Credit unions of all sizes often struggle to find effective ways to show members and potential members the benefits of belonging.

Wright-Patt Credit Union recently the discovered a new way to quantify the value of membership by deploying a program that provides members with a report showing how much they are saving on products and services, the credit union said.

The Member Value Statement program, recently rolled out by Plano, Texas-based compliance, software and marketing firm MARQUIS, provides a savings analysis for members that shows specific costs for each product or service at the member's current credit union compared to similar products at other financial institutions, the company said.

Wright-Patt was the first institution to send Member Value Statements to its members via direct mail and the campaign was well received by members, the credit union said.

"Within the first 90 days of the mailing, we were able to attribute approximately $50 million in new relationships as a result of this project," said Tracy Fors, vice president of marketing and business development of the $2.6 billion institution in Dayton, Ohio.

"We had used other sources of information in the past to convey the message to our membership at a collective level that we really are here to help them keep more of their hard-earned money, but this really helped bring the message home by quantifying the savings at the individual member level," Fors said.

The Member Value Statement delivers an important message to members, Fors said, summing it up as: "Here's exactly how much we saved you. And if you use your credit union more, you can save even more. Most people are not going to ignore that type of compelling information."

The credit union quickly saw results, she said.

"We had a huge increase in attendance at our annual meeting shortly after the Member Report Cards were mailed, and many of the attendees told us they were there because they had received the Member Report Card and wanted to learn about more ways they could save by using their credit union," Fors added.

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