Loans financed through commercial banks or the auto manufacturers represent refinancing opportunities for credit unions. These member-only organizations can sometimes offer more attractive terms to car buyers, making refinanced auto loans a viable source of revenue and membership growth. Innovative credit union marketing direct mail enables savvy marketing teams to make highly personalized offers with very high response rates.

The MCC connects eligible, pre-screened borrowers with credit union lenders, resulting in benefits for both parties. Car buyers save money on their auto loans and credit unions expand their auto loan portfolios.

We think of ourselves as a credit union match-maker. The MCC finds candidates for auto refinancing loans and connects them with our credit union partners.

Mark
The MCC

Using data available from the major credit bureaus, The MCC identifies individuals who would benefit the most from a loan refinance and reaches out to them via direct mail. When borrowers respond, The MCC qualifies borrowers as leads and refers them to one of the credit unions with which they work.

The Challenge: How To Combine Deep Personalization And Salesforce CRM Integration In A Scalable Workflow

Mark, a marketing professional with The MCC, understands the value of variable data.

Variable data improves targeting and, when used correctly, has a tremendous impact on response and conversion rates in marketing campaigns. Fortunately, the most important variables about individual consumer auto loans are available through credit reporting agencies. This wealth of data is good for creating highly personalized offers, but presents a challenge when working with a large number of consumers and lending institutions.

Creating large volumes of highly personalized documents through a traditional direct mail production process can be highly complex, with many steps and manual interfaces.

The MCC sends thousands of pieces of mail per month. Some of that mail is processed in batches and some is triggered by dates and actions recorded in a Salesforce CRM system. All of The MCC mailers are highly personalized, using ten to fifteen variables in a single mailpiece.

Mark has combined eye-catching graphics, interesting copy, and personalized details to create postcards and letters that are producing significant results.

The Solution: Direct Mail Automation Software That Simplifies Complex Workflows

Working from the credit bureau data, The MCC targets only those consumers who are pre-approved for an auto loan and for whom a refinance would result in significant savings. As in any marketing strategy, the more precisely one can define prospective customers, the more successful the campaigns.

The company knew how to find the right prospects, and they knew how to craft attractive offers. What they needed was a cost-effective and straightforward way to get their message in front of the consumers in a way that got their attention. Direct mail, with its superior open and conversion rates, made the most sense.

Postalytics interfaces with Salesforce and handles the extreme mailpiece personalization necessary to craft compelling offers. The system is a perfect way to turn the matches The MCC makes between lenders and vehicle owners into revenue.

At times, The MCC runs campaigns targeting the members of one of their partner credit unions. These prospects are members who have loans they made through outside lenders. Here, the credit union supplies the data necessary to populate variable fields on the mailpieces. Messages in these campaigns include exclusive member-only offers and feature credit union branding elements.

The Results: Scalable Lead Generation With Detailed Tracking And Analytics

The MCC invests heavily in automated direct mail generated by Postalytics. They like the convenience, the analytics, and the creative freedom the system provides. Their Pro level Postalytics plan includes Salesforce integration and provides for the lowest rates per mailpiece as they create and mail tens of thousands of postcards and letters per month.

“I’ve worked with direct mail before,” Mark explains, “But never anything like Postalytics. It’s very versatile and customizable, and they keep improving it!”

Tracking the results is easy. The MCC uses multiple calls to action in the creative that are all trackable at the recipient level, so they know exactly who has responded to which mailpiece.

“Our system of high quality mailpieces, tracking, and CRM integration makes us look very professional at every customer touch point,” says Mark.

Salesforce Drives Multi-channel, Triggered Nurture Campaigns

Prospects who respond to a mailpiece, but do not follow through by refinancing their loan are selected for a direct mail nurturing campaign driven by the Salesforce CRM.

The company also deploys a multi-channel communication strategy by sending emails timed to arrive just before postcards are delivered and again soon after the direct mail piece arrives. Postalytics’ reliable service allows them to time the digital messages and coordinate closely with the in-home dates for direct mail delivery.

“Postalytics makes it easy. Once we set up our templates and define all the variables, we just schedule the mailings. They almost always arrive on the target date”

Mark
The MCC

What’s Next: Expansion Into New Markets, New Envelopes

The MCC continues to expand into new markets as they work with credit unions in a widening geographic area. They are also interested in the latest Postalytics feature, customized envelopes for the letters the company sends as part of their direct mail campaigns.

The company is evaluating the value of including branding and attention-getting graphics on the outside of the envelopes. “We’re definitely interested in using the custom envelopes”, says Mark, “We’ve already been having discussions with Postalytics about implementing a solution that works for us.”

Conclusion

Once The MCC shows credit unions the benefits of their program, most sign up. It’s a “no-brainer” decision in the words of Mark. The MCC does most of the work and the credit unions benefit from a growing membership.

With the help of highly personalized direct mail powered by Postalytics, the company can demonstrate results that make it easy for them to sign up more credit union customers. The MCC expects the next few years to be very busy as they manage increasingly high volumes.