Search  

User Name:

Password:

Hot Topics

The Card Analysis Solutions Web site
This excellent site gives credit unions objective and independent information of the financial, operational, and marketing aspects of credit card portfolio performance. Highly recommended.
Card Analysis Solutions

Session presentations from the 2008 Family Reunion:

• Hitting It Off with the Young Adult Market by Bryan Simms 24.5 MB (PowerPoint)
• A Tour of Visa Online by Jack Coyne (PowerPoint)
• Visa Debit Sales Strategies by Greg Borchardt (PowerPoint)
• ATM Security by John Pillman 6.8 MB (PowerPoint)
• PCI & DSS by Visa's Hector Rodriguez (PowerPoint)
  
• Fraud Prevention by John Snodgrass & Gregg Kats of BECU (PDF)
  

Back to Top

Step 1: Evaluate your card programs - annually. Look at rates, fees, product offering, and underwriting guidelines annually. The goal is not necessarily to have the lowest rate among competing issuers but to have the best combination of rate, fees, and benefits for your membership.

• Examine how your card program is currently performing on a variety of important factors.
  • Acquisition: account-to-member ratio
  • Activation: Number of activated cards vs. inactivated cards
  • Usage: average number of transactions per month and number of cardholders actively using their cards each month.
  • Retention/Loyalty: Which cardholders are staying? Leaving? Are you retaining your best, most profitable, cardholders?
  • JHA Payment Processing Solutions reports to use: month-to-date statistics; inactivated card reports; and quarterly statistics.

Back to Top

Step 2: Plan Your Marketing Campaigns
Once you've determined that your cards are competitive, and you've pinpointed where to best spend your marketing dollars, its time to plan your marketing campaigns. When designing your marketing calendar it's important to include a mixture of traditional promotional campaigns as well as educational and reminder messages to reaffirm the reason your members have chosen your card.

• A single promotion accomplishes very little. You need a well-planned annual program in place.
• Pre-approved acquisition programs. Once per year (inlcude balance transfer). Credit line increases. Convenience checks. Skip-a-pay.
• Convenience checks. Once or twice per year (can be up to four per year).
• Credit line increase. Once per year (include balance transfer).
• Activation and usage campaigns. Best in typically low-usage months. Include incentive to change behavior.
• Retention. Monthly.
• These campaigns should be on your marketing calendar every year.
• What month works best?
  
• Before the holidays. Credit line increases. Convenience checks. Skip-a-pay.
• Summer. Convenience checks. Skip-a-pay.
• Beginning of school year. Credit line increases. Convenience checks.
• Tax time. Balance transfers. Convenience checks.
• After the holidays. Balance transfer.

Back to Top

Marketing Calendar
More of a credit union's marketing funds (37%) are dedicated to loans than any other single product line. However, credit card marketing is generally reserved for new product introductions and occasional acquisition campaigns. Acquisition campaigns can be very costly and new cardholders do not generate income unless they use the card.

Your annual plan should focus on products and areas of focus throughout the year. Your annual plan will also help coordinate efforts across multiple channels and areas of responsibility. Your monthly plan further breaks down each campaign including cost, dates, operational issues, and final results.

The following calendars are intended to be used as suggestions of campaigns that can be added to your marketing calendar based on your card program goals.

• A credit union in Alaska has shared a Sample Visa Marketing Calendar (Word)
• A sample credit card calendar (Word) based on program goals (ie: Acquisition, Increase balances, increase usage). This is an annual calendar highlights which campaigns will take place each month.
• Amer 1st Sample Marketing Calendar (Word). For a complete production calendar take a look at how American First Credit Union blends their credit card promotions in with all of the other product lines they need to promote throughout the year.

Do you have a case study/campaign you'd like featured? Contact Dan Green.

Back to Top

Usage
The goal here is build habitual, incremental debit card usage. Active users are a great source of revenue. Usage campaigns should be geared toward finding more ways for active users to use their card and to motivate medium users to increase usage. They can be based on card education or card inactivity.

For best results you can divide your cardholders into these three categories:

• Low users: 1 - 4 signature-based transactions a month
• Medium users: 5 - 9 times a month
• Heavy users: 10 or more a month

Or take a look at your current usage numbers to see where your average usage numbers are today to develop goals specifically for your cardholders.

Based on their type of usage you can create a marketing campaign to achieve the best results. If you have low recurring billpay, try a usage campaign just for this merchant category group.

Education
These programs are excellent for low-usage cardholders.

• Offer new places to use their card, like bill pay and co-payments for doctors visits. Adding bill payments will increase your average ticket size. Average bill payment is $68.
• Convenience and security are again very important for this group.

Incentives and Sweepstakes
Medium users know how to use their card but may need a little push to use their card in new places. Based on your month-to-date statistics report, you know the average number of transactions your cardholders do each month. To help encourage higher usage you can run incentive and sweepstake promotions to get them to do more than their average. JHA Payment Processing Solutionscan keep track of cardholder activity for your promotional period and report back to you at the end so you can perform the drawing or redeem the incentive. Our Cash Rebate and Usage Program (Word) document will give you more details on how we can help.

Incentives, sweepstakes, and rewards are the added benefit many cardholders need to change their PIN-preference behavior. With so many merchants forcing your cardholders to enter a PIN, it's crucial for issuers to provide valuable reasons for cardholders to sign for their transactions instead.

Examples:
Qualstar Debit Signature Promotion (PDF)
USA Federal's Debit Card Design (PDF)
Don't be a PIN head (PDF)
Skip the PIN and WIN (PDF)
Dinner and a Movie (PDF)

Back to Top

Make a commitment to recognition - monthly
One in four members (24%) of credit unions don't even know that their credit union offers such a program, let alone what the rate and fee structure are.
CUNA Research

Take this liittle test and see who well you are communicating your card program features/benfits:

Walk through your lobby, read through your newsletters, listen to on-hold messages, read your statement inserts and statement messages. How frequently is your card program mentioned? Are any of the features and benefits mentioned?

Now take this test on your Web site:

• How many clicks to get to credit card info?
• Is it easy or difficult to find?
• Is the latest Visa/MasterCard promotion on your home page?
• Can members apply on online?
• Do your links contain marketing information, or simply rates, disclosures and/or an application?
• Can balance transfers be requested online?
• Is your current Visa promotion on your Web site?
• Is "credit card" listed in your navigational tabs, either as its own tab or shown as "loans & credit cards." Do not assume your member identifies a credit card as a loan.

If you are like most credit unions you can make a large impact by simply adding some exposure in these areas. So what do you say when you don't have a promotion going on? Try emphasizing:

• Security features
• Speed and convenience over checks
• Promote recurring payments
• Utilize Visa and MasterCard's free and low cost signage and inserts. Both associations run sweepstake promotions on a regular basis and you can use their major marketing budgets to promote your members chances to win. To order, go to: www.visaonline.com or mastercardpromotions.com/mastercard.

Example of a recognition program:
Amer 1st Security Protection Newsletter (PDF)

Welcome letters
When a new application is approved, a welcome letter is a great way to emphasize the benefits of the card program and suggest ways to use the card.

Examples:
New Cardholder Welcome (Word)
Dear New Cardholder (Word)

Back to Top

Implement some form of rewards
A rewards program is a relationship strategy that many of the high performing credit unions are taking advantage of. Nine of ten credit unions by asset size, and seven of ten in credit card penetration success now offer rewards card programs. Most rewards are points-based like gift card, cash rebate, or travel but can also be simply cash rebate or discount based. See JHA Payment Processing Solutions' Extra Awards Program.

Back to Top

Quarterly Statistics
We've provided you with performance numbers taken from our month-to-date statistics report. You can see how your programs are doing compared to institutions of similar membership size, and/or by card program type. Take a look at these reports to see how your program is performing on a monthly basis:

• The Month-to-Date Statistics Report is available at the end of each month for each BIN through OnDemand. This report breaks down the number of active accounts, average number of transactions per active account, number of disputes, cards ordered, VBV usage and other activity based statistics for each BIN.
• Inactivated Card Report is available monthly and gives you all cards issued that have not activated their cards. This report is useful for a letter or calling campaign to incent cardholders to activate their card. For those that do not wish to activate you can delete them from future card reorders.

Back to Top

Web Sites, Important Dates, and Other Resources
Card and Credit Union Web Sites (Word)
MasterCard Promotions (Web Link)
Visa Online (Web Link)

Back to Top