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Throughout our conversations with credit unions around the country in the last few weeks, we have frequently been asked questions about the best ways to communicate timely and important news to current and prospective members right now.

The WebStrategies benchmark blog post series has covered a variety of site engagement metrics. So far we have taken a dive into how long users remain on credit union websites, how many users leave credit union sites without viewing another page, how the users came to the website, and who these users are.

Many of our credit union clients tell us that they struggle with an aging membership base and want to attract younger members. This is a great goal to set, but first, does your credit union have a thorough understanding of where you stand currently with the age distribution of website traffic? As part of WebStrategies’ credit union annual benchmark report series, today’s topic dives into age distribution of website traffic. Is your website attracting visitors who are in the age demographic that your credit union needs?

Why are Some Credit Unions Behind the Curve on Marketing Automation? WebStrategies CEO Chris Leone and Director of Digital Marketing Phil Woods were recently guests on Mike Lawson’s CU Broadcast, discussing marketing automation for credit unions. Highlights from their discussion are below:

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.