Helping a Great Client to Succeed.
Hi. We’re CSBimpact, a client-centric marketing, and media agency based in San Diego, California. If you clicked on the link that led you here, it’s because our client, Mission Fed Credit Union, helped us to identify your credit union as one they hold in high esteem and consider as outside of their marketing area. We produced this landing page to pique your interest in considering us as a potential partner for your advertising and marketing needs.
This is really a story about the shared success we’ve had working with Mission Fed, the largest credit union exclusively serving San Diego, over the last two and a half years in a hypercompetitive market. We have significantly grown their member base and achieved their business objectives during what has been a particularly challenging economic environment.
As we share our story, we thought it best to start off by letting you hear firsthand from Sanya DeVore, Mission Fed’s VP and Director of Marketing, in her own words about our partnership.
Usually, a happy ending is at the end of the story. In this case, the results of our efforts for Mission Fed are so compelling, we decided to move them to the top of the story rather than wait to share them at the end. Here’s a sampling of the successes we’re helping them to attain.
New members added in 2020 despite COVID-19 impact on banking.
Mission Fed 2020 share of new member growth among the three top San Diego credit unions.
Growth of Mission Fed assets
in one year.
Cost per acquisition for new
members in 2020 vs. CU
industry average of $400.
Growth of online loan
applications YOY versus 2020.
Increase in new members
H1 2021 vs. H2 2020.
Value of negotiated no-charge
broadcast message weight
since 2019.
How We Got There.
Mission Fed hired us as agency of record in early 2019 after an extensive agency review process they instituted despite enjoying strong business success the prior year. As their new agency, we brought along two valuable strategic partners: Simpler & Simpler, a creative agency we have been partnering with for eighteen years; and Power Digital Marketing, a digital agency that complemented our own internal digital media capabilities with their paid search and social media focus.
Our first order of business was an extensive audit of Mission Fed’s marketing condition. Using our proprietary Discovery & Roadmap process, and working with Sanya and her marketing team, we developed a detailed understanding of their business strategies, strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities.
Discovery
Brand Audit
Marketing Audit
Stakeholder Audit
Media Audit
SWOT Analysis
Market Research
Roadmap
Marketing Pillars
Media Modeling
Persona Mapping
Creative Brief
Partner Alignment
Rollout
Media Plan
Budget and Calendar
Asset Management
Measurement
Implementation
Refinement
Analytics
Optimization
Goal Completion
Reporting
Two of our more significant findings emerged to help us shape marketing and media recommendations:
- First, their prior advertising in no way reflected the organization’s deep commitment to their community. To rectify this, we proposed a rebranding that not only underscored Mission Fed’s comprehensive array of financial service products, but also more authentically reflected the core values of this unique organization with respect to community involvement and giving; noble values and differentiators that we felt would resonate deeply with prospective new members.
- Prior to the agency review, Mission Fed had been partnering with both a media agency and a digital agency for several years, yet there was virtually no integration between the agencies. Instead, each was operating in a silo of its own. By bringing in Power Digital as a strategic partner and coherently managing performance of media efforts across all platforms, we jettisoned the siloed approach of the past with an integrated omni-channel strategy to enhance cross-platform media performance to drive results. This happened in parallel with Sanya evolving her team and department with the same goal of holistic marketing.
Rebranding Mission Fed.
Working with our partner creative agency, Simpler & Simpler, we launched the new Mission Fed brand in August 2019 with a brand promise that reflected a deep commitment to serving the hyperlocal San Diego community. Here are two of the brand TV spots that have been used to help reposition Mission Fed in the marketplace and give prospective members their reasons to believe in trusting Mission Fed with their financial needs.
We complement our TV presence with periodic market-wide use of out of home messaging to further solidify our brand promise and build share of voice and share of mind.
For the past two years, we’ve been using television, cable, OTT and out-of-home as a brand umbrella, layered over our persuasive product and service line advertising efforts, all working in concert to grow new members and increase product and service usage.
Driving Member Acquisition and Service Line Growth.
To move the needle on member and service line growth, we are in the market every month with a media strategy employing radio and multi-platform digital advertising focused on supporting specific products like auto loans, credit cards and personal loans. The steady drumbeat of these media channels has proven to move our prospects from brand awareness to action, even during challenging economic times.
As a foundation for both media and messaging strategy, we invested the time and effort to create detailed target audience personas for every Mission Fed banking product. This has helped us to create strategically relevant messaging, imagery, and media placements that our target audiences identify with.
Here is a recent example of the multi-platform approach we take for product support, in this case promoting Mission Fed’s low-rate auto loans. The market-wide but highly targeted radio campaign provides broad message reach against our target audiences, while persona-focused programmatic display, search, and paid social media further moves prospects to members. As a result of this campaign, dollar volume for direct auto loans in Q1 2021 was 159% of the budgeted goal.
A Commitment to Community.
Woven into our branding and product-focused advertising efforts are important moments that deliver on the Mission Fed’s promise to support the San Diego community in meaningful ways. Here’s just one example – a matching gift call to action to raise needed funds for the San Diego Food Bank during the height of the 2020 pandemic, when so many San Diegans were struggling with food insufficiency.
This effort raised more than $420,000 for the Food Bank, providing more than two million meals to San Diego families in need. It was the most successful giving campaign that Mission Fed has experienced in its entire history and is a testament to the power of a well-positioned brand.
Measuring Success to Optimize Results.
Our agency also plays a lead role in tracking, optimizing, and reporting on digital advertising performance. We manage key digital advertising platforms that include programmatic display and video, streaming audio, and OTT. And with Power Digital focusing on search and social media performance, we lead the effort to optimize and report results across all platforms in a unified view of advertising performance.
We’ve been a Google Marketing Platform Agency since 2016, and with more than 20 years’ experience with planning and managing digital advertising, we’ve remained current and at the center of digital advertising platform growth.
Our Integrated Data Studio Report is a proprietary reporting tool that helps us capture, in real time, consumer response and goal completion across all digital platforms, providing Mission Fed with a holistic view of campaign performance at every stage of the consumer journey funnel, regardless of who is managing the various platforms.
At the same time, we’re continually tracking and reporting on the correlation over time between product advertising efforts and resulting consumer response to ensure that we spend each advertising dollar as efficiently as possible.
Tracking these variables over the past two years has shown the positive correlation between product advertising and monthly growth of both new members and new applications over time.
Thanks for Your Time!
We hope our brief story gives you a compelling view into the caliber of our strategic thinking and work for Mission Fed over the past few years. Thanks for following along.
We’ve been talking quite a bit about ourselves here. So, we’ll end our little story with a final word from Neville Billimoria, Mission Fed’s Senior Vice President of Membership and Chief Advocacy Officer. He’s the guy who hired us way back at the beginning of our story.
We’re obviously proud of what we’ve helped the Mission Fed marketing team to achieve since becoming their partner in 2019. A final highlight. Mission Fed recently entered our rebranding effort in the 2020 Marketing Association of Credit Unions national marketing awards. It took top honors as the best rebranding campaign in the U.S. While we don’t seek out awards, we are always grateful for the third-party credibility.
We hope we've piqued your interest. We’d welcome the opportunity to learn about your marketing challenges and share how we might help you meet them. We’re an easy phone call or email away:
Bob Bolinger, Partner: bobb@csbimpact.com; cell: 1.858.337.0704
Bob Cerasoli, Managing Partner: bobc@csbimpact.com; cell: 1.858.829.6255
CSBimpact Marketing & Media Management
6640 Lusk Boulevard, Suite A102
San Diego, CA 92121
www.csbimpact.com