Every credit union marketer loves to have as much high-quality lead tracking in place as possible. Understanding the pages and products that are driving the most new leads is essential to keeping up with your credit union’s digital marketing performance.

But, what if you could also track the actual ROI that your marketing efforts generate?

While lead tracking offers you great insights into the channels that are producing the most traffic and new applications for your credit union, ROI tracking will allow you to dial in on which marketing channels are resulting in funded loans and actual revenue.

Lead Tracking and Marketing ROI for Credit Unions

What is lead tracking?

In short, lead tracking is the act of collecting contact information for prospective members, monitoring user behavior on your website and keeping detailed records of the interactions that users have. Lead tracking is sometimes as simple as keeping a spreadsheet of contacts who completed a contact form or called in to inquire about membership.

Credit unions can step up their lead tracking by using a sophisticated CRM to identify when these users take specific actions on their site, and the marketing channel that they originated from.

Lead tracking allows you to keep track of prospects that have engaged with your credit union and track follow-up with those prospective members, as well have an understanding of which marketing channels are generating the most overall engagement and leads, and it is a common practice among credit unions and many other industries.

What is ROI tracking?

ROI Tracking is similar to lead tracking in the sense that you are still tracking user behavior; however, it gives you a much more holistic and accurate view of which marketing channels are performing best for your credit union.

While tracking the behavior of users on your website is important, that tracking often ends once a user gets redirected to your LOS. ROI tracking can take your reporting to the next level by showing the full lifecycle of your leads from the moment they click to apply for a loan to the point where that loan gets funded.

By implementing ROI tracking, you can pinpoint the exact origin of all of the funded loans that are applied for through your website and better understand the amount of revenue that each marketing channel and advertising campaign is producing for your credit union.

How to Calculate your Credit Union Marketing ROI

Start with the value of a completed application

The first step that you should take to calculate the ROI of your marketing efforts is to identify how much, on average, a completed application is worth for your credit union. Even if you are unable to track much further, this will allow you to calculate a rough ROI based on the total amount of applications that you receive.

Robust end-to-end tracking can even allow you to track specific funded loan amounts back to their originating source, giving you the most accurate picture of the true return on your marketing investment for each channel. But even if you're only using an average loan amount, you're farther along than many credit unions that still remain in the dark about the results of their marketing spending. 

Setup end-to-end tracking

This is where a large number of credit unions fall short. With lead tracking, the information that you can collect stops once a user is redirected to your LOS to complete an application. Those insights can go much deeper when you utilize end-to-end tracking.

By integrating Google Analytics with your LOS, you can connect the user data from your product pages to your application submission activity. With this information, you can have each submitted application tied to a specific user ID on your website and identify the channel that generated that application along with other valuable insights.

ROI tracking for your LOS platform

Fiserv

If Fiserv is your primary LOS platform, then you have access to a wealth of information when you implement ROI tracking compared to some other LOS platforms.

By installing Google Tag Manager and what could essentially be considered eCommerce tracking, you can identify the type of loan and loan amount that individual users to your website have applied for. This will provide you tremendous insights into which marketing channels are driving the most applications for each of the products that you offer. 

CU Direct

Although CU Direct does not allow Google Tag Manager installation, you can still get great insights into your marketing efforts by installing a customized Google Analytics code which will implement cross-domain tracking between your website and LOS platforms.

This method may not give you the level of understanding that you could receive through Fiserv, but it is still extremely valuable in identifying the amount of funded loans that are generated through each of your marketing channels.

MeridianLink

MeridianLink has proven to be one of the most difficult LOS systems to implement end-to-end tracking with, especially the most recent version. But it can be done.

Recently we discovered a unique way to integrate MeridianLink with Google Analytics–something that we were unable to do in the past, and that led to a much better understanding of ROI and the customer journey.

You can learn more about this breakthrough in our article: Tracking Credit Union Marketing ROI With MeridianLink and Google Analytics.

Calculating ROI without end-to-end tracking

If you can’t set up end-to-end tracking, you can still calculate ROI for your website visitors, but it’ll take a little more work on your end.

You’ll start with the value of a new member or application again, but this time you’ll need to keep up with the number of applications that get completed & approved from your website. Over several months, you’ll have a better idea of the percentage of online leads that materialize into members/customers. You’ll then use that percentage times the number of application button clicks (lead tracking) to determine a rough ROI.

However, this is much more unreliable than end-to-end tracking, as you are only generating an estimated ROI that may not be entirely accurate.

Take your Lead Tracking to the Next Level

Results tracking is a critical component for understanding how your credit union’s website and digital marketing channels are performing. Today’s technology allows you to go deeper for better digital marketing performance monitoring through end-to-end tracking.

By taking the additional step of integrating tracking with your LOS, you can accomplish much more advanced tracking and have a precise representation of your credit union’s marketing ROI.

Interested in diving deeper into how you can collect even more insights into the visitors to your credit union’s website? Learn how you can Capture Credit Union Leads With Step Zero Forms.