Transcription:
Growth Through Data, Collaboration and Empowerment

Bill Klaproth (Host): When you've been searching for the right insight, advice and information on financial marketing, you know where to go. The Speakeasy. The exclusive source for financial marketing insights, with a shot of human, starring Kelly Hellickson and Hilary Reed from EmpowerFi. Strategy infused, data-driven marketing solutions for financial institutions nationwide. And on this episode, Hilary Reed talks with Jason Lindstrom, President and Chief Executive Officer at Evergreen Credit Union in Portland, Maine about growth through data, collaboration and empowerment. Now here's your host, Hilary Reed.

Hilary Reed (Host): Hey, Jason, thank you so much for being with us today.

Jason Lindstrom, CUDE (Guest): Hey, you're welcome Hilary. It's pleasure to be here.

Host: I'm so glad we were able to connect. Jason and I go way back. I feel like I say this with everybody we've been talking to lately. I've had a few other EC people on here, but we were on the Executive Committee with CUNA together, which seems like eons ago. Right?

Jason: Yeah, it has been. I just finished up as Chair last year or 2021, I guess, was the end, that would have been eight years for me on the council. And I think I knew you even before that, so it's kind of amazing.

Host: Wow. Eight years on the council. Yeah, it seems like forever ago. And I didn't realize that you had just retired from being Chair, but we've come so far. When we knew each other back then we were both marketers at various credit unions. And that's actually going to lead into some of the things we're talking about today, talking about using numbers to guide decisions and using data, which I'm really excited to talk about.

All sized credit unions using data. And then just working with teams and collaboration and all of that. So, my first question to you, Jason is having been a marketer because I thought about this so many times, having been a marketer and now transitioned to CEO. And for those listeners who don't know who Jason is and haven't read his bio; Jason, can you just give a little update as to your position now and where you are?

Jason: Sure. Yeah, I'm the President and CEO of Evergreen Credit Union up in Portland, Maine. We're a community credit union with a field of membership that's county-based. We have two Southern counties here in Maine, four branches. We have a large commercial area, as well. So, yeah, I came from the marketing side to move over to the CEO side.

Host: Wonderful. And what is your asset size and number of members?

Jason: We're a little over 26,000 members and the asset size as of last month was 456 million.

Host: Wow. Amazing. I love the stories of marketers becoming CEOs. They're my favorite stories. So thank you for that. I always like to give the listeners an idea of who we're talking to. But back to my question, having been a marketer and now transitioned into the CEO role, I'm curious to know what things that you brought with you from your marketing role that you've always wanted to see implemented and that you were excited most excited to do as CEO?

Jason: Gosh, so much. I think coming from the marketing side of the business, you understand what it takes to generate new members, generate new loans, get accounts, all of those things. And so I think having a well-versed background and I started actually in business development and then moved into marketing.

I think I really realized that we've got to move forward. We've got to be proactive with our marketing and be in as many channels as possible. And then also looking at the data and seeing, you know, what is it that our members are using? What aren't they using? What other products can we bring to market in this area?

And then also be a community partner. As a community based financial institution, we've really ramped up our community partnerships. Groups in the community that are popular, in the community. And I think a lot of that comes from having a marketing background and understanding, what's out there.

I think there's basically three different tracks to become a CEO, marketing, being one of them. But finance and operations are the other two. And I didn't come in with a finance background per se. I went to CUNA management school and been through that and I understand 5,300 reports and all that. But I think the board here in Maine brought me on board to really concentrate on the community side of the business and really try to take things to the next level.

Five years ago, when I started here, we were about 258 million in assets and now 456 in five years. So, we're nearly doubled the size and I attribute a lot of that not just to me, but bringing in a spirit of marketing and being involved in the community when we may have been stagnant previously.

Host: Yeah, it's such different leadership, not in a necessarily good or bad way. Just very different from operations and finance to marketing being CEO's, but obviously we saw this trajectory happening a long time ago when we were on the executive committee. I'd say almost all of the individuals we were with on the executive committee have moved up into a role almost similar to yours.

So, the leadership from a marketing side, is a lot different. And I've seen a lot of growth happening with those people moving into CEO roles. Jason, what does your marketing department look like right now? Because then I want to transition to talking about numbers and data, and I think it will help to get a visual of what your marketing team looks like.

Jason: So, currently we have a VP of Marketing who oversees all the marketing functions. His name is Howard and Howard has been with us, I think, 15 or so years. An interesting fact about Howard was when I first came on board, he was a consultant for the credit union. So, marketing was always kind of done on a consultancy type basis here. And I turned them around and brought him in house to become an employee and be engaged with our employee base, as well as the membership. And then from Howard, we have a marketing manager. And then a marketing specialist. So, three people, in marketing, all devoted to making sure that all of our channels and all of the media, everything that we do is all covered by the three of them.

Host: That's amazing. Thank you for that background. So, that team that you have combined with, I'm sure your executive team and others; let's talk about how you utilize data and numbers to guide your decisions as a credit union, to guide the development of products and customized products to members. I'd love to hear a little bit about what kind of data you use and how you use it to, guide your decisions.

Jason: Yeah, so we're heavily into the digital space. So we do a lot with Google, Google Ad Works, all of that along with, you know, emailing to our membership. And we really look at all of the statistics, the open rates, how we write emails, how we pay attention to what we put out in the digital space.

We're also in a lot of the local newspapers, television media. We've got 15 second commercials that run here in Maine and Southern Maine. Maine is a, is not very populated state. When you look at the entire state, I think we're at 1.3 million people. We're in Southern Maine, probably the most populated area, but still there's a lot of competition and cooperation with other credit unions, other financial institutions.

So, we really have to take a look at the data and see, what is it that our members are using. What is it that they want? We're not an indirect lender by any means, but we have our own program that we go direct to dealers and give them access to our loan portal. So, it's doing different things like that and kind of thinking outside of the box, outside the norm and looking at the numbers and what comes in and how can we do better each time?

Evergreen Credit Union for the longest time had been really based on kind of the energy efficiency and hybrid vehicles and that kind of thing. And when I came on board, we really kind of looked at it and said, do we really get members coming to us because we give a discount on hybrid vehicles?

And the answer was no. What members want is a great loan rate. It doesn't matter if it's on a hybrid car or it's on a diesel truck. And so we kind of changed the philosophy around a little bit, when I got here. And again, that was all data-driven. When we looked at it, we saw we're putting all this money and dollars behind giving a discount on hybrid vehicles, but yet we don't have a huge amount of hybrid vehicles in our loan portfolio.

So, you know, are we doing the right thing by marketing? And so I think the data really tells you where you need to go and it kind of gives you that road map for the future and what you need to do and what you need to do to develop new products. We've had a checking account that was basically not really profitable for us and not used, but it was kind of the default, everybody that came in got this checking account. And so we've got a rewards-based checking account and we don't use an outside company like Kasasa to manage it. We do it on our own. We felt like we could build it ourselves and make it work. We also have a 5% interest bearing checking account that is all driven by essentially data. We figured out that people that do more than $1,500 a month in transactions could get a higher interest rate and we can pay that higher interest rate by the interchange income.

So it's looking at all of that data all the way around and working with the CFO to make sure that we've got the right numbers and get into our system on a regular basis to make sure that we're providing everything from the marketing perspective, email perspective, the right product mix, everything. It's all data-driven.

Host: That's great. So, some questions that came up while you were talking, what the data are you using? I know you talked about working with your CFO. I mean, are they ad hoc core reports? Are they MCIF reports? Are they predictive modeling? What kind of data does that look like?

Jason: Yeah, we use a product called ARCU, which is called Advanced Reporting for Credit Unions. And then we have a data analyst that works under the CFO, to pull information. So, as we look at loan campaigns and that kind of thing, we will inquire with him to generate a custom report. What's crazy is I've always used the MCIF throughout my career and we don't have an MCIF system, but we have this system and we're still working the kinks out.

We've had it for a few years. And our data strategy's changing a little bit. We're migrating a lot of things to the cloud. We're looking at a overlay that can help us get more data out of the system by tapping into ARCU. ARCU is a SQL based server program that taps in, we're a Symitar client. So, it taps into all that.

But yeah, it's mostly ad hoc reporting and that kind of thing. We will look and pull data out of it. Let's say we want to email, just 18 to 20 five-year-olds about a new car or a first-time auto buyer program. We'll be able to pull that whole list out of any suppressions that we have as far as no marketing, if they've opted out, all of that information comes out.

And then we use a mail client, email client, MailChimp, to manage our email program. And typically our open rate, we just did a campaign for this IRS thing that's going on with the proposed IRS upgrade, I guess there'll be in there where we'd have to report on transactions over $600, that come in. And, we sent that out to our members and I had a 35% open rate, which we felt was really good. But even just our product open rate is always generally pretty high, anywhere from 20 to 30%.

Host: Well, anything with IRS on it, I think I'd open too.

Jason: Yeah.

Host: That's really interesting that you're able to use the tools that you have, and you don't use an MCIF and everything that you have, I think any sized credit union could use. And something that we talk about with our predictive modeling data a lot is that the barrier to entry, has really diminished for all sorts of data warehousing and data usage for credit unions. So what tips, if any, do you have for smaller credit unions who want to start making better use of their data? Where can they start?

Jason: Well, I think the biggest thing is to talk to your core system provider and see what they offer for tools. You know, I'm only familiar with Symitar because essentially I've worked with that all my career, and I'm not a Symitar expert, by any means. But I know that there's products that are out there that will tap into that. ARCU is one of them.

You know, Marquee. There's a number of 'em. I believe your company, Hilary offers solutions that help get that data out. The biggest thing is just to ask your core system provider, talk to Symitar. If that's your core system, and see what they have. A lot of it is what you see, what you get. You kind of ask the question, or put in the parameters in the back to generate a report saying, I want every member that's between 18 and 25 years old, without a car loan click, you get the data. Even the smaller credit unions, even if you outsource marketing, you've gotta be tapping into the data that's housed on your core so that you understand what your membership is all about.

Host: Yeah, the good old Wiziwig. What you see is what you get. The drag and drop. Everything is so easy nowadays when it comes to data and data extracts. And one tip that I would have for smaller credit unions is don't necessarily just start pulling raw data. Some of that can still be spray and prey marketing.

You know, even if you do pull everyone from 18 to 65 and well, any of those people can take an auto loan. So, let's just send all of those, you know, you still want to avoid the spray and prey if you can, and develop deeper targeting and deeper segments. And you can still do that with the standard reporting tools, but putting the strategy at the forefront is really, really important, in looking at who utilizes those products, why do they utilize those products and still avoiding that spray and prey approach. And it's all doable with the standard data tools. I fully believe that.

Jason: Yeah. And I'll just add to it also, if you're a smaller credit union and you have a limited budget, and let's say, you've thought about direct mail. You know, no one direct mails really any more, but yet all of us get a stack of junk mail every day. So, it's still out there and there are campaigns that could work. And why would you want to target your membership that already has a car loan and spend the 50 cents plus the postage plus creation of something that you have to pay probably for the flyer or whatever, you're mailing out, even a letter. Why would you want to send that to a member that already has an auto loan when you're trying to get first-time auto buyers, you know? So, getting the data and having that backup. You know, if you have 5,000 members and a thousand of them don't have car loans, that's the thousand that you want to send to. So, in just basic terms, getting that data out and creating that list of a thousand versus blanketing your entire membership who someone sees that ad and they're like, oh, I already have a car loan so it goes in the trash, you waste money that way. And so I think data, you know, on that side from the expense perspective, yeah, you may have to spend some money to get the data out of your system, but in the long run, you can be more, technical and I guess more savvy in picking out who you send the offers to.

Host: Yeah, we always say, I mean, I've been saying this for years, spend the money on getting the data upfront instead of wasting the money on the backend, sending to the wrong people. Even when it comes to sending to those thousand individuals who don't have an auto loan with you. That goes for email too. I mean, not only are you saving money on the postage on the front end, but if you decide to send a direct mail piece, but emails too, I mean, you can personalize it way more, if you know the person already doesn't have an auto loan with you, but yet if you're sending the email to your entire membership, it almost reduces your credibility; if you're sending something to somebody asking for an auto loan, knowing they already have one with you, even though to you, maybe it's just a dinky little email, it couldn't hurt, but at the same time, you're almost reducing your credibility by sending to those people. So, I would say segment all the way around if you can.

So shifting gears just a little bit, something else I wanted to talk to you about in terms of growth for the credit union; I know that you are all about collaboration, creativity, and just empowering people to do their best. And of course, empowerment is a big word around here, obviously. We pride ourselves on offering self-driven and self-fulfilling roles here at our organization. And what that means to us is if you come on as a project manager, for example, and you see that you really are liking artificial intelligence and data analyst jobs. Then we allow you to go in that direction and we say, pursue it, pursue it, and let us help you learn more about it.

And if that's what makes you happy, you will be a better employee for us. And so that's our definition of empowering employees, offering self-driven and self fulfilling roles here. Talk about what you do internally with staff and engagement and empowerment and how that assists the credit union and overall growth.

Jason: Yeah, that's a great question. I think for us, just to give some background, since I've been here, we've been ranked one of the best places to work in Maine every year. The last two years, we've been the top financial institution between 49 and 250 employees. Last year we were seventh on the list and this year we were 10th.

But we were the top financial institution above all banks and other credit unions. So, that's all kind of by my marketing spirit, right. I came in and I saw the things that were wrong. And one of the goals that I gave my board of directors was within the first 90 days, I'm going to meet with every single one of our employees and find out what's working. What's not working. What changes would they like to see and then put it all together. So, it actually took me only maybe 30, 40 days to get through everybody. And we made immediate changes. The previous CEO, was a great guy. He moved to a larger credit union here in Maine, and that's why this seat was vacant.

He was a firm believer in the 401k program being a retirement benefit only and would not allow for any type of hardship withdrawals and being in my career, I've been laid off from a credit union. I've been laid off from two credit unions and someone that needed to access a 401k at one point, because of a hardship. I figured, you know, this is what our team needs. It needs options like this. If there's ever a hardship. And so we changed out the 401k. It also took five years of employment to get to the next level of PTO. The personal time off, we're a personal time off shop. We don't have vacation and sick leave, but just PTO. And I said that's too long. So we lowered that to three years. We've kept our benefits level and steady. And we pay a large percentage of our employee benefits.

And so for me, it's always been, we treat members well because we're treated well and we have very little turnover. We try to create career paths. It's tough when you're a teller and you may be, didn't go to college and you're working and you're working 40 hours a week and you're trying to figure out what's the next step in your career. And so, more recently, we've been really trying to offer different ways to like shadow other areas and see if there's something else that you eventually want to get to, because you're a teller and you're moving along. And we actually, our marketing specialist has gone back to school. He started as a teller here. He wasn't doing well as far as coming in on time and everything.

And essentially the branch manager wanted to fire him. And we talked with him, my COO and myself, and said, you know, we really see that you have potential here and it's, that it's, it's recognizing potential. And I think we gave him a chance and our VP of compliance took him under her wing, to help run our quality control area. And he did quality control for over a year. And was on time every day. Really enjoyed it. Thought of different ways to do the quality control job faster, easier, better, more efficient. He did all. And now when the marketing specialist role was open, he applied and he got it. And he wowed the VP of marketing. He's going back to school to get a degree in marketing. He's an outstanding graphic artist, and it's just giving people a chance to thrive in the environment that they're in. And that's really what I'm about and what our organization is about. When I was in running for this job, there was an internal applicant. That internal applicant didn't get the job.

I got the job. And he's still here because I treated him really well. And I still treat him really well, and you know, he's my right hand person here at the credit union, our COO. And, there's just something to be said about always creating value amongst your employees and making sure that they're happy.

We have a partnership with the local minor league hockey team and the local minor league basketball team and baseball team and the season tickets that we get for all of the relationships that we have, we give those out to our employees and they just thrive on having these perks and these options that make it a fun place to work. And they know they're taken care of all the way around. So, that's at least my philosophy moving forward, but I think it makes all of them even better marketers, because everywhere they go, if they're in the grocery store line and they see somebody using our debit card, they're like, hey, I work there and it's just, there's a lot of recognition amongst it in the community.

They're proud and we don't really have a lot of turnover. And when we do have turnover, since I've been here, we've had three or four employees leave and end up coming back. Because, you know, they think, well, maybe the grass is greener over it turns out to be just AstroTurf for whatever. So.

Host: Well, that's, there's a reason that you won best place to work. That's amazing. I fully agree with all of that. We actually polled our staff at one point as to what does empowerment mean to you? To them, they ended up coming back, unanimously really maybe said in different words, but saying that we were given a job to do, but then most importantly, we're trusted to do that job.

It's so simple. It was the most simple answer, but it makes the most sense. Too often people are given jobs to do, and they're not trusted to actually fulfill that role. And I love that, you know, it sounds like you have some of the same philosophies in self-driven and self-fulfilling type of roles.

If you want to become a marketer, but you're a teller now, let us know and we'll help you become a marketer. So, I am in full agreement with that and we have no turnover. I mean, we're a very small company, but I can't even imagine having someone leave. It just, I couldn't even imagine it. And if, we did, we would do everything we could to retain that person. So I love those philosophies.

Jason: Yeah. And some of the other things we did too, more recently, the job market up here in Maine has been tough and I think it is everywhere. I drove by a Walgreens and I saw, now hiring at $18 an hour. And I'm thinking, gosh, we have tellers that are making $16 an hour. So, we looked at all of that and we raised our minimum wage to $18 an hour. So, I think it affected six people, but overall it's a good move for our organization because I look at the credit union world as being a stepping stone because I started as a part-time teller. So, you can get to the corner office by starting as a part-time teller. And I just don't know what glory you would have working at Walgreens as a cashier. I mean, eventually, maybe you could get to the store manager. I don't even know if they have regional managers, and not to bash Walgreens, but I don't look at that as a professional environment where we're looking to help people. And that's what we are here at the credit union. And so we raised the minimum wage to $18 an hour.

So now anybody that comes on board, is going to get a wage that is it's $12 and 15 cents, I think in the state of Maine minimum wage, you're going to get a $6 an hour, better than the minimum wage here. So, it's doing those little things like that, that make a difference and I think just will help drive us further.

Host: Well, I can say that looking in from the outside, I think that's probably attributed a lot to the growth that you've had over the last five years. So, kudos to you, Jason. Thank you so much for being on our podcast. I'm so glad we got to connect. Jason, is there anything else that you want to tell our listeners, whether they be marketers or CEOs, any other tips or anything before we wrap up?

Jason: Yeah, I think the biggest thing I've experienced in my career is just the bottom line is you have to raise your hand and you have to ask for more. Things aren't just going to fall into your lap. I've worked hard at all the jobs I've had in the credit union movement. And I've raised my hand numerous times to do more, that's beyond the job description. And I think that's the biggest piece of advice I could offer to a marketer that may be looking to get to a CEO job, to a part-time teller that may want to be in the corner office one day, is do as much as you can in this credit union industry/movement, whatever you want to call it, be involved with the marketing and business development council.

Any other CUNA councils that are out there, go through CUDE program, do everything that you possibly can to enhance your background and learn more about what the credit Union is all about. Certainly we need the tellers that have been here for 17 years and they know every member by name and that person doesn't want any more responsibility than doing that we need those folks too.

But I think if you want to get somewhere in the credit union, you have to raise your hand. You have to be willing to put in the hard work. And I think you would agree Hillary, you've seen it, how many times you had to raise your hand to get to where you are. The same thing here, you are running your own company and all the greatness that's surrounded by it didn't just fall in your lap. It was a skill set that you had to develop by learning, asking questions, taking things to the next level. And, I think there's a lot of success that you've had and you can show your clients, just as we've had success here at this organization, others by all the stuff that you have to always raise your hand and ask to do more.

If you sit back, things are gonna run over you, I think and I've always lived that way. And I think that's what people are learning here is, at my shop, at my credit union, you know, if they raise their hand and they asked to do more, they'll get more in return, so. That's it.

Host: Awesome. I love that. Pick it up and carry it over the finish line yourself if you have to.

Jason: That's right. Exactly.

Host: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Jason. It was so great talking with you.

Jason: Yeah. Good talking with you, Hilary. We'll talk to you again later.

Bill Klaproth (Host): And thank you for joining usandi to simplify your credit union marketing needs with EmpowerFi's full service marketing and design support, please visit empowerfi.org. You can also email Hillary direct at Hilary@empowerfi.org. That's Hilary with one L. This is the Speakeasy financial marketing podcast. Thanks for listening.