Tower Federal Credit Union was formed in 1953 and is headquartered in Laurel, MD, with branches in Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Howard and Prince George’s counties as well as at Fort Meade. Since its inception, Tower has grown to be the largest federal credit union in Maryland with $3.07 billion in assets and 184,611 members worldwide.
Challenge
Tower Federal Credit Union is the largest federal credit union in Maryland, boasting more than $3 billion in assets and over 180,000 members. The company works with over 500 Select Employee Groups (SEGs), including government agencies and local businesses. Tower is dedicated to offering its members competitively priced products such as auto loans, credit cards and mortgages.
Marc Wilensky is the Vice President of Communications and Brand Marketing, and runs a 10-person marketing team that acts as an internal full-service agency. Although having a dedicated marketing team gave Tower an advantage over other institutions, Marc and his team saw potential to make their marketing efforts more efficient and effective, grow Tower’s SEG penetration, and improve the credit union’s outreach efforts in order to become the primary financial institution for existing and prospective members.
Solution
In comparison to many larger financial institutions that are profit-focused, Tower is a nonprofit dedicated to providing affordable offers on auto loans, credit cards and mortgages, making it an appealing choice for both new members and those looking to save money by making the switch. However, Tower was lacking the tools necessary to efficiently and effectively nurture its relationship with leads and promote these offerings.
Before making the switch to marketing automation, Tower was using a basic email marketing service to run its email campaigns. Marc and his team had to manually sort through open and click through rate reports, segment customers based on their actions and upload new lists before sending follow up emails. Tower knew there was an easier way to do this and was looking for a solution that could automate their marketing efforts.
The company considered various marketing automation platforms, including IBM Watson Marketing. “We knew automation was out there and we were looking for somebody that could automate the process after that initial email went out. And from talking to various firms, we thought Act-On had what we were looking for within our budgets,” said Marc.
Since becoming an Act-On customer, Tower has used the platform to automate its email campaigns and improve segmentation efforts. Marc and his team have also been using data and analytics tools to better understand member behavior and run reports.
Results
Making the switch to Act-On opened up a world of possibilities Tower Federal Credit Union never thought possible. Act-On improved Tower’s ability to understand and score customers based on their behavior on the website, two things have helped set it apart from the competition. “I’ll tell you, being able to track customer activity and the sales funnel scoring system are two things that most vendors utilized by people in our industry don’t have,” said Marc.
Tower has also taken full advantage of Act-On’s segmentation and automated trigger campaign capabilities with huge results. In particular, Tower has seen a rise in open and conversion rates for emails aimed at leads for loan products. “We’ve seen a two-three times increase in our open rates, especially to the follow-up emails, and we’ve seen a lot more customers starting loan applications.”
Marc believes this increase in open rates has a lot to do with his team’s ability to personalize the customer journey through marketing automation. “I love Act-On’s whole right person at the right time with the right message kind of approach. Through the analytics, and knowing where they are in the cycle and what they’re interested in, we’re able to deliver customers the message that we think is most relevant to them.”
But the ability to improve conversions is not the only benefit Tower has seen from making the switch to marketing automation. “Automation really frees up your time. You don’t have to manually go back into the program to do that follow-up email a week later, which is what a lot of people are currently doing,” Marc says.
Furthermore, Marc believes Act-On truly gives marketers the most value for their spend. “I think Act-On, from a pricing and a functionality standpoint, is an easy platform for people to switch over to. And I’ve had that conversation with other credit union marketers, not just in our market.”
