Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Let’s not give consumers any good reasons to choose a bank over a credit union

If there was ever a “KEY” message that should be included among all those promoting credit unions to consumers as the best choice for managing financial services, it’s this — Text "MYCOOP" to find a surcharge-free ATM near you.

All too often, I hear consumers say that one of the primary reasons they use a bank is to have convenient access to ATMs, particularly when they travel. They believe credit unions do not offer such widespread access.

So knowing what we know, what are credit unions doing to eradicate such misconceptions?

I recently came across this post on the home Web site of Xceed Financial Credit Union (Xceed Financial Credit Union). There it was, plain as day on the home page. Text "MYCOOP" to find a surcharge-free ATM near you. So I tried it out and it worked perfectly.

What a convenient tool I thought! So why is this message not plastered all over the place? Why aren’t other credit unions promoting it as well? Certainly we are cooperatives and in this particular case what is good for one is good for all.

Then I thought that perhaps it might be that we have forgotten one of the fundamentals of effective communication and brand marketing; you have to tell them again, and again, and again . . . and, not just on one channel, using one medium, but across all media and all channels.

Let’s not give consumers any good reasons to choose a bank over a credit union.

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Text "MYCOOP" to find a surcharge-free ATM near you.

The next time you're out, about, and short on cash, you can now
use your cell phone to find any of 25,000+ surcharge-free CO-OP ATMs.

Simply send a text from your cell phone to "MYCOOP" (692667).

In the body of the text, enter your address (with city, state, and zip)
or intersection (with city and state).

In about 30 seconds, the service will reply with the nearest
CO-OP network surcharge-free ATM.

If you need to find additional ATM locations,
simply reply "MORE" to the message and another
listing of surcharge-free ATM locations will be sent to your cell phone.

The locator service is free but standard text messaging rates do apply.

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