All of the speakers at the upcoming FORUM Solutions/Trabian Partnership Symposium are encouraged to submit a guest post to help promote the event. Being the not-so-subtle, highly over-exposed credit union marketer that I am, I thought I would just cut to the chase with an old-fashioned sales pitch. Here goes (best read with a high-energy, monster-truck-loving announcer voice).

Have you registered for the FORUM Solutions/Trabian Partnership Symposium yet? No? What’s up with that? This is the hands-down best emerging technology conference in the credit union space. Here are five reasons that you need to stop what you are doing right now, mark your calendar for October 1 and 2, 2008 and register now!

5) The venue is superb! Not only is the FORUM Conference Center an awesome meeting space, it will be transformed into a swank party zone complete with multiple Nintendo Wii stations featuring Guitar Hero and other geek treats.

4) The hosts with the most(s)! Mr. Doug True is a highly connected credit union advocate with a unmatched passion for product innovation and technology. And, Mr. Matt Dean is a silent-but-deadly agent of change. Combined, they represent the new guard of leaders that are making a real difference in the credit union movement.

3) Speakers solving problems, not blathering on! The Symposium features great credit union speakers discussing real-world situations. You will not be subjected to academic 300-word PowerPoint slides. You’ll hear from real practitioners who get their hands dirty everyday.

2) The CU Skeptic will be unveiled. This is the most highly anticipated unmasking since Kiss was unmasked in 1980. Doug has even talked about the Skeptic being lowered from the ceiling amidst pyrotechnics.*

1) Ron Shevlin is the on-stage host. Our resident, lovable blog-o-sphere curmudgeon will be going all Oprah as he interviews the speakers at the end of each presentation in an attempt to get to the real dirt.

Bonus Feature

I had the good fortune of being the wild card speaker last year. Luckily for me, I was the only one who answered the call for entries. This year it is a different story! The competition is really heating up with four phenomenal video applications so far.

I am so glad I don’t have to complete for my spot this year. However, as I stated above, being the highly over-exposed marketer that I am, I couldn’t help but to get involved!

Sign-up today and I’ll see you in Fisher’s in October!

Tim McAlpine

* Unveiling may vary.

Tim McAlpine is the President & Chief Strategist of Currency Marketing. You can read Tim’s ‘stuff’ on the Currency Marketing blog at www.currencymarketing.ca/blog.

How much do you trust your members? How much should they trust you? A couple of days ago the NAFCU Compliance Blog kicked off a discussion about credit unions offering consumer opt-outs from third party and affiliate marketers.

Okay first, selling your members’ information is just shady. Come on.

But moving on – my attention perked when the Compliance Guy brought up a credit union that allows its members a full-on marketing opt-out:

These members have the right to exclude themselves from all credit union marketing campaigns. (Interestingly, this credit union currently does not need to offer their members an opt-out under the privacy rules and does not plan on offering an affiliate information opt-out.) I asked how it worked, and the compliance officer said that it seemed to keep a very specific segment of their membership happy. “And happy members deposit more,” she added.

I’d like to shake this credit union’s hand. What an enormous amount of trust and respect for their members’ time and privacy.

But that brings up a new question – how do you reach members that have opted out of everything? I think part of the answer lies in the reason for opt-out. These members aren’t trying to shut you out entirely, they’re filtering out irrelevant noise. So the key to reach might be relevance. Opt-in.

One simple-ish way to stay relevant and paperless is to offer topical RSS feeds and email alerts (see NPR’s news feeds). For example, right now I’d absolutely subscribe to a “small business” feed offered by an FI. But if I see another credit card app, I’ll probably set something on fire.

How would/do you reach members that have removed themselves from your traditional marketing?

Maybe a better question is – would you even give them the option?

Currency Marketing announced today that the Young & Free program is now available to credit unions across the U.S.

Interested credit unions – or in some cases, state leagues – will receive a regional license on a first-come-first-serve basis (ex: “Young & Free Wisconsin”).

Has Young & Free Alberta been successful for 52,000-member Common Wealth CU ? Here are some numbers. In eight months:

• Over 1,900 Young & Free Checking Accounts opened.
• Average account balance of $1,422 in an account that pays no interest (they were hoping for $250 per account).
• Total in market PR-value of over $200,000 (calculated from print, online, radio, and tv articles/segments, brand mentions, and impressions).

I think replicating the success of Alberta’s program will be based on three things:

• Finding the right personality to represent each region. Larissa is a jackpot of creativity and charisma, will other CUs be so lucky?
• Providing spokesters with the perfect tightrope of freedom and direction. This is a high-engagement campaign, both for consumers and involved credit unions.
• Tying in a unique product. Common Wealth’s product, a free checking account, is hugely novel in Canada because they’re one of the only FIs to offer free checking. The U.S. market will need something a little sweeter.

That said, this program has the potential to tackle the CU “national brand/awareness” issue by digging in on a grassroots level. It’ll be like dropping paratroopers of relevance throughout the U.S.

For more details, check out Tim’s announcement post from earlier today.

The Filene Research Institute is putting on three free innovation webinars next month. From their blog (links added):

The 30-minute Webinars show how you can be an innovator at your credit union. Kent Sugg, Tinker FCU, Oklahoma City, and Maureen Maddox, Filene Research Institute, will present three Filene i³ innovations: MatriMoney®, Savings Revolution, and Prize-Based Savings. Find out how credit unions have rolled these out and how your credit union can benefit from implementation.

The webinar dates are:

• Friday, June 6 at 10:30 a.m. CST
• Monday, June 9 at 2:30 p.m. CST
• Wednesday, June 11 at 10:30 a.m. CST

I’ve said this before, but Filene’s collection of i³ projects are a goldmine of inspiration and innovation. And even better – they’re all open source ideas. Completely free to peruse, use, and abuse.

Update 6/3 You can register by sending an e-mail with your name, credit union and session you’d like to attend to Kent Sugg at kentsugg@filene.org.

Webinar space is limited, so grab a spot while you can.

Thought you all might like to know – Trey’s daughter, Ava Kate Reeme, was born tonight at 8:10. She is 7lbs 6oz and beautiful.

Congratulations, Trey and Jenny, and welcome to the world Ava!

Check out two more speaker auditions, both wrought with radness:

Jwaala’s Andrew Taylor

(Andrew is the one on the left)

ThriftyCU meets WannabeCU from andrew taylor on Vimeo.

For a recap on Jwaala, check out Chaz’s Tour of Jwaala’s MoneyTracker.

Members Credit Union’s / CU Warrior Matt Davis

(Matt is the one with the ninja moves)

Thrift - The Rise of the Credit Union Warrior from Matt Davis on Vimeo.

Thanks, fellas!

Also, Doug True has informed me that the official submissions deadline is June 30th, so there’s still time for you to put yourself in the ring. Rock on.

(Click here to learn more about auditioning for the 2008 Partnership Symposium)

As you may have read here, here, here, here, and here, CUES Experience was a blast.

What struck me the most about Mark Stutrud, Summit Brewing Company’s founder and CEO, was that he knows exactly who Summit is and where it’s going. He makes no apologies, and doesn’t try and water Summit down (figuratively, but also literally….there’s no “Summit Lite”), or grow without reason to be like his larger competitors.

One of my favorite quotes by him was, “If we aren’t making some people mad a few times a year, we aren’t doing our job.”

My main takeaway, and the theme of my workshop after the tour, was to differentiate by knowing exactly who you are and pursing that as deeply as you can. Get specific. It takes businesses years and a lot of hard work to find a nitch. Credit unions come with one – its automatic! And as a result we have a built-in affinity and culture from the very beginning. So own that.

Our final question was this: What is something you can do at your credit union that is so relevant to your specific SEG and/or community, that it absolutely wouldn’t make sense somewhere else?

Also, I highly recommend Ron’s post on his Summit takeaways – “Financial Services Marketers Could Use A Beer .”

Here are the slides (a few of which make little sense without their talking points):

| View | Upload your own

Also, Summit beer is fantastic. If you can get it in your area, do it.

ps: I didn’t take any pictures, because I’m a moron. But I’ll update this post with a link to some shots from the tour as soon as a certain someone hooks it up.

A great conversation with Tim over dinner tonight brought up this:

I probably write one out of every ten ideas I have for a post. Why? Because I tend to overthink, over-present, and tie a bow around my point. This doesn’t just stress me out (and it does) – pre-packaging a point clips off the conversation. In trying to wrap up my own conclusions, I bypass the fact that what I really need and want for any given topic is your collective perspective.

What hurts my blogging? Formatting. Packaging. Which is dumb.

Here’s to grittiness, reality, and ideas.

We’ve received two lovingly-crafted auditions. Check them:

UFirst FCU / The Boardcast’s Ginny Brady

2008 Partnership Symposium Audition – Ginny Brady from Ginny Brady on Vimeo.

Maine SCU / The CU Loop’s Andy LaFlamme

Thanks to both of you for your awesome work.

Earlier today Matt Davis asked “When’s the deadline?” The answer for now is…keep em coming. The more the merrier.

Do you have one up your sleeve, Matt?

(Click here to learn more about auditioning for the 2008 Partnership Symposium)

I apologize for the lack of love OSCU has been receiving lately. As my Twitter-friends know, I’ve been on the road and elbow deep in on-sight client work pretty much constantly for the past month.

But I miss you. I do.

Here are three things we woulda/coulda/shoulda been covering over the past couple of weeks:

1. FinovateStartup

I wish to high heaven I could have attended FinovateStartup this year. But fortunately, I was able to stay in the live-action loop thanks to fantastic coverage by the following folks:

• Brad & Mark from The Garland Group / Banktastic. Their coverage includes reviews of each and every demo and video interviews of presenters.
• Ron Shevlin’s “Notes from FinovateStartup 2008,” in which he tells it like it is.
• Jeff Stephens from Creative Brand’s insightful series of posts.
• Christophe Langlois from Visible Banking’s collection of posts and video interviews. Aside – you should add this blog to your feeds.
• Live-action commentary from the Twitter militia.
• And, of course, the belle-of-the-ball, Jim Bruene from Netbanker’s write-ups.

Congrats to Jim on another hugely successful event.

2. Joe Lieberman introduced CURIA to the Senate

Anyone who knows me knows I’m not a legally or regulatorily-inclined person. I color with crayons and markers for a living. But after doing some research I realized how significant CURIA could be for CU’s ability to impact people. To quote the Cornerstone CU blog, CURIA, which stands for the Credit Union Regulatory Improvements Act, proposes to:

• Modernize credit union capital standards to permit more efficient capital management while allowing more earnings to be returned to members in lower costs and expanded services;
• Expand the ability of credit unions to make loans to finance their members’ local small businesses; and
• Permit more credit unions to offer needed services in lower-income communities that are not adequately served by other depository institutions.

Learn more about CURIA here.

3. Account portability

When I was at the GAC, I had an awesome conversation with Robbie Wright about data portability – the idea that your data from any given online service (from your Facebook profile to your online photos to your gmail acount) belongs to you and not the service. Groups like DataPortability.org are working to make this a reality, and web services like Wesabe and Mint have applied the same concept to transactional data.

So I was excited when Colin Henderson linked to Better Banking Blog’s write-up on ‘BPAY’s top-secret MAMBO project’:

...the top-secret BPAY proposal could deliver the bank account portability that Treasurer Wayne Swan so desperately wants Australian consumers to enjoy.

Instead of a bank account number and BSB, individuals would register for their own BPAY code which could be used to facilitate payments. Consumers could then port their number from bank to bank without the need to re-establish direct debits or credits, and use it to enable online payments.

Because of your collaborative nature, I think this is more relevant to CUs than banks. The closest thing I’ve seen to this in the states, outside of general back-end consolidation work (which is great), is Filene’s ‘Once a Member Always a Member’ i³ Project. But even that is limited in scope compared to the potential of account portability.

How member-empowering, representative of your cooperative structure, and incredible for retention would this be for credit unions?

William Azaroff is asking for your help.

Vancity is up for a Webby Award for ChangeEverything.ca in the Social Networking category. Those are kind of a big deal. Facebook is on the ballot with them. That makes it a big, fat, hairy deal. The good news is, you can help them win it.

First go here, register, then vote for ChangeEverything.ca in the Social Networking category.

Second watch this video then post it on your own blog along with the instructions from the First thing above:

Voting ends May 1st, so we must fly. It’s a nice world we live in when it only takes 10 minutes to do something that will help our friends in a big way. Their winning the Webby will be epic, considering the behemoth they are up against and it will be some awesome exposure for Credit Unions.

Since last year’s auditions for Guest Speaker at the Partnership Symposium were such a hit, and since it introduced us to Tim and the Gang, who are now our good friends, we are having the auditions again. This year we are looking to double our pleasure with two guest speakers. Quick! you finance folks are good with numbers, tell me, if we keep doubling the guest speaker number every year, how many will we have in 2020?

Themes The Federal Credit Union Act gives this definition for a Credit Union (Hang in there for the first few stodgy lines, it gets romantic in the last three. Emphasis mine.):

...the term ‘‘Federal credit union’’ means a cooperative association organized in accordance with the provisions of this chapter for the purpose of promoting thrift among its members and creating a source of credit for provident or productive purposes;

That statement of purpose is good news, good news we aren’t always good at sharing or remembering. So maybe you can help us get excited and refocussed by speaking to one of these two core ideas.

• Promoting Thrift

• Loans for Provident and Productive Purposes

How to Audition It’s pretty easy, just make a video of why you’d make a good Guest Speaker and tell us which of the two topics you’d like to speak on and why.

Here is a video we made with a few Dos and Don’ts on what to include in your audition video:

To participate, just post a link to your audition video as a comment in this post.

• Going green might be a fad, but what about when it’s accidental? In an attempt to increase employee retention, Navy FCU accidentally built new “green” buildings that use between 25 and 40% less energy. They also decreased turnover from 60 – 17%. Double win. (“The Accidental Environmentalists” via Kottke)
  
  
• Visible Banking’s Christophe Langlois breaks down the 4 types of social media projects.
  
  
• Five credit unions, including Digital FCU, have enabled members to scan in deposits from home. (via NetBanker)
  
  
• Wells Fargo is rolling out vSafe, a web-based storage tool for important documents. vSafe will integrate with their online banking. As someone who loses everything important every time, I love this idea. (via Finextra)
  
  
• First New York FCU’s Walt Everhardt has done a great job of keeping the financial tips and advice coming over at his credit union’s blog.
  
  
• Vancity’s ChangeEverything is up for a much-deserved Webby. Show your love by voting for them for the Webby People’s Voice Award. (via Azaroff’s Blog)
  
  
• Bank of America is partnering with MIT to build a banking innovation lab. (via The Bankwatch)
  
  
• Filed under “another way credit unions make the goodness happen,” the Wisconsin State Treasurer’s Office wants to partner with the Wisconsin CU League to set up an alternative payday lending program. (via CUNA News Now)

Creativity, despite being one of the things that people cite as the reason they love their job, is one of the hardest things to accomplish in a typical financial institution. So many executives and marketing directors get so caught up in the ROI and the numbers that creativity gets lost in the background.

Now, this isn’t meant to fault those people. Tracking the effectiveness of a marketing campaign is essential to their position. What if you could get some help?

When I say “get some help” you might reply, “We don’t have the budget to hire on a bunch of new marketing people!” Let me offer an idea that might kill several birds with one stone.

Innovate Your Institution

The hierarchal structure of most financial institutions makes it very difficult for lower level employees (Tellers and MSR’s) to bring up ideas. Typically the proper channel of communication ends up smothering the idea as unusable, or it gets lost before it makes it to somebody who might care.

Front line staff, MSR’s, and Loan Reps are the people who have the most contact with your member base. Why shouldn’t their ideas be considered just as highly as anyone else’s…if not more? They may see an opportunity where nobody else does.

There is so much creative power located in your teller, member service, and loan departments that almost never sees the light of day. What might come out of this collective group if given the opportunity to throw out ideas in a community environment, bounce them around, and create something of value?

Give people the opportunity to be creative and you’ll find a fountain of unique, interesting, and valuable ideas for products or processes that might have never come to light.

Retain Your Valued Employees

If you are looking to retain employees (tellers especially) there needs to be a sense that their position offers something of value to the whole, especially when trying to retain younger, GenY employees. Giving people, regardless of position or “silo”, the sense that what they have to say makes a difference can be very powerful.

Create a wiki, or discussion board, anything that gives people the opportunity to discus new ideas or concepts in an environment that is free from the fear of rejection. So often people are afraid to share because they feel that their idea will be shot down from the get-go and the possibility of humiliation makes them shy away from unleashing their creativity.

Create an environment that is open, collaborative, and free from this fear and you might just end up with a great source for creativity within your institution.

Your next question might be, “Well how do we get these people to come up with ideas? Do they really care enough to contribute?”

Create Evangelists

Credit Unions have a built in advantage when it comes to encouraging this kind of participation. There is an underlying cause behind credit unions that goes way beyond gaining profit.

I recently made a trip to BarCampBank New England on April 5th. It was held at America’s Credit Union Museum and it has inspired me beyond words. Seeing how it all started has given me new direction, inspiration, and dedication to my work at Maine State Credit Union.

The best way to get people excited about working at a credit union is to tell them the story. Show them what a credit union really is, what it stands for, and why it started in the first place. People find it much easier to get behind a cause than just a company. Share with them the powerful message behind their job. Show them the meaning of the institution and the movement as a whole and they might just be inspired to help move it along. It happened to me, it can happen to anybody.

Create a place for collaborative brainstorming, get people motivated behind the cause, and allow them to express ideas in an open environment where their say counts and you’ll end up with credit union evangelists…who just so happen to work on your teller line.

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Andy is a Marketing Specialist at Maine State Credit Union in Augusta, Maine. After being a teller for 3 years he was offered the opportunity to bring new ideas on communication and youth marketing to the table. He currently writes a blog, TheLoop, which details his ideas and opinions regarding the Credit Union Industry.

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to interview Cornerstone Advisors’ strategy and tech guru Steve Williams for the very first CUES Experience Podcast.

What can you expect to see happening in the FI tech-space over the next year? Listen to find out:

powered by ODEO

The rest of the CUES Experience Podcasts will happen live from the conference from May 13th – 16th. They’ll be hosted by Currency Marketing’s Tim McAlpine, so you know they’ll be great (for a sample, check out Currency’s podcast).

And on a final note, if you’re coming, don’t forget about my tour of Summit Brewing Company. It will be many good times.

Thanks to Christopher Stevenson from CUES for the opportunity and Steve Williams for his time and brilliance.