SAN FRANCISCO – FreddaMcDonald, EVP and chief creative officer at PSCU, encouragedevery credit union to embrace mobile technology as a tool to reach a larger audience.

To demonstrate the demand for mobile technology, McDonald saidduring her America's Credit Union Conference best practices sessionthat the amount of iPhones sold in the U.S. has exceeded the numberof births.

“Access means everything,” she said.

McDonald said PSCU launched a direct digital messaginginitiative called “Make Your Money Matter,” which discovered thesurprising statistic that yoga enthusiasts are eight times morelikely to join a credit union.

She told the audience that analytics from online initiatives arecurrently more useful to credit unions than traditional advertisingthrough radio and television.

Amber MacArthur, president of thedigital agency KONNEKTNOW, delivered an address in a separatesession about the importance of marketing online through socialmedia and mobile websites.

“I'm standing here today telling you, yes, you should useTwitter, you should use Facebook, you should use LinkedIn and allof these different tools, but the reality is you don't own theexperience there,” MacArthur said.

“Overnight many of these companies are changing the way thatthey do things. So yes, definitely take advantage of them, but atthe end of the day, you should be driving everybody who is going tothose social media sites to your own website, because that's theonly piece of real estate on the web that you own,” she added.

Since consumers are increasingly checking websites on theirmobile phones or tablets, MacArthur said credit unions shouldbrainstorm ways to improve their official website's appearance.

“I encourage many of you – if you haven't already – to use yourphones at some point and take a look at your own website to see howit displays on mobile,” she said. “See some of the challenges andthe experiences.”

She suggested that credit unions strip down all of the “prettystuff” on their sites, and highlight key facts and informationinstead.