Creating a personalized marketing experience is the goal for many companies, but providing customers with the targeted information and resources they demand can be challenging without the proper tools. When manual marketing tasks — such as segmentation, sending emails, and keeping up with various product launches — eat up much of your time, that leaves little room to tailor your messaging.
TruStone Federal Credit Union is a financial institution with a strong customer focus that was struggling to deliver the right messages to their members. It was the credit union’s customer-first approach that motivated them to upgrade from an email service provider (ESP) to a marketing automation platform with the necessary resources to provide their members with timely and relevant communication.
TruStone leverages Act-On’s automated email programs, landing pages, segmentation tools, and more to match up members with resources and information that fit their financial goals. We interviewed TruStone’s Chief Business Officer Steve Steen and Digital Marketing Specialist Carrie Uttecht, and they shared a few insights of how their team is changing the way the credit union communicates with members.
Keep reading to learn how TruStone is benefiting from marketing automation and using Act-On to put their members at the forefront of all their credit union marketing efforts. You can also check out our success story to get an in-depth look at how TruStone uses marketing automation to improve overall engagement and maximize their marketing ROI.
Save Time on Manual Tasks and Allocate Your Marketing Resources Where They Matter Most
With marketing automation, TruStone’s marketing team is able to save time on manual tasks such as onboarding new members, sending emails, and keeping track of which communications were sent and when. By eliminating much of the hassle involved in everyday tasks, the credit union’s marketing team is able to focus their resources where they make the most impact. Carrie says that Act-On’s automation features allow her to concentrate on other customer-engagement efforts while giving her peace of mind that members are still receiving critical information.
“One of the things I appreciate the most is the time that automation saves me. For example, we use Act-On automation’s to manage the onboarding email program, and that gets sent to hundreds of contacts every month without me having to worry about it. I know these people are getting the information that they need in a timely manner, so I can allocate my time more efficiently to other member-focused projects. I just had to take the initial time to set it up but members are now automatically receiving every email in the sequence now that it’s up and running, and that’s just a huge benefit for me.”
Timely and Relevant Messaging Can Yield Better Results
In addition to saving TruStone time in implementing email campaigns and completing day-to-day activities, Act-On enables the credit union to improve their marketing. TruStone uses segmentation and Act-On’s automated program to provide members with relevant messaging that matches their financial goals. According to TruStone’s Chief Business Officer Steve Steen, “Act-On helps us better serve our members so we can offer timely and relevant messages on company updates, financial education, and product solutions. We are now better able to send the right message at the right time to the right members.”
By improving the personalization of their messaging, TruStone has increased overall engagement of their email campaigns. The credit union has achieved average open rates of 68.8% on nurturing emails and an average open rate of 42.5% on follow-up emails. The results are even better for highly-segmented emails, where TruStone is generating open rates of 83.3%.
The Right Marketing Automation Platform Can Help Your Organization Grow
One of the benefits of choosing the right marketing automation platform is it enables marketing teams to fulfill their current goals while also equipping them with the tools they’ll need when it’s time to expand their efforts. In addition to offering customers robust marketing automation, Act-On’s platform integrates with various third-party tools to empower teams to continuously transform their marketing as their organizations grow. Carrie notes that she’s excited to see how TruStone will continue to benefit from Act-On in the future.
“I would love to see us be able to eventually connect with a CRM and really use Act-On to its full potential. I know that once we do, we can also track website visitors, and score members, among other things. There’s just so many opportunities to integrate our marketing activities into one platform, so I think that would make things really easy and save us time. Another benefit of Act-On is that the company consistently shares ideas, tips, and recommendations — whether it’s via email, their website, a success manager, or webinar — and those resources can help us grow and improve.”
We’re looking forward to seeing how TruStone Federal Credit Union continues to use Act-On to transform the customer journey and practice a member-first approach.