Do you have any “friends” that seem to come around when they need something? Their social call for coffee is actually a request for advice or a job recommendation. Or maybe you own a truck and they’re moving next weekend…

What if your credit union is acting like that friend toward your members?

Unfortunately, that might be the case. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, you can be a real, supportive, understanding friend. It starts with Nook and a deep member focus.

Where the “Typical” Member Relationship Fails

Credit unions have long hung their hat on member service and member relationships. This relationship-based model allowed them to build trust, loyalty, and lifelong engagement. Yet as fewer people bank in branches and credit unions continue to expand past their original core member groups, the definitions of “personalization” and “relationship” have changed, and credit unions have been slow to adjust.

This is a failure, and relationships, loyalty, and profitability are the casualties.

Case in point is the relationship I have with my credit union: I get two kinds of communications from them. First there are the usual statement and notice fodder. The second kind are product offers.

It’s all car loans, RV loans, CDs, credit cards, and even boat loans. Offers aren’t bad—I’ve taken my CU up on a CD offer that I likely would have missed without the notification—but often, the timing is off

The thing is, it’s easy to ignore these offers. Most emails go unread. Push notifications are similarly easy to clear. When people see communication from their credit union, and they know it’s a marketing offer, they skip it.

It’s a transactional relationship. The credit union only comes around when they need something and the member feels like the friend with the pickup truck.

How Credit Unions Can Build Better Relationships

There are many ways to build better relationships with members. Always, a good relationship rests on your ability to support your members’ financial goals. That’s part of your core promise, and if you can’t deliver on it, you’re cooked.

But that’s the most basic level of relationship. It’s almost entirely transactional.

And a transactional relationship is not where you want to compete. It’s barely a relationship at all and it makes you susceptible to churn. In a transactional relationship, only rates, terms, and convenience matter, and fintech competitors will likely have you beat with negative profit, loss-leading strategies.

Your relationship must be better. And to improve, the relationship must extend beyond its purely financial, transactional nature.

That means connecting on a personal level. It could be a cookout with free food and drinks. It could be a block party. Heck, any community engagement counts here.

However, those types of events take a lot of planning and resources, and they’ll miss a lot of members who can’t attend. There are easier ways to connect with members on a personal level, consistently, and at scale, especially with recent enhancement in digital.

Member Engagement Around Niche Interests

Nook helps credit unions build a non-banking relationship with their members. And how it works is extremely simple.

First, Nook delivers lifestyle-focused articles, videos and information to target member groups. It’s all about non-banking things that interest them:

• Travel hacks
• Health and wellness tips
• Home improvement and decorating
• Holiday foods and recipes
• Etc.

Nook lets credit unions become the source of these niche experiences. It’s an organic, non-salesy, non-markety way to stay engaged with members digitally. And just by delivering targeted experiences, credit unions can deepen relationships and “sell without selling.”

After all, even though the articles aren’t thinly-veiled ads for credit union products, there’s plenty of space on the screen for the credit union’s brand and several strategically placed ads/calls-to-action.

The goal is to develop a relationship that doesn’t hinge entirely on the fact that one of you has a pickup sells products.

But… does it work?

Emphatically, yes. So far, at least. The pilot for Nook’s age 50+ member segment increased email click-through rates, dramatically improved time-on-page, and resulted in a measurable uptick in product adoption among targeted members, consistently week-over-week for the last year since they’ve gone live.

Their early success has even resulted them receiving investment from a credit union client, turning them into a Credit Union Service Organization (CUSO). That same client liked what they saw so much with the 50+ niche experience that they urged Nook, and are now helping build niche #2, the 30-49 age group.

Seriously. You can learn more about Nook and read the case study here: