not succeeded in making their cause their brand. To see how it’s done, let’s follow these six critical steps to creating a successful Cause Marketing brand.

Step #1: Learn what makes a cause a good fit for your brand

We’ll make this step easy and outline what we’ve learned about what makes a particular cause a good fit or not. The three things that make a typical cause marketing campaign fail are:

1. The brand chooses a cause that seems inauthentic for the brand to care about.
2. The brand does not identify a cause that their target audience cares about.
3. The brand chooses a cause that is so broad that they cannot effectively target a niche.

Conversely, here are the identifiers of a brand-worthy cause …

Brand-worthy causes are authentic. Authenticity, of course, comes with practicing what your credit union preaches. Some of the biggest Cause Marketing fails have occurred because a brand is supporting a cause that blatantly doesn’t match the core of the brand. For example, Pepsi got itself in hot water by co-opting protest movements with its commercial of Kendall Jenner ending a protest by giving a police officer a can of Pepsi. There’s nothing in Pepsi’s brand that connects to political activism, and the company was even called out by Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter for its inappropriate use of that imagery.

Anyone can see through a disingenuous attempt at Cause Marketing. You want to highlight, not hurt, your brand, so make sure you have a real story behind your cause.

One institution excelling at authentic cause marketing is Missoula FCU. The credit union has clearly defined the causes it is committed to, and attracts like-minded members by organizing related community events and leading with its cause throughout the website.

Brand-worthy causes align with your prospective members’ deeply held beliefs. In his book, All Marketers Are Liars Tell Stories, Seth Godin outlined the importance of aligning your brand stories around people’s strongly held worldviews. According to Cone Communications/Ebiquity’s 2015 Global CSR Study, 90% of U.S. consumers say they would switch brands to one associated with a cause, given comparable price and quality.

This growing trend has already expressed itself in the market in numerous examples, including the brand Wildfang. The feminist brand donates 1% of every sale to a rotating monthly charity meaningful to its target audience.

When you choose a cause to build your brand on, you want it to be an issue that a large group of people care about and one that people can readily recognize as that cause. 1% of every sale donated to charity is pretty clear!

One common trap for inauthentic cause marketing is “saving the environment.” Sure, that sounds nice, but does that mean protecting spotted owls or campaigning against oil pipelines? People who care about “saving the environment” have very different opinions about how to go about it. Clean Energy Credit Union deftly navigates this by choosing a clear focus on promoting clean energy exclusively providing loans with a clean energy and energy conservation theme, which gives the company a clear story to tell and a focused worldview that will resonate with prospective members.

Brand-worthy causes are not supported by everyone. Don’t choose a cause simply because it’s “safe” or because it might appeal to the broadest subset of your membership base. The causes that are the most buzzworthy are often those that some people will strongly disagree with.

Our client Point West Credit Union has taken on a cause that touches on the hot-button issue of immigration, by offering financial services to non-citizens. Point West not only allows non-citizens to be members, but they are looking to find additional ways to support local communities of non-citizens. There’s a large group of people who would oppose that cause — perhaps you are one of them. But the very fact that you have a forceful opinion either way indicates that Point West has succeeded in focusing their cause around a strongly held belief.

The word differentiation comes from the word different, and being different can feel uncomfortable.

Step #2: Engage your employees to choose your cause

Employees will be your best or worst brand ambassadors. If you can successfully get them to “live your cause,” they live your brand. Depending on the cause you choose though, you may have a hard time convincing them to do that.

A Cause Marketing strategy built around the CEO’s pet project may induce more eye-rolling than engagement amongst your employees. So rather than make a top-down decision and have to do a bunch of culture training around your brand, get your employees involved in finding a cause that everyone at your credit union can get behind. Ask yourself: How can your employees authentically engage with the cause, and how can the company internally generate excitement?

Survey your employees to gauge interest. Credit unions have a unique advantage in that all of them are already invested in living the credit union mission. What are the causes the credit union is already involved in that get employees excited? Identify the top 10 that meet the brand-worthy cause criteria, and send out a survey to your team to gauge their interest.

In the survey, include a preface explaining that you are considering taking the credit union’s brand in a new direction focused around a particular cause. Ask them to rate each cause on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being “I’m most excited about this cause” and 10 being “I’m least excited about this cause.” Include a follow-up question of “Which, if any, of the following causes are you outright opposed to?” so they can select any that apply. Close with a final question: “Would you be interested in participating to help shape our new brand around the cause?”

The survey will give you a sense of which causes will make for logical focus areas for your brand and help you identify potential allies in the process to building the brand.

Define the specifics around how your cause will become your brand. With the help of the survey results, you should be ready to move forward defining the specifics of your cause, i.e., how will the credit union adopt, enact, and embody the cause? Reach out to employee volunteers who are passionate about the chosen cause. Work with them to identify how the credit union can get employees and members on board with the cause as well as what initiatives the credit union should be working on around the cause — if you’ve identified your causes successfully, it is likely your credit union is already working on some initiatives.

This step could occur in many different forms, including:

• Open houses with you where employees can come and propose their ideas.
• Designated action teams with tasks around defining an action plan.
• Volunteer events where employees participate in volunteering for the cause with a meeting afterward to discuss the path forward.

 

Hire and train for your cause. For a cause to truly become a part of your brand, your employees need to be as enthusiastic about the cause as your members and prospects. Make sure they know the nuances of your cause, how they can participate in being a part of the cause, and are prepared to tell members how they can get involved too.

Solicit input at each stage, from honing in on your cause to developing a strategy around it. Your employees will naturally inspire members and prospects with their enthusiasm.

Step #3: Find your tribe outside the credit union

In Seth Godin’s book, Tribes, he explains how the most powerful consumer audiences are those groups aligned around those beliefs, what he calls “tribes.” If you’ve successfully engaged your employees, you’ve already discovered some of your tribe members, and they can help you identify others like them.

Who qualifies to be in your tribe? As you go about defining who among your prospects and members is also a fit, remember: The people who make up your tribe are not just those who believe in your cause — they are the people who are ready, eager, and able to influence a large group of their friends to join the cause too. Your tribe members will happily give you free word of mouth, share your content on social media, and participate in your Cause Marketing initiatives.

Tom’s invited their tribe to participate in their 2016 One Day Without Shoes Instagram campaign, raising awareness about the cause behind their brand. They asked their tribe to post a photo of their bare feet with the hashtag #WithoutShoes, and in exchange Tom’s donated a pair of shoes to someone in need. 3.5 million people participated. That was great exposure for the cause — and for Tom’s brand.

Get specific about who is part of your tribe. The more specific you can get in defining your tribe members, the better. Returning to the example of Missoula FCU, they have very clearly defined their tribe as community-minded folks committed to causes like affordable housing, refugee support, and protecting the local environment. Their website is clear about this to the point that it may put off people who aren’t part of that tribe — and that’s actually a good thing. By being specific, Missoula FCU is even more attractive to their target market.

To define your own tribe, start with all the basic demographic questions (age, education, etc.), but talso want to dig deeper with questions like:

• What other brands do our tribe member love?
• What local organizations are they involved with?
• What kinds of products are they buying?

The more specific you can get in defining your tribe, the more targeted you can be in your outreach to them.

Step #4: Engage your members

Your members might appreciate the warm and fuzzy PR that comes with donating to a worthy cause, but how can they actually get involved? You should give your members multiple avenues to participate in your cause (and, in doing so, interact with your brand).

Find ways for your members to get involved that are both buzzworthy and meaningful. After The Bank of Ann Arbor committed to supporting performing arts in the schools, the bank let its customers choose which 12 local schools would receive donations. According to Selfish Giving:

It’s an understatement to say the campaign was successful. The 47,300 votes cast grew the bank’s fan base by 10%, reached 170,000 Facebook users, and successfully crowdsourced charitable giving to 12 schools. From the beginning, Bank of Ann Arbor involved all 150+ area schools and 150 employees to act as campaign advocates and promote the campaign.

PNCU could consider a similar campaign, allowing its membership to decide which schools get donations toward renewable energy upgrades. PNCU could also issue a “reduce your carbon footprint” challenge to their tribe members in and outside of the credit union, providing them with tools to track their daily environmental impact. The tool would not only report back on participants success, but at set intervals of a month, 3 months, and a year, participants who are also members would be awarded a $5, $10, or $100 deposit depending on how well they do. Such a campaign would not only generate excitement around their cause, it would increase awareness of the brand and encourage new membership as people eager to get the reward join the credit union.

Step #5: Leverage multiple channels

Just as you would want a logo and tagline to be visible across multiple channels, from your branches to your bank statements to your social media profiles, so do you want to create similar multichannel visibility for your cause.

Here are a few channels to consider:

• Take photos and videos of locals at your cause-based events (which of course prominently displays your logo) and post regularly to social media.
• Co-brand an app to help members track their involvement in your joint cause
• Leverage your blog, email newsletter, and social media channels to profile members who are participating in a cause-based challenge and solicit tips from them on what steps they are taking.
• Share tips or “mini-challenges” via push notifications on the app or text message alerts.
• Create a display, also replicated online, that keeps track of your impact, such as: “Our members have removed XX tons of litter from our beaches since August 1, 2016” with a call to action to join the challenge.
• Start a weekly event promoting your cause, like “carbon-free Fridays,” where participants post photos on Instagram of how they are avoiding consuming carbon for the day with hashtag #CarbonFreeFridays
• Donate a certain amount to a local nonprofit that promotes your cause each time a member completes a certain type of transaction, or implement a “keep the change” program in your online banking system to allow members to directly donate their “change” to the nonprofit.

By bringing your cause to multiple channels, you increase the chances that your cause will go viral.

Step #6: Measure and communicate your impact

People are growing ever more cautious about groups that claim to support a cause, but actually spend the majority of their resources on administrative efforts with little to no real results. Your tribe members will expect you not only to say that you are supporting the cause, but they will expect you to provide real data about your results.

Credit unions in particular have a long way to go to successfully communicating their impact, for the causes they support as well as their general positive impacts on the community as a whole. According to research from Filene during interviews with a range of credit unions with assets ranging from $27 million to $11 billion, credit unions are lacking in this regard (emphasis mine):

With pride, credit unions speak about making meaningful impacts in their communities as volunteers and philanthropists … [But] no credit union interviewed has quantified the role and impacts of the credit union and its members, nor the savings achieved through membership, and no credit union has compared its impacts priorities with the objectively known needs of its members and community setting.

Moreover, no credit union interviewed uses a quality-of-life or life-cycle anticipation framework to handle and help resolve community disaster response, major employer shutdown, real estate market swings, or other events that affect credit union members on a recurring basis. No credit union interviewed has a robust set of sustainability goals and metrics for benchmarking the impacts of its and its members’ transactions or setting interest rates in line with sustainability goals. In short, credit unions do a poor job showing their own impact.

The key to communicating your impact is to make it measurable from the start. Saying you donated to a local school sounds nice, but what did the school do with the money, and how were the students lives improved by the donations?

You want both numbers and stories. The numbers help to track progress and to show members at a glance that you are truly making a difference. The stories help make the cause personal.

Clearinghouse CDFI, does a great job communicating their impacts to investors in several ways. They have a whole section of their website focused on their impacts, which features an Impact Map, key Impact Numbers (such as the number of affordable housing units their funds have helped to create), and Impact Stories.

Another great example of a business communicating community impact is Hopworks Urban Brewery. They focus their brand around “Do Good: Quality, Community, Planet” and have pages dedicated to how each one is at the core of their brand. They cover all the bases, from their ingredients to how they transport their products in sustainable ways. Most important, they are specific in what they’re reporting, right down to the 3.39 gallons of water per gallon of beer they produce.

 

Your credit union can be so much more than the credit union that treats its customers like family. With commitment and creativity, yours could be the brand that inspired a community to increase its use of renewable energy sources, provide more affordable housing, or any other cause that resonates with your team and tribe.

That is meaningful differentiation.