When Debbie Matz addressed the Mountain Regional Credit Union Roundtable this week, she told the nearly 100 CU officials gathered there, “When you adopt best practices and share them with others, you can overcome all of the concerns for the future of credit unions. You can reach new members of all ages and all ethnic groups, help small credit unions grow and thrive, uphold credit unions’ pro-consumer reputation, and continue to earn your tax exemption by serving people of modest means.”

The overall theme was increasing Membership Growth should be the number one priority for CUs – and it ties in directly with what we’re trying to do with Open Source CU.

We’re all about using online and offline channels, as Matz emphasized, to share best practices. And while we’re at it, we’re going to discuss the pros and cons of blogging – both here and with your own members.

That being said, you’re never going to hear us preach that blogging with your members is the automatic answer to any and every problem. In fact, blogging just isn’t for everybody.

Blogging is, however, one online channel (and possibly the only one) that’s better suited for credit unions than for banks. You can read Matt Dean’s “Starting the Conversation” post for more about that.

Take a look at this recent study that shows that CU execs, as a whole, view “Acquire New Members” as their third most important goal in online marketing, far behind “Sell Products or Services” and “Retain Existing Members”. Fewer than 10% listed it as their top priority.

Why do those priorities seem out of whack to us? Selling products isn’t bad in itself, but sales-speak in marketing has become a huge turn-off to consumers.

Perhaps that’s why the average CU member now is around 45 years old, well outside the prime lending age. That’s a big motivation for credit unions to communicate more effectively with “online” members, who, according to the study, “are more desirable members. They are more profitable, have higher loan and deposit balances, use more products, respond better to marketing and cost less to serve. In terms of demographics, they have more assets, higher income, better credit scores and are slightly younger than offline members.”

And they’re ready to join the conversation.