Want to know the secret about how to better target a new member acquisition campaign?
Of course you do.
Just about every credit union in the country is scrambling to gain new members - but could the campaigns be more efficient and effective?
In many, many cases the answer is a loud yes.
Enter Vertices Which is blending data and AI to give credit unions tool to enable more precise targeting strategies and tactics.
On the show is Mitch Rutledge, CEO of Vertice AI and himself a past podcast guest, episode 247,
But don’t take just his word.
Also on the show are business development specialist Tiffany Sharpensteen and Bradley Herbert, senior VP of technology, both of Education Credit Union of Amarillo, Texas which has assets around $480 million. Education shares its experience in the pilot program of Vertice ACQUIRE - and, yes, the reviews are glowing.
Listen up.
Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com
And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.
Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It's a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_03 (00:00):
Welcome to the CU2.0 podcast.
SPEAKER_01 (00:05):
Hi, and welcome to the CU2.0 podcast with big new
ideas about credit unions andconversations about innovative
technology with credit union andfintech leaders.
This podcast is brought to youby Quillo, the real-time loan
syndication network for creditunions, and by your host,
longtime credit union andfinancial technology journalist,
(00:27):
Robert McGarvey.
And now...
the CU 2.0 podcast with RobertMcGarvey.
SPEAKER_03 (00:33):
Want to know the secret about how to better
target a new member acquisitioncampaign?
Of course you do.
Just about every credit union inthe country is scrambling to
gain new members.
But could the campaigns be moreefficient and effective?
In many, many cases, the answeris a loud yep.
Enter Virtus, which is blendingdata and AI to give credit
(00:56):
unions a tool to enable moreprecise targeting strategies and
tactics.
On the show is Mitch Rutledge,CEO of Virtus.ai, and himself a
past podcast guest, episode 247.
There's a link to that in theshow notes.
But don't just take Mitch'sword.
Also on the show are businessdevelopment specialist Tiffany
(01:16):
Sharpenstein and BradleyHerbert, senior vice president
of technology, both of educationCredit Union of Amarillo, Texas.
Assets of around$400 million.
Education shares its experiencein the pilot program, Virtus
Acquire.
And yep, the reviews areglowing.
Listen up.
(01:38):
My experience is that creditunions are non-selective in new
member drives.
And they often get a bunch ofmembers who are not profitable
you can't make any money ifsomeone comes in and opens a
share draft account puts a fewbucks in in a savings account
(02:01):
and that's it this is this is soit's the pathway to financial
despair so you at vertis havesome magic potion that allows
allows credit unions to bettertarget the members and i want to
hear from you about Thetechnology of this, I want to
hear from the credit unionabout, does it actually work?
(02:21):
Because fintech guys come andthey lie to me.
You know that?
This might surprise you, butthey don't lie.
They exaggerate.
Let me put it that way.
Lying is, hey, I get along verywell with fintech guys.
SPEAKER_04 (02:35):
But it's...
So, Robert, I'll kick it off.
This is Mitch Rutledge.
So at Virtus, we were on...
You had us on, I think, a coupleof years ago as we were just
getting started.
And we originally founded Virtusto focus on how do we empower
credit unions to help theirmembers climb their financial
(02:55):
mountain?
So this idea of growing therelationship, member economic
participation with the existingmembers, which is...
very important.
And, you know, we've seen greatstrides with credit union
clients over the last few yearsof doing that with BERTIS,
including an education.
That's where we started withthem.
But we also know that growingthe membership and getting new
(03:18):
members is important to thecredit union movement for a
variety of reasons.
And we said, how can we takewhat we learned about knowing
existing members to help creditunions know perspective numbers
and find What could be the bestpossible prospective members to
(03:39):
help them grow the financialrelationships?
And that's what we createdVirtus Acquire, to leverage what
we learned about existing membergrowth to apply it to finding
the best prospects for thecredit unions, those ones that
will have long-term growthpotential that aren't just one
product or rate shoppers.
(04:00):
We want to use all of theinsights and data that we have
about existing members to findwhat are our our best members
who are the most economicallyparticipant to then go find
prospects that look like those.
So much more than just a quotelookalike model, it's a pretty
advanced way of using lots ofdata elements to find prospects.
SPEAKER_03 (04:20):
Do the prospects, profile of a prospect differ
from credit union to creditunion?
I mean, obviously there's somelike maybe federal where you
need a particular background.
That aside, Do they differ?
SPEAKER_04 (04:33):
Yes.
So that's what we're starting tosee in this.
So we just launched this productat the beginning of the year.
And so we're education was ourfirst partner on helping us
deploy this.
But we're now working with fourcredit unions and we're starting
to see that, yes, there are somesimilarities about what is a.
highly participant member.
(04:54):
But again, in different marketsand credit unions with
different, you know, traditionalmembership bases, right, fields
of membership, there aredefinitely some uniquenesses
around it.
And that's, again, where wethink that our models can help
them identify, you know, who arethe best future members for
their credit union.
What's the size range of thesecredit unions?
(05:14):
Under 500 million to approaching2 billion.
So all sort of, you know, wethink the sort of the full gamut
SPEAKER_03 (05:23):
of folks.
Is that the range that you thinkthis product is best suited for?
No,
SPEAKER_04 (05:29):
I mean, we're talking to some smaller credit
unions as well who, you know, Ithink all credit unions have a
priority for adding new members,right?
I think that I just saw the, youknow, the Callahan MarketWatch
survey, right?
And that was the number onefocus of credit unions for 2025
was new member growth.
So I think all credit unionshave that as a priority.
SPEAKER_03 (05:49):
But a credit union doesn't want indiscriminate new
member growth because some newmembers can actually cost the
credit union money.
For sure.
Quite a few new members cost thecredit union money,
unfortunately.
So what you say is that you havethis potion that will help them
identify people who will not bemoney losers as members.
SPEAKER_04 (06:12):
Well, I mean, I think I'd love to turn it over
to my friends at education totalk about some of their
strategies for new membergrowth.
Part of the credit unionmovement is about how do we
serve our community.
And it's not just about what areour profitable members.
We want to serve the community.
And we know that's a balanceacross all of the members that
(06:32):
we take on.
And I think that's part of thedecision process as we think
about finding new members.
is what is our priority rightnow?
Is it deposit growth that we'veheard from some folks?
Is it, again, these long-termmembers that may take more time
to grow into?
We think about some of the focusabout youth and getting the next
(06:56):
generation of credit unionmembers.
Well, some of those members maynot be profitable now, but when
we think about the long-term,and I think most credit unions
do have a long-term horizon,those are ones where I think
having a long-term outlook onpotential growth is a really
important part of this.
SPEAKER_03 (07:14):
But it's not an either or, I think.
Education.
Now, why did you sign on as theguinea pig in this thing?
SPEAKER_00 (07:21):
Well, I think that, Robert, you mentioned something
at the very beginning, and thatis these typical large net
casting membership drives thatcredit unions are known for.
And something that our team hasbeen really interested in is how
can we provide more relevantoffers and services that really
(07:42):
strengthen long-term membershiployalty and not just bring them
in for the little gimmicky radiothat we're giving away today?
How can we really be their fullfinancial provider covering
everything that they need?
And so Virtus was initiallyattractive because they offered
(08:03):
this AI service data-drivenstrategy.
And we really felt like if wedidn't embrace something like
that, we would frankly riskfalling behind.
SPEAKER_03 (08:15):
Technologically, how hard is it to use the Virtus
technology?
SPEAKER_00 (08:23):
Well, from a user experience from my side, I don't
live in the data world.
I'm marketing.
And so I am fairly analytical.
And so it interests me, but it'snot my day to day.
And so it can be a If you trulyjust embrace it, jump both feet
(08:43):
in.
I felt like the team, the Virtusteam, they're top notch
exceptional.
And so they were able to walkalongside us the whole way.
And myself and my othermarketing colleagues that a lot
of times were spent in graphicsand designing, we were able to
pick it up very easily.
SPEAKER_03 (09:02):
When did this go live?
SPEAKER_00 (09:04):
Speaking to the acquire piece of it
specifically, we've beenvisiting with Virtus and working
through small campaigns, I'd sayover the past year, maybe year
and a half or so.
But acquire specifically, whichgave us this entry into the
prospect world, which ishonestly a question that I had
asked Virtus initially.
(09:25):
How do we get into theprospects?
How do we tap into somenon-members?
We were able to really startthis initiative, I believe, in
about mid-November.
And we started it, EducationCredit Union started it
specifically on a smart checkingcampaign.
So it's just a checking account.
(09:46):
We have a really exceptionalchecking account product that
offers over 6%.
And so we...
We didn't offer any additionalincentives or anything with it.
It's just what our productalready is in its glory.
And so we started that inNovember and we wanted to launch
it initially about an eight weekcampaign to see what kind of
(10:08):
results that gave us.
But because we have been seeingreally exceptional results on
our impressions and clicks,we're continuing that campaign.
SPEAKER_03 (10:21):
6% is pretty outstanding.
My credit union has a great rateof 0%.
SPEAKER_00 (10:29):
Let me send you a link after this with our...
Our information.
SPEAKER_03 (10:34):
You said 6%.
I'm saying, well, you got myattention there.
SPEAKER_06 (10:37):
I'd like to expand on a couple of the things
Tiffany mentioned in there andkind of answer your questions
from a little bit of a differentview and a little bit deeper.
One of the big reasons why wedid choose to go with Virtus,
Tiffany did mention that they'rea phenomenal partner.
And regardless of how perfect orimperfect pieces of the tool
are, they always step up to helpbridge that gap, which is
(11:00):
something we look for in anytechnology.
You know, technology should notbe replacing human beings.
It should really be amplifyingwhat we do every step of the
way.
And they're a good example ofthat and of, you know, really
filling in those gaps, helpingto lead through to what the
intentions are, what thepossibilities are, and keep that
human part of the technology.
So that was a big part of why wewent with them.
(11:23):
And they continue to prove that.
One of your other things, youknow, you were talking about
just our strategy and how wekind of approach it and
identifying who are thoseprofitable members.
Because even though we are acredit union, We're not a
business that's generated tocreate profit.
It's to serve the members.
But we are still a business.
(11:44):
We have to create that in orderto serve the members.
But it's not just aboutidentifying who is profitable up
front and who will immediatelystep in, but continuing that
journey and really identifyinghow do we keep them profitable?
How do we create a profitablerelationship with those that we
already have?
(12:04):
You know, Virtus does a lot ofthat as well.
It's not not just the intakewhere we create that path.
SPEAKER_03 (12:10):
With a money center bank, I have a Chase account.
Once you open up with Chase withany product, they're going to
tempt you to sign up for moreand more products.
It's kind of like your streetcorner drug dealer.
Wow, this is free, but oh wow,this one's not free.
SPEAKER_05 (12:28):
Your references are killing me, Robert.
Your potions and drugs.
SPEAKER_03 (12:33):
I'm assuming Acquire does not need any core system
access, right?
SPEAKER_04 (12:38):
No, it does.
We are using, we need to knowabout the existing members and
we get that data from the core.
So I would say that part of ourapproach is, or a key part of
our approach is leveraging, whatdo we know about your existing
members?
And what defines a, you know,what are good, highly
(13:02):
participant members for yourcredit union?
So that we can use that to find,and that's not just about, you
know, demographic information.
It's more about transactionalbehavioral information as well,
right?
What are the behaviors of thosemembers?
So that we can then go and findthe prospects that, you know,
again, we can grow into be thosehighly participant members over
(13:24):
the long term.
SPEAKER_03 (13:25):
Now, can you extract data from the core that shows
you member journey?
Yes.
You might remember once upon atime, a lot of financial
institutions were aggressivelyrecruiting college kids who
probably were not veryprofitable at all.
But when they turned 24 and theyhad a job and they got a new
(13:47):
car, did they get the car loanfrom you?
When they got to be 30, werethey looking to buy a house or
something?
Did they get a mortgage fromyou?
So you can pull that data fromthe core.
SPEAKER_04 (13:59):
That's exactly right.
We have all of that data and we,that's a, you're spot on Robert.
That's one of the keys aboutwhat we're modeling is what is
the journey of these membersover the long term?
And that is an important part ofhow do we think about the next
you know, generation ofprospective members.
And it's not just about youth.
I think that is one strategythat many credit unions are
(14:19):
focused on.
But it is more broadly about theentire community and where the
opportunities, again, people aremoving in.
And, you know, again, if it'sgeographic, people are moving.
And how do we make sure thatwe're hitting the right new
people in the communities toengage?
SPEAKER_03 (14:34):
Well, the historic credit union model, and I'm
going to grossly simplify, butin a way, it was a simple
business some years ago.
Young people borrowed.
They had credit cards.
Old people threw money in asavings account or some other
way that the credit union couldlend that money out, and it was
(14:54):
a spread business.
You lived on it.
Your profit was the differencebetween the interest rate on
loans and credit cards and theinterest rate you paid to the
old people.
Now, I'm an old person, so...
It's not making fun of all thepeople here.
But the business is much morecomplicated now, credit union
business.
And those credit unions havemultiple income streams.
(15:17):
So you can track that kind ofstuff.
SPEAKER_04 (15:19):
Yeah, I mean, we're looking at all of the activities
that a member does with thecredit union.
So that's about accounts andtransactions and interactions
that they have.
And all of those go intounderstanding what are my highly
participant members that I wantmore of.
And part of this, we can modelif there is a profitability
(15:40):
aspect.
But to date, we haven't hadcredit unions that have made
that a priority in how theythink about acquiring new
members.
SPEAKER_03 (15:47):
What's the difference between new members
who don't really gel for thecredit union and ones that do
gel for the credit unions?
I mean, I know a lot of creditunion people don't like the word
profit.
They're actually talking aboutprofits.
They just don't like that word.
But as Bradley pointed out,if...
And as NCUA would certainlyagree with me, if you're not
(16:10):
making something that looks likeprofits, you've got problems
with the regulator.
So now how do you distinguish?
How do you look at a prospectand say, okay, this is a
prospect that this credit unionreally wants?
SPEAKER_04 (16:21):
I'll take the first crack at that, but then I'd love
for Bradley and Tiffany tocomment.
So within Virtus Acquire, wehave something, we have created
this, what we call AcquireScore.
And we're looking at really twodimensions of these prospects
We're looking at, can we getthem and can we grow them?
And can we get them is sort ofthat answer of, is there a
(16:44):
product that they score high onpropensity for that they might
want that we can get them in,right?
They're potentially rateshoppers or high rate
certificate could be a driverthat they'll one, give us that
money, but they may not growwith us, right?
So this is where we go into thatjourney that says these members
show that high propensity thatthey want.
have growth potential to be, youknow, multi-product members over
(17:07):
time.
And we show those scores inthis, you know, sort of what we
call the acquisition matrix ofcan we get them and can we grow
them?
Because there's times where,again, we've seen this last year
where there was just a focus onliquidity, right?
Go get deposits, right?
You know, we probably know thatthere was lots of that.
We just need to make sure thatwe're focused on the balance
(17:28):
sheet and we'll deal with it.
Can we grow them later?
So we want to give theflexibility and the insights
that these credit unions canmake those decisions about where
do we want to focus today.
And, you know, we know there'salways tradeoffs.
And so there may be a time wherewe just say we want, you know,
(17:48):
quick loans or quick deposits.
And we can give you that, right?
Single products.
Let's go get auto loans or let'sgo get a certificate.
But there's also times that wesay, no, we want to think about
the broader long-term growthpotential of members.
And there may be different timesthat we want to have different
strategies and we want to beable to support that.
SPEAKER_03 (18:10):
So you can change this on the fly.
I mean, there was a time when...
credit unions really, really,really want to make auto loans.
Then there was a subsequent timewhen they really, really, really
didn't want to make auto loans.
SPEAKER_04 (18:24):
Yeah, you're exactly right, Robert.
So we're providing a userexperience for the marketing and
strategy and executive teams ofcredit unions to really see
where are the opportunities forgrowth, and then they can make
decisions on what campaigns theywanna execute, right?
(18:44):
So we can give you the, here isthe prospects in your area that
score high for auto loans andpotentially you could grow them.
Do you want to build a campaignaround leading with that
potential product?
Same with checking as Tiffanymentioned where they started,
which is who shows highpropensity for our checking
product in our area that wedon't have already as members
(19:05):
and we can grow them.
Let's focus on that.
So it absolutely gives them aneasy way.
And that's where we think we'redifferent than most of the
solutions in the market likethis, where we let the credit
union see all of this and theycan make informed data driven
decisions about what strategiesthey want to execute and what's
(19:26):
the potential size of the prizefor them versus, you know,
historically it's been we eitherhire a consultant or an agency
and we kind of put it all intheir hands to go and do this.
Or there's solutions that arevery product centric, right?
We can go get new members forchecking accounts or we will
just get you, you know, HELOCnew members so we want to give
(19:47):
them the flexibility to see itand make these informed
decisions and understand thetrade-offs of hey we can go get
quick loans or deposits in thisparticular target audience or we
can think about a longer-termgrowth strategy with this other
audience and they can do youknow they're not mutually
exclusive right we can berunning multiple campaigns for
(20:08):
acquisition for differentproducts and services, but
they're all data driven andfocused on putting the right
products and services in frontof the right prospects instead
of the, you know, call it theold spray and pray model.
SPEAKER_02 (20:19):
Now,
SPEAKER_03 (20:20):
how will you measure the success of this, of your
product?
And I ask because it's trickysince a lot of the success is
long range.
In other words, this new memberthat I get today, next year
might not be all that great.
but your model is saying, well,five years from now, this
person's going to be exactlywhat you want.
SPEAKER_04 (20:42):
It's a great question.
Go ahead.
SPEAKER_06 (20:46):
Oh, no, you have at it, Mitch.
I know this is something we'vetalked about a lot, and it
really is the perfect question.
And there's more to it than justbeing a long range decision in
peace.
It's figuring out what to trulymeasure, how that impacted.
I mean, I know Tiffany goes overthis stuff over and over and
over and what really matters.
And definitely, Mitch.
So have at it, Mitch.
SPEAKER_04 (21:07):
I'm going to lead with we're early days into this.
I think we are our hypothesisaround measurement was clearly
around How many new members canwe get through these programs
compared to the old ways ofdoing it?
Are they more efficient and moreeffective prospecting campaigns?
Are the...
products and services that we'regaining with these new members,
(21:29):
you know, what we would expect,are we getting, you know,
products?
And I think that's one of thelearnings that we had, which is
we need to make sure we measureall products that we, you know,
we may have targeted for achecking account, but if at the
same time we get a member thatadds another product and they
don't add a checking, that'sstill a win, right?
We're potentially getting, youknow, they started with a
different product.
So I think measuring what thatis, we do know that the
(21:51):
long-term aspects, we're justgoing to have to, you Tiffany
alluded to, we're seeing initialpositive results of higher
interactions and engagementrates.
So the short-term measurementis, are we seeing higher
response rates to our outboundmarketing and engagement, right?
So that's sort of theshort-term.
The kind of the next medium termis, are we seeing new members
(22:15):
adopting products and servicesat a either equal or greater
rate than we historically sawfor the dollars that we're
spending on gaining those newmembers.
And then to your point, Robert,the long term will be as are we
really growing these into highlyparticipant members over the
next 12, 24 or further monthsout?
(22:35):
And that's the part that we, youknow, we don't have yet, but we
have a view on how we want tomeasure it.
UNKNOWN (22:39):
So.
SPEAKER_03 (22:40):
How will you price this?
I'm not asking you what you'recharging education.
That's probably a very specialdeal.
How will you price it when youroll it out into the general
market?
SPEAKER_04 (22:49):
Well, I'd love to come back to that, but I feel
like, Tiffany, I'd love for youto speak to that last question.
I'll maybe put you on the spotif you have any other thoughts
on measurement and how we'rethinking about the impact that
this is happening.
SPEAKER_00 (23:02):
That's a good question.
I think one of the things that Ican appreciate most about the
Virtus solution is the We'resending data back to the
solution on a weekly basis, andthat's just what we chose.
And so we're able to seeimmediate results.
Immediately we can say, this isthe amount of accounts that were
open that we can tie back to themarketing campaign.
(23:25):
And a lot of times those areimmediate results.
we certainly want long-termsustaining members, but we also
need very immediate results thatcan be tied back to the
marketing campaign.
And so something that I reallycan appreciate is that you can
just log into the platform andget those very quickly.
SPEAKER_03 (23:43):
Now, Tiffany, what pain point was the credit union
suffering where you said, thecredit union said, hey, We're
going to take a chance on thisnew Vertix product.
There had to be a pain pointthat motivated this.
SPEAKER_00 (23:59):
Yeah, I think that our...
Previous methods of memberacquisition were just too broad
and inefficient.
And so we really wanted toresearch a more targeted,
personalized, data-drivenapproach to maximize our
marketing resources.
So we had to enter a whole newmindset of how to approach
(24:20):
member acquisition and growthwith the Virtus tool.
And so those pain points werequickly alleviated because not
only are we able to go in andselect our target audience, but
that additional built-in modelthat Virtus provides, the AI
part of it is super helpfulbecause we're not just guessing,
(24:43):
we're not just saying, from thetransactional analytics, we're
not just saying, that we want totarget members who use payday
lenders because we certainlywant to tell them and show them
that we can be a moreaffordable, fair solution for
them so that they don't have touse payday lenders.
(25:04):
But the Virtus.ai tool can alsomodel out there's other members
that are more propense to acceptthis as well.
They're very likely to be usingpayday lenders that we can't see
from the ECU lens.
And so, yeah, it was certainlyable to help us approach our
marketing with a more targeted,personalized approach.
SPEAKER_03 (25:26):
So the traditional marketing you were using was not
terribly effective, I'mgathering.
And I think this is true formost credit unions.
I get solicited for all kinds ofproducts that I just buy my
mailbox, there's a trash can.
Almost all of that material goesdirectly in the boom, boom,
(25:50):
boom, boom, boom.
It's just horribly inefficient.
SPEAKER_00 (25:52):
Yeah, I agree.
It certainly wasn't particularlyeffective.
And it wasn't telling us whatwas working and what wasn't
working.
And so with the Virtus.aiplatform, like I said, you know,
we get those immediate results.
And so we're very quickly ableto say, hey, this is working
(26:13):
really well.
Let's dig in our heels and takethis to its full capability.
Or, you know what, this one,we're not getting a lot of
traction with the direct mailand this particular marketing
campaign.
Let's take a step back anddetermine, is this our create Is
it the target audience?
So we're able to move quickerwith this platform.
(26:37):
And
SPEAKER_03 (26:37):
what's something that's worked really well that
perhaps you were surprised itwas working so well?
SPEAKER_00 (26:45):
Good question.
I'll let Mitch or Bradley takethat one.
I
SPEAKER_06 (26:51):
can take a little bit of a stab on that and an
expansion of what Tiffany wastalking about.
I mean, it...
So many people underestimate thepower of transactional data in
just understanding your members,understanding their needs, their
patterns or history, things likethat.
And a lot of what it provides usis not just the ability after
(27:17):
the fact to be able to pivot ifsomething's not going in the
direction we thought it wasgoing, but understand a little
bit better on how to approachupfront.
And it's not just who falls intothat, but it's how do we
communicate with them?
I mean, you see through thetransactional history and
patterns of our members, whatmatters to them, what they spend
(27:38):
their money on, where they gowith those sort of things, what
their needs are.
And that changes the strategyfor just who we market to, but
also how we market to them andhow do we make sure we've got
the right products for them tosolve those needs.
So it really, I mean, it's aroundabout way of answering your
(27:59):
question, Robert, aboutsomething that's surprising, but
it never ceases to surprise methe power that is in
transactional data and justknowing our audience and being
able to I'm
SPEAKER_03 (28:12):
guessing that your methods of marketing have
changed dramatically over thelast 20 years.
20 years ago, probably it was alot of direct mail stuff.
Whereas now it's, you tell mewhat it is, it's probably a lot
of digital stuff.
SPEAKER_00 (28:29):
For sure.
And something that we're ableto, maybe this was a surprising
piece of the platform, is thatAfter we identify the most
propense target audience, we cancraft our marketing methods,
like Bradley said, and ourcollateral around the
demographics of that specifictarget.
So no longer are we just saying,oh, we want to market to 18 to
(28:56):
24-year-olds.
We're letting the platform tellus who we're marketing to.
in terms of who's the mostpropense.
And it's going to spit back andsay, this is the age range that
is most propense to adopt yourproducts.
And these are their marketingaffinities.
They are not going to look atdirect mail.
(29:18):
They are absolutely going to bemore interested in digital video
advertising and email is goingto be a heavy hitter for them as
well.
So it's nice because it gives usa lot more insights than what we
would have probably just gambledon, on just going by our own
feelings.
SPEAKER_03 (29:40):
Yeah, I think a lot of historic marketing decisions
were made just gut instincts.
SPEAKER_04 (29:46):
Robert, just picking up on that.
And one of the things that Ithink is we're excited about
what Tiffany and her team arepicking up on is the ability to
just do much more microcampaigning.
And it's a transition and ittakes time and effort, but we're
trying to make it as efficientas possible for them to be able
(30:09):
to say, yes, this group is goingto respond to direct mail.
There is a group of people thatwill respond to that.
There is a group of people thatwill respond to in-app
messaging, and there's a groupof people that will respond to
email.
And we need to make sure that weuse the right channel and the
right tactics to engage witheach of those groups within the
the same campaign, right?
(30:31):
And it's not, we shouldn't useeverything on everybody.
We need to be, use the data todetermine what's the best tactic
and message to engage with eachmember.
And that's one of the thingsthat we're trying to efficiently
get to those micro targetgroups.
SPEAKER_03 (30:46):
Yeah, tell me about a micro campaign.
And this, it could be Virtustalking about this, could be
education talking about it.
Maybe both of you want to talkabout it.
You know, put some flesh onthat.
What is a micro campaign?
SPEAKER_04 (30:59):
Well, from our perspective, it may not just be
a complete campaign.
It just may be an audience thatwe're going to take a different
tactic or message to.
Right.
So I think about one of thethings we did at education was
pushing some specific messagingthrough the digital banking app.
Right.
Obviously, there's a selectgroup of people that are, you
know, have those, you know, areheavy users of the app.
(31:22):
the digital banking app, but we,we did a scenario where we
pushed some messaging to the, tothose folks.
So I think it could just bewithin the same campaign, but
it's, it's creating these, maybeit's more micro tactics and, um,
you know, sub campaigns of howwe're going to engage
differently.
And I think the same for thisacquire piece, right?
We had a subset that got directmail, a subset that got digital
(31:44):
targeting, uh, within thecampaign as well.
So, so that was part of theprograms here.
SPEAKER_03 (31:50):
And I think historically at credit unions,
everybody got served the samedish.
Every prospect was...
And obviously there were betterways to do that, more efficient
ways to do that.
For sure.
SPEAKER_06 (32:07):
And Robert, there's another way, I guess you can
talk about those micro campaignsthat we're really working on,
haven't fully implemented yet,but helping to even just from...
a footprint of our branchlocations and giving each
location the information theyneed to truly know the members
that they're going to interactwith, the ones that they see
(32:28):
walk in, know some things to beable to talk to them about to be
able to have the communication,or even maybe just a short
little micro campaign aroundphone calls for a subset that we
see a need and they can approachthat and really even breaking
that out to the location, to thebranch level level or just to
(32:50):
the wider aspect you know wemight not have a full build out
where Tiffany's creatingmaterial and you know generating
communication but it's somethingthat simplifies down to hey
here's a list of members you seethem come in there's a talking
point for you or here's a listthat we might need to call and
(33:10):
engage a conversation on
SPEAKER_03 (33:15):
Now, the credit union has to be pretty good at
developing micro campaigns, hasto be pretty clever about
creating the concepts behindthese campaigns.
How widespread is that talent incredit unions?
SPEAKER_06 (33:40):
I almost feel like we're walking into a trap with
that one, Robert.
SPEAKER_03 (33:44):
Hey, everything I do involves traps, man.
I'm a journalist.
SPEAKER_04 (33:50):
Let me start there and then Tiffany, I'd love for
you to do that.
So I'm going to tease a littlebit of what's coming because
this is, you know, I think oneof the things that we recognize
was as we, you know, see thevalue of doing more
hyper-targeting,hyper-personalization, that
comes with, okay, well, now wehave to create the messages and
(34:11):
the content and the copy to dothat.
And as a marketer, I'm sureTiffany says, wait, how are we
going to do that?
So that's the next big part ofwhat at Virtus we are offering.
When we now create thesehyper-personalized campaigns, we
need to help enable creating thecopy for that.
And so we've just recently addeda new piece that Tiffany and
(34:36):
team haven't yet taken advantageof, but we're hopeful they're
going to do soon called VirtusCompose.
And that is really how do wecreate many versions of copy or
content for your marketingcampaigns that leverages a
common theme and voice of thecredit union, but is then
hyper-targeted and personalizedto the audience that we're
(34:57):
engaging, right?
So back to your 18 to 24 yearolds wanna be a different
communication strategy than thebaby boomers and the Gen Xers.
And so can we create versions ofthe message that's more targeted
to those audiences.
Or it could be, again, around abranch, right?
We know all the peopleassociated with a branch.
We can make it branch specificto your neighborhood and use
(35:17):
that language.
So again, Virtus Compose is thenext piece of our offering that
will take a campaign that says,we wanna bring this checking
account to this to the masses orto our audience.
But now we can create manyversions of that marketing copy
(35:38):
for the campaign that's veryspecific to these hyper
personalized micro segments thatwe want to engage so that's the
next piece of this to you knowreally answer i think the the
question or the challenge thatyou've put forth which is okay
great we want to have audiencesof you know hundreds or
thousands of members but if inow have to have 20 different
(35:58):
audiences how do i um write uhyou know a marketing piece of
collateral that meets these 20different views.
And that's what we're trying tosolve with Virtus Compose is
doing that at scale, leveragingthe power of AI.
SPEAKER_03 (36:14):
I assume that product would be optional for
users of Acquire?
Yes, for sure.
I mean, some credit unions withlarge staffs would say, heck, we
can do this ourselves.
SPEAKER_04 (36:25):
For sure.
And as well, we hear they alsohave agencies, right?
There's many great marketingagencies out there that do this
on behalf of them.
And so we're not trying tonecessarily cannibalize that,
but we want to provide a way toat scale generate multiple
versions of copy that could helptell the story that's much more
(36:46):
personalized and focused on theaudience.
SPEAKER_00 (36:48):
And that's our experience is that we do utilize
an agency and we feel alreadyreally comfortable with our
current process of putting outcopy in content.
But my experience personally isthat I've worked at a couple of
different credit unions andfinancial institutions.
(37:08):
And you may have been alludingto this, but credit unions, I
think, particularly the smallershops are When it comes to
marketing, they may havesomebody doing marketing that's
also doing, has two other hatson.
And so when it comes to thiscomposed tool that Virtus is
offering, I think that that isreally going to be essential in
(37:32):
these micro campaigns, or evenit could become essential in
their bigger campaigns as well.
But it is what's going to helpmake it possible, particularly
for those smaller shops.
SPEAKER_03 (37:44):
Yeah, I just see a lot of credit unions struggling.
You say, okay, fine.
Now you're going to have tocreate six different messages
for six different demographics.
And I see them saying, whoa,that's a lot.
That's a lot of creating.
And it's not because they're notintelligent people.
It's that there's not a lot ofstaff ready to dive in on this
(38:05):
problem.
SPEAKER_04 (38:06):
But it's such a great use case for this age of
AI that we live in, Robert.
I mean, we're hearing so muchabout this and people are trying
to understand what are the usecase and the opportunities for
it.
And we think this is just thenatural progression of our value
case for credit unions, which isdata-driven personalization.
(38:26):
That's great.
So I can find these smalleraudiences that show high
propensity for differentproducts and services.
Now I need to reach them.
So how do I reach them?
OK, I need to engage them withsome sort of compelling message
or content.
OK, how do I do that at scalewith a limited staff?
And that's why we releaseCompose as the natural
(38:47):
progression of how do I engagemy existing members?
How do I find the best long termprospective members to grow my
membership?
And then how do I engage them?
So that's the journey that we'vebeen on to support the movement.
SPEAKER_03 (39:01):
Now, Mitch, I'm going to come back to you in a
minute.
You're going to answer my costquestion, which I haven't
forgotten.
But I want to hear fromeducation.
How and when will you decidethat Acquire is successful for
you?
Both how and when?
What kind of timetable are youlooking at?
And what kind of decisionprocess are you going to use?
SPEAKER_00 (39:23):
I would certainly say that I'm already seeing the
success from it.
And I think that it cancertainly be an ongoing
measurement that we can continueto track, engage and say, yes,
this campaign is successful orthis one is not.
But I think if nothing else, theparticular insights that it
(39:48):
gives us of our target audience,there's a lot of value in that
too.
So obviously we are hoping to tobottom line, grab additional
accounts and loans that areprofitable and meaningful.
But there's certainly a lot ofvalue in understanding our
(40:09):
member mountain and our memberdemographics and just the
transactional history andanalysis that comes with that.
SPEAKER_03 (40:20):
I think you'll probably find that quite a few
micro campaigns are notsuccessful.
And that's no big deal.
What is a big deal is when youpersist in doing something
that's not working over and overagain.
I mean, Amazon kills things likein a heartbeat.
It's like, boom, that's notworking, dead.
(40:41):
You use the data and you say,hmm, data says this isn't
working.
Let's just kill it.
Speaking
SPEAKER_06 (40:48):
to that, data, Robert, and kind of what was
mentioned a little bit there.
Tiffany's done a phenomenal jobat not just looking into the
Virtus solution to measure thesuccess or the lack thereof, but
looking at a lot of our othermetrics that we measure through
the marketing world and justlooking at the interaction with
(41:11):
the results, the other piecesthat we have there.
So a big part of the how iscompletely outside of the Virtus
solution and measuring theimpact and solution with that.
But as far as the when on it, Ican tell you we're not going to
be as quick to kill something,especially like this, as Amazon
is.
We don't have nearly as manyoptions as they do.
(41:34):
But also, there's a lot more totake in.
So I can't give you a date, butI can tell you we won't be near
as quick as Amazon to do that.
SPEAKER_03 (41:44):
Well, understandably.
But at some point, you're goingto have to make a decision.
Absolutely.
And obviously, it's going to bedata-driven.
SPEAKER_04 (41:54):
I think, Robert, I just want to make one more
comment about that statementthat you said, which is we are
big believers in this test andlearn approach.
And that's what we're trying toempower Tiffany and team and
Bradley and team to do, which ishow do we quickly surmise if
this program is working andmaybe not kill it, but pivot it?
(42:18):
And pivot could be, do we havethe right message, the right
tactics that we're engaging, theright product?
And if I can, and as Tiffanyalluded to earlier, if we can
show every week that, hey, thiscampaign that we're running is
having good impacts with thisdemographic group or around this
(42:39):
branch, but it's not doing aswell against this branch, well,
now we can make adjustments,right?
So not everything's gonna work,we know that, but if we can give
them the feedback loopefficiently so that they can
make pivots and say, we're gonnaeither change the message here,
or maybe we need to do moreeducation at this particular
branch, or we could justrecognize that a particular
(43:01):
branch is in a much morecompetitive market, and we
accept that that's the realitiesof that branch, Just giving them
that feedback loop is a really,we think, powerful value
proposition for Virtus for newmember acquisition, as well as
for just the existing membergrowth.
So that's a big part of whatwe're trying to bring to them.
SPEAKER_03 (43:22):
Now, so how do you see the costs?
SPEAKER_04 (43:25):
So our solution is a subscription model for the
Virtus solution.
Virtus Acquire is an add-on tothat that allows them to, again,
model these target audiences.
We're, again, different thanothers in that we are, you know,
they get a...
a subscription to the solutionand they can run as many
(43:47):
campaigns as they want to.
There is some variable costaround the number of prospects
that they want to target, butit's important that where we're
different is that we are helpingyou identify the who, the what,
and the how you should engageprospects and members.
There's still a an executionaspect that that is not
(44:07):
currently something that we do.
So, you know, you have toactually do the direct mail
piece or do the digital outreachto those prospects.
And that is still something thateither the credit union does on
their own or through theirexisting marketing partnership.
So our subscription scales basedon the size of the credit union.
You know, again, we have creditunions, smallest 30 million in
(44:28):
assets on the platform andapproaching six billion in
assets.
So the solution scales forcredit unions of all sizes for
both existing member and newmember growth.
SPEAKER_03 (44:39):
And with Compose, you're trying to plug up a
possible weak point, which issome credit unions just probably
wouldn't be very good and don'thave existing vendor
relationships that would creategood campaigns.
That's correct.
UNKNOWN (44:56):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (44:57):
So that's clever on your part.
And as we said, it's notmandatory.
But you say, no, we're happywith what we
SPEAKER_06 (45:05):
do.
Mitch might shoot me for thisone because I might be pushing
Compose a little outside of whatit was intended to be.
But I would love to see that bemore than just a replacement for
a shop that doesn't have thecapability internally or the
third party relationship togenerate that.
But to also be kind of just...
(45:26):
A part of that ability to reactquicker, to have something
that's immediately generated.
And it might be something, hey,take a look at it.
We've got a great internal team.
And they're going to say, thisis crud.
This is terrible.
This is great.
And take that one piece.
It's still got us going quicker.
than if we would have had tothink that up off the fly.
(45:48):
And the more of those microcampaigns you generate, the more
you do those sort of things,it's just something that can
help with speed and not justreplacement of those functions.
SPEAKER_04 (45:59):
That's great feedback, Bradley.
And I think that is, you arespot on.
The vision of Furtis Compose isreally to just be, you know,
call it the co-pilot for yourmarketing team on this content,
not necessarily a replacement,which is, let me give you eight
or 10 versions and you candecide, I like this, I don't
like this, combine these pieces,right?
It's the, you know, swipe left,swipe right on content to get to
(46:21):
what is something we can, youknow, more efficiently get out
into the next membercommunication, the next member
engagement.
So that's great feedback and,and we, you know, we'll
definitely be taking more fromyou over the, over the coming
months and years.
SPEAKER_06 (46:35):
Did you just compare Virtus to an online dating app?
No, just, just,
SPEAKER_04 (46:46):
just the function of how do I get to good, good
answers quickly, right?
SPEAKER_03 (46:54):
Before we go think hard.
about how you can help supportthis podcast so we can do more
interviews with more thoughtfulleaders in the credit union
world.
What we're trying to figure outhere in these podcasts is what's
next for credit unions.
What can they do to really,really, really make a difference
in the financial scene?
Can't all be mega banks, can it?
(47:16):
It's my hope it won't all bemega banks.
It'll always be a place forcredit unions.
That's what we're discussinghere.
So figure out how you can help.
Get in touch with me.
This is rjmcgarvey at gmail.com.
Robert McGarvey again.
That's rjmcgarvey at gmail.com.
Get in touch.
We'll figure out a way that youcan help.
We need your support.
(47:37):
We want your support.
We thank you for your support.
The CU2.0 Podcast.
Welcome to the CU2.0 podcast.
SPEAKER_01 (00:05):
Hi, and welcome to the CU2.0 podcast with big new
ideas about credit unions andconversations about innovative
technology with credit union andfintech leaders.
This podcast is brought to youby Quillo, the real-time loan
syndication network for creditunions, and by your host,
longtime credit union andfinancial technology journalist,
(00:27):
Robert McGarvey.
And now...
the CU 2.0 podcast with RobertMcGarvey.
SPEAKER_03 (00:33):
Want to know the secret about how to better
target a new member acquisitioncampaign?
Of course you do.
Just about every credit union inthe country is scrambling to
gain new members.
But could the campaigns be moreefficient and effective?
In many, many cases, the answeris a loud yep.
Enter Virtus, which is blendingdata and AI to give credit
(00:56):
unions a tool to enable moreprecise targeting strategies and
tactics.
On the show is Mitch Rutledge,CEO of Virtus.ai, and himself a
past podcast guest, episode 247.
There's a link to that in theshow notes.
But don't just take Mitch'sword.
Also on the show are businessdevelopment specialist Tiffany
(01:16):
Sharpenstein and BradleyHerbert, senior vice president
of technology, both of educationCredit Union of Amarillo, Texas.
Assets of around$400 million.
Education shares its experiencein the pilot program, Virtus
Acquire.
And yep, the reviews areglowing.
Listen up.
(01:38):
My experience is that creditunions are non-selective in new
member drives.
And they often get a bunch ofmembers who are not profitable
you can't make any money ifsomeone comes in and opens a
share draft account puts a fewbucks in in a savings account
(02:01):
and that's it this is this is soit's the pathway to financial
despair so you at vertis havesome magic potion that allows
allows credit unions to bettertarget the members and i want to
hear from you about Thetechnology of this, I want to
hear from the credit unionabout, does it actually work?
(02:21):
Because fintech guys come andthey lie to me.
You know that?
This might surprise you, butthey don't lie.
They exaggerate.
Let me put it that way.
Lying is, hey, I get along verywell with fintech guys.
SPEAKER_04 (02:35):
But it's...
So, Robert, I'll kick it off.
This is Mitch Rutledge.
So at Virtus, we were on...
You had us on, I think, a coupleof years ago as we were just
getting started.
And we originally founded Virtusto focus on how do we empower
credit unions to help theirmembers climb their financial
(02:55):
mountain?
So this idea of growing therelationship, member economic
participation with the existingmembers, which is...
very important.
And, you know, we've seen greatstrides with credit union
clients over the last few yearsof doing that with BERTIS,
including an education.
That's where we started withthem.
But we also know that growingthe membership and getting new
(03:18):
members is important to thecredit union movement for a
variety of reasons.
And we said, how can we takewhat we learned about knowing
existing members to help creditunions know perspective numbers
and find What could be the bestpossible prospective members to
(03:39):
help them grow the financialrelationships?
And that's what we createdVirtus Acquire, to leverage what
we learned about existing membergrowth to apply it to finding
the best prospects for thecredit unions, those ones that
will have long-term growthpotential that aren't just one
product or rate shoppers.
(04:00):
We want to use all of theinsights and data that we have
about existing members to findwhat are our our best members
who are the most economicallyparticipant to then go find
prospects that look like those.
So much more than just a quotelookalike model, it's a pretty
advanced way of using lots ofdata elements to find prospects.
SPEAKER_03 (04:20):
Do the prospects, profile of a prospect differ
from credit union to creditunion?
I mean, obviously there's somelike maybe federal where you
need a particular background.
That aside, Do they differ?
SPEAKER_04 (04:33):
Yes.
So that's what we're starting tosee in this.
So we just launched this productat the beginning of the year.
And so we're education was ourfirst partner on helping us
deploy this.
But we're now working with fourcredit unions and we're starting
to see that, yes, there are somesimilarities about what is a.
highly participant member.
(04:54):
But again, in different marketsand credit unions with
different, you know, traditionalmembership bases, right, fields
of membership, there aredefinitely some uniquenesses
around it.
And that's, again, where wethink that our models can help
them identify, you know, who arethe best future members for
their credit union.
What's the size range of thesecredit unions?
(05:14):
Under 500 million to approaching2 billion.
So all sort of, you know, wethink the sort of the full gamut
SPEAKER_03 (05:23):
of folks.
Is that the range that you thinkthis product is best suited for?
No,
SPEAKER_04 (05:29):
I mean, we're talking to some smaller credit
unions as well who, you know, Ithink all credit unions have a
priority for adding new members,right?
I think that I just saw the, youknow, the Callahan MarketWatch
survey, right?
And that was the number onefocus of credit unions for 2025
was new member growth.
So I think all credit unionshave that as a priority.
SPEAKER_03 (05:49):
But a credit union doesn't want indiscriminate new
member growth because some newmembers can actually cost the
credit union money.
For sure.
Quite a few new members cost thecredit union money,
unfortunately.
So what you say is that you havethis potion that will help them
identify people who will not bemoney losers as members.
SPEAKER_04 (06:12):
Well, I mean, I think I'd love to turn it over
to my friends at education totalk about some of their
strategies for new membergrowth.
Part of the credit unionmovement is about how do we
serve our community.
And it's not just about what areour profitable members.
We want to serve the community.
And we know that's a balanceacross all of the members that
(06:32):
we take on.
And I think that's part of thedecision process as we think
about finding new members.
is what is our priority rightnow?
Is it deposit growth that we'veheard from some folks?
Is it, again, these long-termmembers that may take more time
to grow into?
We think about some of the focusabout youth and getting the next
(06:56):
generation of credit unionmembers.
Well, some of those members maynot be profitable now, but when
we think about the long-term,and I think most credit unions
do have a long-term horizon,those are ones where I think
having a long-term outlook onpotential growth is a really
important part of this.
SPEAKER_03 (07:14):
But it's not an either or, I think.
Education.
Now, why did you sign on as theguinea pig in this thing?
SPEAKER_00 (07:21):
Well, I think that, Robert, you mentioned something
at the very beginning, and thatis these typical large net
casting membership drives thatcredit unions are known for.
And something that our team hasbeen really interested in is how
can we provide more relevantoffers and services that really
(07:42):
strengthen long-term membershiployalty and not just bring them
in for the little gimmicky radiothat we're giving away today?
How can we really be their fullfinancial provider covering
everything that they need?
And so Virtus was initiallyattractive because they offered
(08:03):
this AI service data-drivenstrategy.
And we really felt like if wedidn't embrace something like
that, we would frankly riskfalling behind.
SPEAKER_03 (08:15):
Technologically, how hard is it to use the Virtus
technology?
SPEAKER_00 (08:23):
Well, from a user experience from my side, I don't
live in the data world.
I'm marketing.
And so I am fairly analytical.
And so it interests me, but it'snot my day to day.
And so it can be a If you trulyjust embrace it, jump both feet
(08:43):
in.
I felt like the team, the Virtusteam, they're top notch
exceptional.
And so they were able to walkalongside us the whole way.
And myself and my othermarketing colleagues that a lot
of times were spent in graphicsand designing, we were able to
pick it up very easily.
SPEAKER_03 (09:02):
When did this go live?
SPEAKER_00 (09:04):
Speaking to the acquire piece of it
specifically, we've beenvisiting with Virtus and working
through small campaigns, I'd sayover the past year, maybe year
and a half or so.
But acquire specifically, whichgave us this entry into the
prospect world, which ishonestly a question that I had
asked Virtus initially.
(09:25):
How do we get into theprospects?
How do we tap into somenon-members?
We were able to really startthis initiative, I believe, in
about mid-November.
And we started it, EducationCredit Union started it
specifically on a smart checkingcampaign.
So it's just a checking account.
(09:46):
We have a really exceptionalchecking account product that
offers over 6%.
And so we...
We didn't offer any additionalincentives or anything with it.
It's just what our productalready is in its glory.
And so we started that inNovember and we wanted to launch
it initially about an eight weekcampaign to see what kind of
(10:08):
results that gave us.
But because we have been seeingreally exceptional results on
our impressions and clicks,we're continuing that campaign.
SPEAKER_03 (10:21):
6% is pretty outstanding.
My credit union has a great rateof 0%.
SPEAKER_00 (10:29):
Let me send you a link after this with our...
Our information.
SPEAKER_03 (10:34):
You said 6%.
I'm saying, well, you got myattention there.
SPEAKER_06 (10:37):
I'd like to expand on a couple of the things
Tiffany mentioned in there andkind of answer your questions
from a little bit of a differentview and a little bit deeper.
One of the big reasons why wedid choose to go with Virtus,
Tiffany did mention that they'rea phenomenal partner.
And regardless of how perfect orimperfect pieces of the tool
are, they always step up to helpbridge that gap, which is
(11:00):
something we look for in anytechnology.
You know, technology should notbe replacing human beings.
It should really be amplifyingwhat we do every step of the
way.
And they're a good example ofthat and of, you know, really
filling in those gaps, helpingto lead through to what the
intentions are, what thepossibilities are, and keep that
human part of the technology.
So that was a big part of why wewent with them.
(11:23):
And they continue to prove that.
One of your other things, youknow, you were talking about
just our strategy and how wekind of approach it and
identifying who are thoseprofitable members.
Because even though we are acredit union, We're not a
business that's generated tocreate profit.
It's to serve the members.
But we are still a business.
(11:44):
We have to create that in orderto serve the members.
But it's not just aboutidentifying who is profitable up
front and who will immediatelystep in, but continuing that
journey and really identifyinghow do we keep them profitable?
How do we create a profitablerelationship with those that we
already have?
(12:04):
You know, Virtus does a lot ofthat as well.
It's not not just the intakewhere we create that path.
SPEAKER_03 (12:10):
With a money center bank, I have a Chase account.
Once you open up with Chase withany product, they're going to
tempt you to sign up for moreand more products.
It's kind of like your streetcorner drug dealer.
Wow, this is free, but oh wow,this one's not free.
SPEAKER_05 (12:28):
Your references are killing me, Robert.
Your potions and drugs.
SPEAKER_03 (12:33):
I'm assuming Acquire does not need any core system
access, right?
SPEAKER_04 (12:38):
No, it does.
We are using, we need to knowabout the existing members and
we get that data from the core.
So I would say that part of ourapproach is, or a key part of
our approach is leveraging, whatdo we know about your existing
members?
And what defines a, you know,what are good, highly
(13:02):
participant members for yourcredit union?
So that we can use that to find,and that's not just about, you
know, demographic information.
It's more about transactionalbehavioral information as well,
right?
What are the behaviors of thosemembers?
So that we can then go and findthe prospects that, you know,
again, we can grow into be thosehighly participant members over
(13:24):
the long term.
SPEAKER_03 (13:25):
Now, can you extract data from the core that shows
you member journey?
Yes.
You might remember once upon atime, a lot of financial
institutions were aggressivelyrecruiting college kids who
probably were not veryprofitable at all.
But when they turned 24 and theyhad a job and they got a new
(13:47):
car, did they get the car loanfrom you?
When they got to be 30, werethey looking to buy a house or
something?
Did they get a mortgage fromyou?
So you can pull that data fromthe core.
SPEAKER_04 (13:59):
That's exactly right.
We have all of that data and we,that's a, you're spot on Robert.
That's one of the keys aboutwhat we're modeling is what is
the journey of these membersover the long term?
And that is an important part ofhow do we think about the next
you know, generation ofprospective members.
And it's not just about youth.
I think that is one strategythat many credit unions are
(14:19):
focused on.
But it is more broadly about theentire community and where the
opportunities, again, people aremoving in.
And, you know, again, if it'sgeographic, people are moving.
And how do we make sure thatwe're hitting the right new
people in the communities toengage?
SPEAKER_03 (14:34):
Well, the historic credit union model, and I'm
going to grossly simplify, butin a way, it was a simple
business some years ago.
Young people borrowed.
They had credit cards.
Old people threw money in asavings account or some other
way that the credit union couldlend that money out, and it was
(14:54):
a spread business.
You lived on it.
Your profit was the differencebetween the interest rate on
loans and credit cards and theinterest rate you paid to the
old people.
Now, I'm an old person, so...
It's not making fun of all thepeople here.
But the business is much morecomplicated now, credit union
business.
And those credit unions havemultiple income streams.
(15:17):
So you can track that kind ofstuff.
SPEAKER_04 (15:19):
Yeah, I mean, we're looking at all of the activities
that a member does with thecredit union.
So that's about accounts andtransactions and interactions
that they have.
And all of those go intounderstanding what are my highly
participant members that I wantmore of.
And part of this, we can modelif there is a profitability
(15:40):
aspect.
But to date, we haven't hadcredit unions that have made
that a priority in how theythink about acquiring new
members.
SPEAKER_03 (15:47):
What's the difference between new members
who don't really gel for thecredit union and ones that do
gel for the credit unions?
I mean, I know a lot of creditunion people don't like the word
profit.
They're actually talking aboutprofits.
They just don't like that word.
But as Bradley pointed out,if...
And as NCUA would certainlyagree with me, if you're not
(16:10):
making something that looks likeprofits, you've got problems
with the regulator.
So now how do you distinguish?
How do you look at a prospectand say, okay, this is a
prospect that this credit unionreally wants?
SPEAKER_04 (16:21):
I'll take the first crack at that, but then I'd love
for Bradley and Tiffany tocomment.
So within Virtus Acquire, wehave something, we have created
this, what we call AcquireScore.
And we're looking at really twodimensions of these prospects
We're looking at, can we getthem and can we grow them?
And can we get them is sort ofthat answer of, is there a
(16:44):
product that they score high onpropensity for that they might
want that we can get them in,right?
They're potentially rateshoppers or high rate
certificate could be a driverthat they'll one, give us that
money, but they may not growwith us, right?
So this is where we go into thatjourney that says these members
show that high propensity thatthey want.
have growth potential to be, youknow, multi-product members over
(17:07):
time.
And we show those scores inthis, you know, sort of what we
call the acquisition matrix ofcan we get them and can we grow
them?
Because there's times where,again, we've seen this last year
where there was just a focus onliquidity, right?
Go get deposits, right?
You know, we probably know thatthere was lots of that.
We just need to make sure thatwe're focused on the balance
(17:28):
sheet and we'll deal with it.
Can we grow them later?
So we want to give theflexibility and the insights
that these credit unions canmake those decisions about where
do we want to focus today.
And, you know, we know there'salways tradeoffs.
And so there may be a time wherewe just say we want, you know,
(17:48):
quick loans or quick deposits.
And we can give you that, right?
Single products.
Let's go get auto loans or let'sgo get a certificate.
But there's also times that wesay, no, we want to think about
the broader long-term growthpotential of members.
And there may be different timesthat we want to have different
strategies and we want to beable to support that.
SPEAKER_03 (18:10):
So you can change this on the fly.
I mean, there was a time when...
credit unions really, really,really want to make auto loans.
Then there was a subsequent timewhen they really, really, really
didn't want to make auto loans.
SPEAKER_04 (18:24):
Yeah, you're exactly right, Robert.
So we're providing a userexperience for the marketing and
strategy and executive teams ofcredit unions to really see
where are the opportunities forgrowth, and then they can make
decisions on what campaigns theywanna execute, right?
(18:44):
So we can give you the, here isthe prospects in your area that
score high for auto loans andpotentially you could grow them.
Do you want to build a campaignaround leading with that
potential product?
Same with checking as Tiffanymentioned where they started,
which is who shows highpropensity for our checking
product in our area that wedon't have already as members
(19:05):
and we can grow them.
Let's focus on that.
So it absolutely gives them aneasy way.
And that's where we think we'redifferent than most of the
solutions in the market likethis, where we let the credit
union see all of this and theycan make informed data driven
decisions about what strategiesthey want to execute and what's
(19:26):
the potential size of the prizefor them versus, you know,
historically it's been we eitherhire a consultant or an agency
and we kind of put it all intheir hands to go and do this.
Or there's solutions that arevery product centric, right?
We can go get new members forchecking accounts or we will
just get you, you know, HELOCnew members so we want to give
(19:47):
them the flexibility to see itand make these informed
decisions and understand thetrade-offs of hey we can go get
quick loans or deposits in thisparticular target audience or we
can think about a longer-termgrowth strategy with this other
audience and they can do youknow they're not mutually
exclusive right we can berunning multiple campaigns for
(20:08):
acquisition for differentproducts and services, but
they're all data driven andfocused on putting the right
products and services in frontof the right prospects instead
of the, you know, call it theold spray and pray model.
SPEAKER_02 (20:19):
Now,
SPEAKER_03 (20:20):
how will you measure the success of this, of your
product?
And I ask because it's trickysince a lot of the success is
long range.
In other words, this new memberthat I get today, next year
might not be all that great.
but your model is saying, well,five years from now, this
person's going to be exactlywhat you want.
SPEAKER_04 (20:42):
It's a great question.
Go ahead.
SPEAKER_06 (20:46):
Oh, no, you have at it, Mitch.
I know this is something we'vetalked about a lot, and it
really is the perfect question.
And there's more to it than justbeing a long range decision in
peace.
It's figuring out what to trulymeasure, how that impacted.
I mean, I know Tiffany goes overthis stuff over and over and
over and what really matters.
And definitely, Mitch.
So have at it, Mitch.
SPEAKER_04 (21:07):
I'm going to lead with we're early days into this.
I think we are our hypothesisaround measurement was clearly
around How many new members canwe get through these programs
compared to the old ways ofdoing it?
Are they more efficient and moreeffective prospecting campaigns?
Are the...
products and services that we'regaining with these new members,
(21:29):
you know, what we would expect,are we getting, you know,
products?
And I think that's one of thelearnings that we had, which is
we need to make sure we measureall products that we, you know,
we may have targeted for achecking account, but if at the
same time we get a member thatadds another product and they
don't add a checking, that'sstill a win, right?
We're potentially getting, youknow, they started with a
different product.
So I think measuring what thatis, we do know that the
(21:51):
long-term aspects, we're justgoing to have to, you Tiffany
alluded to, we're seeing initialpositive results of higher
interactions and engagementrates.
So the short-term measurementis, are we seeing higher
response rates to our outboundmarketing and engagement, right?
So that's sort of theshort-term.
The kind of the next medium termis, are we seeing new members
(22:15):
adopting products and servicesat a either equal or greater
rate than we historically sawfor the dollars that we're
spending on gaining those newmembers.
And then to your point, Robert,the long term will be as are we
really growing these into highlyparticipant members over the
next 12, 24 or further monthsout?
(22:35):
And that's the part that we, youknow, we don't have yet, but we
have a view on how we want tomeasure it.
UNKNOWN (22:39):
So.
SPEAKER_03 (22:40):
How will you price this?
I'm not asking you what you'recharging education.
That's probably a very specialdeal.
How will you price it when youroll it out into the general
market?
SPEAKER_04 (22:49):
Well, I'd love to come back to that, but I feel
like, Tiffany, I'd love for youto speak to that last question.
I'll maybe put you on the spotif you have any other thoughts
on measurement and how we'rethinking about the impact that
this is happening.
SPEAKER_00 (23:02):
That's a good question.
I think one of the things that Ican appreciate most about the
Virtus solution is the We'resending data back to the
solution on a weekly basis, andthat's just what we chose.
And so we're able to seeimmediate results.
Immediately we can say, this isthe amount of accounts that were
open that we can tie back to themarketing campaign.
(23:25):
And a lot of times those areimmediate results.
we certainly want long-termsustaining members, but we also
need very immediate results thatcan be tied back to the
marketing campaign.
And so something that I reallycan appreciate is that you can
just log into the platform andget those very quickly.
SPEAKER_03 (23:43):
Now, Tiffany, what pain point was the credit union
suffering where you said, thecredit union said, hey, We're
going to take a chance on thisnew Vertix product.
There had to be a pain pointthat motivated this.
SPEAKER_00 (23:59):
Yeah, I think that our...
Previous methods of memberacquisition were just too broad
and inefficient.
And so we really wanted toresearch a more targeted,
personalized, data-drivenapproach to maximize our
marketing resources.
So we had to enter a whole newmindset of how to approach
(24:20):
member acquisition and growthwith the Virtus tool.
And so those pain points werequickly alleviated because not
only are we able to go in andselect our target audience, but
that additional built-in modelthat Virtus provides, the AI
part of it is super helpfulbecause we're not just guessing,
(24:43):
we're not just saying, from thetransactional analytics, we're
not just saying, that we want totarget members who use payday
lenders because we certainlywant to tell them and show them
that we can be a moreaffordable, fair solution for
them so that they don't have touse payday lenders.
(25:04):
But the Virtus.ai tool can alsomodel out there's other members
that are more propense to acceptthis as well.
They're very likely to be usingpayday lenders that we can't see
from the ECU lens.
And so, yeah, it was certainlyable to help us approach our
marketing with a more targeted,personalized approach.
SPEAKER_03 (25:26):
So the traditional marketing you were using was not
terribly effective, I'mgathering.
And I think this is true formost credit unions.
I get solicited for all kinds ofproducts that I just buy my
mailbox, there's a trash can.
Almost all of that material goesdirectly in the boom, boom,
(25:50):
boom, boom, boom.
It's just horribly inefficient.
SPEAKER_00 (25:52):
Yeah, I agree.
It certainly wasn't particularlyeffective.
And it wasn't telling us whatwas working and what wasn't
working.
And so with the Virtus.aiplatform, like I said, you know,
we get those immediate results.
And so we're very quickly ableto say, hey, this is working
(26:13):
really well.
Let's dig in our heels and takethis to its full capability.
Or, you know what, this one,we're not getting a lot of
traction with the direct mailand this particular marketing
campaign.
Let's take a step back anddetermine, is this our create Is
it the target audience?
So we're able to move quickerwith this platform.
(26:37):
And
SPEAKER_03 (26:37):
what's something that's worked really well that
perhaps you were surprised itwas working so well?
SPEAKER_00 (26:45):
Good question.
I'll let Mitch or Bradley takethat one.
I
SPEAKER_06 (26:51):
can take a little bit of a stab on that and an
expansion of what Tiffany wastalking about.
I mean, it...
So many people underestimate thepower of transactional data in
just understanding your members,understanding their needs, their
patterns or history, things likethat.
And a lot of what it provides usis not just the ability after
(27:17):
the fact to be able to pivot ifsomething's not going in the
direction we thought it wasgoing, but understand a little
bit better on how to approachupfront.
And it's not just who falls intothat, but it's how do we
communicate with them?
I mean, you see through thetransactional history and
patterns of our members, whatmatters to them, what they spend
(27:38):
their money on, where they gowith those sort of things, what
their needs are.
And that changes the strategyfor just who we market to, but
also how we market to them andhow do we make sure we've got
the right products for them tosolve those needs.
So it really, I mean, it's aroundabout way of answering your
(27:59):
question, Robert, aboutsomething that's surprising, but
it never ceases to surprise methe power that is in
transactional data and justknowing our audience and being
able to I'm
SPEAKER_03 (28:12):
guessing that your methods of marketing have
changed dramatically over thelast 20 years.
20 years ago, probably it was alot of direct mail stuff.
Whereas now it's, you tell mewhat it is, it's probably a lot
of digital stuff.
SPEAKER_00 (28:29):
For sure.
And something that we're ableto, maybe this was a surprising
piece of the platform, is thatAfter we identify the most
propense target audience, we cancraft our marketing methods,
like Bradley said, and ourcollateral around the
demographics of that specifictarget.
So no longer are we just saying,oh, we want to market to 18 to
(28:56):
24-year-olds.
We're letting the platform tellus who we're marketing to.
in terms of who's the mostpropense.
And it's going to spit back andsay, this is the age range that
is most propense to adopt yourproducts.
And these are their marketingaffinities.
They are not going to look atdirect mail.
(29:18):
They are absolutely going to bemore interested in digital video
advertising and email is goingto be a heavy hitter for them as
well.
So it's nice because it gives usa lot more insights than what we
would have probably just gambledon, on just going by our own
feelings.
SPEAKER_03 (29:40):
Yeah, I think a lot of historic marketing decisions
were made just gut instincts.
SPEAKER_04 (29:46):
Robert, just picking up on that.
And one of the things that Ithink is we're excited about
what Tiffany and her team arepicking up on is the ability to
just do much more microcampaigning.
And it's a transition and ittakes time and effort, but we're
trying to make it as efficientas possible for them to be able
(30:09):
to say, yes, this group is goingto respond to direct mail.
There is a group of people thatwill respond to that.
There is a group of people thatwill respond to in-app
messaging, and there's a groupof people that will respond to
email.
And we need to make sure that weuse the right channel and the
right tactics to engage witheach of those groups within the
the same campaign, right?
(30:31):
And it's not, we shouldn't useeverything on everybody.
We need to be, use the data todetermine what's the best tactic
and message to engage with eachmember.
And that's one of the thingsthat we're trying to efficiently
get to those micro targetgroups.
SPEAKER_03 (30:46):
Yeah, tell me about a micro campaign.
And this, it could be Virtustalking about this, could be
education talking about it.
Maybe both of you want to talkabout it.
You know, put some flesh onthat.
What is a micro campaign?
SPEAKER_04 (30:59):
Well, from our perspective, it may not just be
a complete campaign.
It just may be an audience thatwe're going to take a different
tactic or message to.
Right.
So I think about one of thethings we did at education was
pushing some specific messagingthrough the digital banking app.
Right.
Obviously, there's a selectgroup of people that are, you
know, have those, you know, areheavy users of the app.
(31:22):
the digital banking app, but we,we did a scenario where we
pushed some messaging to the, tothose folks.
So I think it could just bewithin the same campaign, but
it's, it's creating these, maybeit's more micro tactics and, um,
you know, sub campaigns of howwe're going to engage
differently.
And I think the same for thisacquire piece, right?
We had a subset that got directmail, a subset that got digital
(31:44):
targeting, uh, within thecampaign as well.
So, so that was part of theprograms here.
SPEAKER_03 (31:50):
And I think historically at credit unions,
everybody got served the samedish.
Every prospect was...
And obviously there were betterways to do that, more efficient
ways to do that.
For sure.
SPEAKER_06 (32:07):
And Robert, there's another way, I guess you can
talk about those micro campaignsthat we're really working on,
haven't fully implemented yet,but helping to even just from...
a footprint of our branchlocations and giving each
location the information theyneed to truly know the members
that they're going to interactwith, the ones that they see
(32:28):
walk in, know some things to beable to talk to them about to be
able to have the communication,or even maybe just a short
little micro campaign aroundphone calls for a subset that we
see a need and they can approachthat and really even breaking
that out to the location, to thebranch level level or just to
(32:50):
the wider aspect you know wemight not have a full build out
where Tiffany's creatingmaterial and you know generating
communication but it's somethingthat simplifies down to hey
here's a list of members you seethem come in there's a talking
point for you or here's a listthat we might need to call and
(33:10):
engage a conversation on
SPEAKER_03 (33:15):
Now, the credit union has to be pretty good at
developing micro campaigns, hasto be pretty clever about
creating the concepts behindthese campaigns.
How widespread is that talent incredit unions?
SPEAKER_06 (33:40):
I almost feel like we're walking into a trap with
that one, Robert.
SPEAKER_03 (33:44):
Hey, everything I do involves traps, man.
I'm a journalist.
SPEAKER_04 (33:50):
Let me start there and then Tiffany, I'd love for
you to do that.
So I'm going to tease a littlebit of what's coming because
this is, you know, I think oneof the things that we recognize
was as we, you know, see thevalue of doing more
hyper-targeting,hyper-personalization, that
comes with, okay, well, now wehave to create the messages and
(34:11):
the content and the copy to dothat.
And as a marketer, I'm sureTiffany says, wait, how are we
going to do that?
So that's the next big part ofwhat at Virtus we are offering.
When we now create thesehyper-personalized campaigns, we
need to help enable creating thecopy for that.
And so we've just recently addeda new piece that Tiffany and
(34:36):
team haven't yet taken advantageof, but we're hopeful they're
going to do soon called VirtusCompose.
And that is really how do wecreate many versions of copy or
content for your marketingcampaigns that leverages a
common theme and voice of thecredit union, but is then
hyper-targeted and personalizedto the audience that we're
(34:57):
engaging, right?
So back to your 18 to 24 yearolds wanna be a different
communication strategy than thebaby boomers and the Gen Xers.
And so can we create versions ofthe message that's more targeted
to those audiences.
Or it could be, again, around abranch, right?
We know all the peopleassociated with a branch.
We can make it branch specificto your neighborhood and use
(35:17):
that language.
So again, Virtus Compose is thenext piece of our offering that
will take a campaign that says,we wanna bring this checking
account to this to the masses orto our audience.
But now we can create manyversions of that marketing copy
(35:38):
for the campaign that's veryspecific to these hyper
personalized micro segments thatwe want to engage so that's the
next piece of this to you knowreally answer i think the the
question or the challenge thatyou've put forth which is okay
great we want to have audiencesof you know hundreds or
thousands of members but if inow have to have 20 different
(35:58):
audiences how do i um write uhyou know a marketing piece of
collateral that meets these 20different views.
And that's what we're trying tosolve with Virtus Compose is
doing that at scale, leveragingthe power of AI.
SPEAKER_03 (36:14):
I assume that product would be optional for
users of Acquire?
Yes, for sure.
I mean, some credit unions withlarge staffs would say, heck, we
can do this ourselves.
SPEAKER_04 (36:25):
For sure.
And as well, we hear they alsohave agencies, right?
There's many great marketingagencies out there that do this
on behalf of them.
And so we're not trying tonecessarily cannibalize that,
but we want to provide a way toat scale generate multiple
versions of copy that could helptell the story that's much more
(36:46):
personalized and focused on theaudience.
SPEAKER_00 (36:48):
And that's our experience is that we do utilize
an agency and we feel alreadyreally comfortable with our
current process of putting outcopy in content.
But my experience personally isthat I've worked at a couple of
different credit unions andfinancial institutions.
(37:08):
And you may have been alludingto this, but credit unions, I
think, particularly the smallershops are When it comes to
marketing, they may havesomebody doing marketing that's
also doing, has two other hatson.
And so when it comes to thiscomposed tool that Virtus is
offering, I think that that isreally going to be essential in
(37:32):
these micro campaigns, or evenit could become essential in
their bigger campaigns as well.
But it is what's going to helpmake it possible, particularly
for those smaller shops.
SPEAKER_03 (37:44):
Yeah, I just see a lot of credit unions struggling.
You say, okay, fine.
Now you're going to have tocreate six different messages
for six different demographics.
And I see them saying, whoa,that's a lot.
That's a lot of creating.
And it's not because they're notintelligent people.
It's that there's not a lot ofstaff ready to dive in on this
(38:05):
problem.
SPEAKER_04 (38:06):
But it's such a great use case for this age of
AI that we live in, Robert.
I mean, we're hearing so muchabout this and people are trying
to understand what are the usecase and the opportunities for
it.
And we think this is just thenatural progression of our value
case for credit unions, which isdata-driven personalization.
(38:26):
That's great.
So I can find these smalleraudiences that show high
propensity for differentproducts and services.
Now I need to reach them.
So how do I reach them?
OK, I need to engage them withsome sort of compelling message
or content.
OK, how do I do that at scalewith a limited staff?
And that's why we releaseCompose as the natural
(38:47):
progression of how do I engagemy existing members?
How do I find the best long termprospective members to grow my
membership?
And then how do I engage them?
So that's the journey that we'vebeen on to support the movement.
SPEAKER_03 (39:01):
Now, Mitch, I'm going to come back to you in a
minute.
You're going to answer my costquestion, which I haven't
forgotten.
But I want to hear fromeducation.
How and when will you decidethat Acquire is successful for
you?
Both how and when?
What kind of timetable are youlooking at?
And what kind of decisionprocess are you going to use?
SPEAKER_00 (39:23):
I would certainly say that I'm already seeing the
success from it.
And I think that it cancertainly be an ongoing
measurement that we can continueto track, engage and say, yes,
this campaign is successful orthis one is not.
But I think if nothing else, theparticular insights that it
(39:48):
gives us of our target audience,there's a lot of value in that
too.
So obviously we are hoping to tobottom line, grab additional
accounts and loans that areprofitable and meaningful.
But there's certainly a lot ofvalue in understanding our
(40:09):
member mountain and our memberdemographics and just the
transactional history andanalysis that comes with that.
SPEAKER_03 (40:20):
I think you'll probably find that quite a few
micro campaigns are notsuccessful.
And that's no big deal.
What is a big deal is when youpersist in doing something
that's not working over and overagain.
I mean, Amazon kills things likein a heartbeat.
It's like, boom, that's notworking, dead.
(40:41):
You use the data and you say,hmm, data says this isn't
working.
Let's just kill it.
Speaking
SPEAKER_06 (40:48):
to that, data, Robert, and kind of what was
mentioned a little bit there.
Tiffany's done a phenomenal jobat not just looking into the
Virtus solution to measure thesuccess or the lack thereof, but
looking at a lot of our othermetrics that we measure through
the marketing world and justlooking at the interaction with
(41:11):
the results, the other piecesthat we have there.
So a big part of the how iscompletely outside of the Virtus
solution and measuring theimpact and solution with that.
But as far as the when on it, Ican tell you we're not going to
be as quick to kill something,especially like this, as Amazon
is.
We don't have nearly as manyoptions as they do.
(41:34):
But also, there's a lot more totake in.
So I can't give you a date, butI can tell you we won't be near
as quick as Amazon to do that.
SPEAKER_03 (41:44):
Well, understandably.
But at some point, you're goingto have to make a decision.
Absolutely.
And obviously, it's going to bedata-driven.
SPEAKER_04 (41:54):
I think, Robert, I just want to make one more
comment about that statementthat you said, which is we are
big believers in this test andlearn approach.
And that's what we're trying toempower Tiffany and team and
Bradley and team to do, which ishow do we quickly surmise if
this program is working andmaybe not kill it, but pivot it?
(42:18):
And pivot could be, do we havethe right message, the right
tactics that we're engaging, theright product?
And if I can, and as Tiffanyalluded to earlier, if we can
show every week that, hey, thiscampaign that we're running is
having good impacts with thisdemographic group or around this
(42:39):
branch, but it's not doing aswell against this branch, well,
now we can make adjustments,right?
So not everything's gonna work,we know that, but if we can give
them the feedback loopefficiently so that they can
make pivots and say, we're gonnaeither change the message here,
or maybe we need to do moreeducation at this particular
branch, or we could justrecognize that a particular
(43:01):
branch is in a much morecompetitive market, and we
accept that that's the realitiesof that branch, Just giving them
that feedback loop is a really,we think, powerful value
proposition for Virtus for newmember acquisition, as well as
for just the existing membergrowth.
So that's a big part of whatwe're trying to bring to them.
SPEAKER_03 (43:22):
Now, so how do you see the costs?
SPEAKER_04 (43:25):
So our solution is a subscription model for the
Virtus solution.
Virtus Acquire is an add-on tothat that allows them to, again,
model these target audiences.
We're, again, different thanothers in that we are, you know,
they get a...
a subscription to the solutionand they can run as many
(43:47):
campaigns as they want to.
There is some variable costaround the number of prospects
that they want to target, butit's important that where we're
different is that we are helpingyou identify the who, the what,
and the how you should engageprospects and members.
There's still a an executionaspect that that is not
(44:07):
currently something that we do.
So, you know, you have toactually do the direct mail
piece or do the digital outreachto those prospects.
And that is still something thateither the credit union does on
their own or through theirexisting marketing partnership.
So our subscription scales basedon the size of the credit union.
You know, again, we have creditunions, smallest 30 million in
(44:28):
assets on the platform andapproaching six billion in
assets.
So the solution scales forcredit unions of all sizes for
both existing member and newmember growth.
SPEAKER_03 (44:39):
And with Compose, you're trying to plug up a
possible weak point, which issome credit unions just probably
wouldn't be very good and don'thave existing vendor
relationships that would creategood campaigns.
That's correct.
UNKNOWN (44:56):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (44:57):
So that's clever on your part.
And as we said, it's notmandatory.
But you say, no, we're happywith what we
SPEAKER_06 (45:05):
do.
Mitch might shoot me for thisone because I might be pushing
Compose a little outside of whatit was intended to be.
But I would love to see that bemore than just a replacement for
a shop that doesn't have thecapability internally or the
third party relationship togenerate that.
But to also be kind of just...
(45:26):
A part of that ability to reactquicker, to have something
that's immediately generated.
And it might be something, hey,take a look at it.
We've got a great internal team.
And they're going to say, thisis crud.
This is terrible.
This is great.
And take that one piece.
It's still got us going quicker.
than if we would have had tothink that up off the fly.
(45:48):
And the more of those microcampaigns you generate, the more
you do those sort of things,it's just something that can
help with speed and not justreplacement of those functions.
SPEAKER_04 (45:59):
That's great feedback, Bradley.
And I think that is, you arespot on.
The vision of Furtis Compose isreally to just be, you know,
call it the co-pilot for yourmarketing team on this content,
not necessarily a replacement,which is, let me give you eight
or 10 versions and you candecide, I like this, I don't
like this, combine these pieces,right?
It's the, you know, swipe left,swipe right on content to get to
(46:21):
what is something we can, youknow, more efficiently get out
into the next membercommunication, the next member
engagement.
So that's great feedback and,and we, you know, we'll
definitely be taking more fromyou over the, over the coming
months and years.
SPEAKER_06 (46:35):
Did you just compare Virtus to an online dating app?
No, just, just,
SPEAKER_04 (46:46):
just the function of how do I get to good, good
answers quickly, right?
SPEAKER_03 (46:54):
Before we go think hard.
about how you can help supportthis podcast so we can do more
interviews with more thoughtfulleaders in the credit union
world.
What we're trying to figure outhere in these podcasts is what's
next for credit unions.
What can they do to really,really, really make a difference
in the financial scene?
Can't all be mega banks, can it?
(47:16):
It's my hope it won't all bemega banks.
It'll always be a place forcredit unions.
That's what we're discussinghere.
So figure out how you can help.
Get in touch with me.
This is rjmcgarvey at gmail.com.
Robert McGarvey again.
That's rjmcgarvey at gmail.com.
Get in touch.
We'll figure out a way that youcan help.
We need your support.
(47:37):
We want your support.
We thank you for your support.
The CU2.0 Podcast.
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