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If you’ve been following the WebStrategies credit union annual benchmark report blog series, you know that we are taking a deep dive into credit union site engagement metrics from 2019 to identify pain points and trends across the industry. While site engagement metrics don’t show conversion data, these metrics allow you to identify specific opportunities for your credit union.

Credit union marketers can spend hours (or longer) looking at data and analyzing its meaning. Some of this data is meaningful, while certain metrics aren’t much more than distractions from the big picture. It takes an expert to determine what metrics matter for your organization.

Ecommerce tracking isn’t new to Google Analytics. Retailers have been using this data to track online transactions for years. But eCommerce tracking isn’t just for online retailers. Credit unions can (and should) be using Google Analytics eCommerce tracking to monitor submitted applications to better calculate ROI.

A new Google Analytics feature will allow users to link digital marketing efforts to physical location traffic. The feature, called “Store Visits”, tracks the number of people who visit an organization’s physical location after a session on the organization’s website. Store visits are counted if the user walks into the physical location within 30 days of the online session. This feature is currently in beta mode and not yet available to all Google Analytics users, but this could be an exciting insight for credit unions.

When we partnered with a 15 branch credit union in May 2018, their primary goals were to run successful digital ad campaigns and set up reliable results tracking. While their initial priorities were to accurately measure the effectiveness of their marketing, and increase auto loans, mortgages, and new checking account inquiries, in a short amount of time they've seen those goals realized as well as some impressive results they weren't necessarily expecting.

The ability to measure the results of marketing efforts continues to be a challenge for many credit unions. In fact, it was one of the biggest pain points in our 2018 credit union marketing survey. Credit unions without a system for accurately measuring marketing results struggle to prove ROI and to justify their marketing budgets, only putting them further behind other credit unions and banks who are more digitally savvy.

Credit Unions are often flooded with sales calls and emails, offering promises that sound almost too good to be true. While partnering with an external agency with expertise in the Credit Union industry can yield fantastic results, it can be very difficult to sort through it all and figure out where to turn.

2018 Credit Union Marketing Survey Results We recently conducted our second annual survey of credit unions to learn more about their marketing approach, and where they're seeing both success and challenges. Sixty-nine credit union professionals submitted their responses, including Marketing Directors, CMO's, COO's and CEO's, from credit unions across the country and ranging widely in asset size.

Many Credit Unions, lacking meaningful reporting on the ROI of past marketing campaigns, are unsure of how to set a reasonable marketing budget that will produce results. We recently hosted a webinar, Marketing Budgets for Credit Unions, to guide credit union marketers in setting overall marketing budgets, and how much to allocate to digital marketing channels.

Our exclusive 2018 Credit Union Digital Marketing Benchmark Report is ready, and it offers valuable insight into digital marketing performance among credit unions, and guidance on the important metrics every credit union should be tracking. The report also features easy to follow advice on how to set up tracking for those metrics, if it is not already in place.