Michael Hostetler

As a marketing manager, I’m always concerned about the ROA on each promotion. As I’ve been thinking over the marketing strategy our credit union will pursue in 2009, I’ve thought of another measurement.

ROM – Return On Membership

In credit unions, we like to tout the strong differences between banks and credit unions and the importance of being a member instead of a customer, but what is the member receiving that makes his experience different than if he was a customer at a bank?

I think that we rely on the fact too much that we are credit unions and that should be enough to get a potential member to switch from another financial institution. Instead, we should focus on the experience and what it means to be a member of a credit union.

Increase your ROM, and your ROA will follow.

If you’re a CU professional, I highly recommend going to FORUM and Trabian’s Partnership Symposium in Fishers, IN next year. It was a great experience and very informative.

I’ve added a few of the presenters’ blogs on my sidebar.

Innovation must be continuous since the generated ideas end up being replicated by someone else. It’s not enough to innovate for a single project and then stop. Innovation has to be built into the framework of your business as if it is a fully functioning, necessary department.