Next to doing the right thing, the most importantthing is to let people know you are doing the rightthing.
-John D. Rockefeller

No matter what your goals, increasing member awareness andengagement should be a priority. Here are a few fundamental ideasto help drive your success:

Focus on awareness across multiplechannels
We have more marketing and communicationschannels available to reach out to members now than ever before,from traditional media, to electronic channels, to more recentopportunities like social networking. Different members willrespond to different marketing channels, so it is important toidentify what are the most effective channels for your members andthen deliver a consistent, coordinated message across them.Coordinated multi-channel marketing with a clear call to action canreally make a big difference in the success of your promotions.

Engage them, direct them, and interact withthem
Once you've drawn the members in, engage them.How many members come to your website, log in to home banking, andthen leave? When Atlantic Financial FCU used an interactive CU WebHunt on their website, members were rewarded for exploring aroundthe deeper pages of the site, incidentally discovering all thosegreat rates and services. The result? Just through that increasedawareness and interaction with the existing material in theirwebsite, AFFCU increased new memberships by 68% and new loandollars by 66% during the campaign. It is definitely important togive the members reasons to get to know you, clear paths torelevant information, and clear calls to action.

Enable self actualization and hands-onlearning
Rather than sell to your members, give themthe means to teach themselves. This can be a very powerful tool forboth education and marketing. Here's one example: Many creditunions offer members tens of thousands of surcharge-free ATMs andshared branches, and have literally 2 or 3 times as many ATMsavailable as the big mega banks, but the members just don'tseem to get it. You are lucky if they even know what a sharedbranch is! You can tell them you are convenient until you are bluein the face, with no real impact. On the other hand, if you put allthose locations from all those networks into one easy interactivetool inside your branded page, and the member can easily look attheir own house or office, see the cars in the parking lot, and seethe neighborhood just covered with locations, that changes theperception of your convenience at a gut level.

It's that self-actualized, hands-on, interactive approach thatlets people learn about your virtues for themselves. This sameapproach can be powerfully applied to your rates, your lendingproducts, your financial literacy program, and more.

Encourage members to be your advocates and then rewardthem
More than just educating and engaging members,you need to win them over as advocates. There is no other form ofmarketing more powerful than word of mouth. You already offer thebest rates and services around. Now you have to get that messagethrough to your members, and make them proud and excited about yourcredit union to the point that they want to crow about it to theirfriends and family members. Many marketers are confused about whatto do with Facebook, twitter and the like. The power of thesesocial networking tools is not necessarily for you to sellyourself, but for your members to spread the word on your behalf.In a certain sense, this represents the ultimate goal of reallyengaging the member - win them over, give them easy ways to tellyour story to the world, and then track and reward theiradvocacy.

By Jason Green, president of Code Green (www.codegreen.org).