Transcription:
Transforming A Credit Union

Bill Klaproth (Announcer): When you've been searching for the right insight, advice and information on financial marketing, you know where to go, the Speak Easy, the exclusive source for financial marketing insights, with a shot of human, starring Kelly Hellickson and Hillary Reed from EmpowerFi. Strategy infused data-driven marketing solutions for financial institutions nationwide. And on this episode, Kelly Hellickson welcomes Dawn Clark, Vice President of Marketing at We Florida, as they talk about transforming a credit union. Now here's your host, Kelly Hellickson.

Kelly Hellickson (Host): Hello, listeners. Today, I'm pretty excited. We have a special guest, Dawn Clark from We Florida Financial Credit Union. Welcome to the Speak Easy.

Dawn Clark (Guest): Thank you for having me. I'm super excited to be here and talk about what We Florida Financial is up to lately.

Host: Yeah, I am too. And honestly the last couple of phone conversations we've had have just been really insightful. And I love your story. So, let's start with We Florida Financial story, and then we'll get into Dawn Clark and how you partnered with We Florida.

Dawn: We Florida Financial is a low income designated credit union in Florida. We serve 46 counties. So basically all of Florida besides the panhandle, we are just over $600 million.

Host: Yeah 600 million?

Dawn: Yes, 600 million in assets. And we have a membership base of about 45,000 and that's the state of Florida.

Host: Okay. Wow. So, would you say that you're serving the underserved or in an underserved area, so to speak?

Dawn: We're both. We are definitely in a low-income designated area in south Florida. We do see that. And especially since COVID, a lot of our membership is in the hospitality and service industry. So, some of the hardest hit areas when the shutdowns for COVID hit, and what we're doing to better serve them besides I think what kinda everyone did was step up to the plate with additional loans and forgiveness on some things that were happening. We've really just been, trying to get back out into the community now that we're kind of start stepping back outside a little bit and see how we can help.

Host: Well, as I started, you know, you and I have talked before, we've actually, I think had a pretty good couple first dates, I would say, Dawn, wouldn't you? I wanted to give the audience and our listeners I think it's really cool that you come from outside the space. So tell us a little bit about your marketing background.

Dawn: I've got over 20 years of marketing background with not only television, but hospitality industry as well as casino gaming. So, it was something really different that I decided, and actually just in the nick of time to change industries and left the hospitality industry right before COVID hit, actually I think it was in February before the closures that happened in March.

Host: Wow. So that was, like, it's just like the perfect timing in terms of you segueing into the financial space.

Dawn: It was, it was like the perfect storm and, you know, with none of us knowing what was ahead of us, I had people close in the industry that were no longer working, where I was considered an essential employee. And for me, growth and development is always important. So, you know, I was like, hey, let's tackle a new industry because I felt like I had a lot to offer from coming from a background in hospitality because, banking and finance, I think becomes very transactional and it really shouldn't be because you're providing a lifestyle opportunity for your members and the community from give back opportunities. So, it's not just transactional, it's how you can help people, how you can better them to help better themselves. And it really plays into that, that lifestyle, that aspirational marketing, that I've always kind of been behind.

Host: Well you're with the right group of folks. I, myself am a credit union brat. Born and raised, literally underneath the teller line. I used to play paper dolls with my sister when my mom didn't have a babysitter. She just retired after 42 years of service with Blackhawk Community Credit Union, my Alma Mater. So, giving my moms a shout out right now. I think that for you start and lead that way with your passion and the fact that you emphasize and anchor it to the fact that it is about the people I think is fantastic.

I do think that what you bring to We Florida, is just so insightful because you've been utilizing marketing techniques and tools for years, that credit union space has not had access to. So, let's talk a little bit about your experience there in terms of, I think reputation management and artificial intelligence. You're pretty familiar with that, correct?

Dawn: Yes, absolutely. Coming from the hospitality industry is this kind of, one of the top things you're doing. You want to be the first search in TripAdvisor. You want to have five star rating in Google business review, because if you don't, you're not going to get those heads on beds and you're not going to get those travelers that are looking for the best and the greatest place to go, because this is their discretionary income. This is something that they are looking to, to do, to, to aspire to, hey, they're gonna save all year to go on this vacation to wherever it may be, and you want them to stay at your hotel. So, if you don't have a good service experience at a hotel, you're not going to get those heads in beds. I think that plays so eloquently into the financial and credit union industry, because it's the same thing. We're here to serve our members and give them that amazing customer service or member service experience. If you don't, they're going to talk about it.

Host: And, with reviews and you're right, they're going to talk about it. Not only are you going to lose that member, they're going to talk badly about you online and reviews are everything right now because let's face it folks, it's a popularity contest and Google's leading the charge. So, I love that you bring that insight into the financial space and we've worked with, Hillary and I and EmpowerFi have worked with We Florida Financial for several years now. You guys had some transitions and so tell us about a little bit about your, your new CEO.

Dawn: When I came on board, about six months later, Robert de Ramirez joined us as a President and CEO here at We Florida Financial. He came to us from Vantage West out in Arizona. He had successfully taken that credit union from a small credit union to over a billion dollars in assets and I'm going to call it short. Well, I'm sure he wouldn't call it short, but a short period of time. So, he has a lot of experience and not only with credit unions, but with employee management and talent that he's bringing to us. And it's been a great year that we've both worked together to date and I'm sure that it will be many more, but we've been really excited to be able to bring new products, services, internal opportunities to our employees to really allow them to be part of bigger picture so that we can all work together to take We Florida Financial to the next level.

Host: Yeah. That's awesome. And I have to say, so, I've worked with both CEOs at We Florida, in my past five, six years, but when I met Bob, oh my gosh, he is so wonderful. He is everything you just described, but he also has something that leadership nowadays sometimes lacks. He has compassion for the task and the matter at hand. Everything he does and touches in our experience, he just, you're right, it's all about the members. And he wants to better We Florida Financial and the community. So shout out to Bob Ramirez.

Dawn: Whoo. Whoo.

Host: Whoop, he and I talked the first time and we were just chit chatting and he said, now, where are you? I said, I'm in Madison, Wisconsin. And he goes, oh my gosh, my wife's from Wisconsin. And so that just obviously made me love him even more. That's fantastic, Bob. We are on your team, sir. So Dawn, talk to us a little bit about what you saw coming in to We Florida Financial from the hospitality arena, and then part two to that is what are some of the tech situations that you've bettered since you've been at We Florida.

Dawn: Kelly, one of the things that when I first stepped into this role here, one, it was a learning experience. I had to start learning some new lingo, you know, some, some ad hoc acronyms and some things in the industry. So for me, that was a big change, but what didn't change is how marketing works. The first thing I noticed, there's a lot of low hanging fruit. The credit union at the time was only marketing to their current membership. And while you can engage your members that way and cross sell some additional products and, or introduce them to new products that they may need down the line, it's not a way to really grow your membership like we are looking to do. It's kind of like you're talking to the same audience all the time. So, it would be like Kelly, if we had this podcast and only the same 10 people tuned in, we would be telling them pretty much some of the same stuff about the industry as we continued, but if we were to take this and share it and advertise it to people that didn't subscribe to the podcast, then that would be expanding our audience. And that's what we were looking to do at We Florida. We immediately jumped on the digital train and started doing advertising outside of the credit union. I had to quickly put into place a digital strategy so that we could talk to these other audiences and start to increase our brand awareness.

Host: That's exactly it. Brand Awareness. I have to ask you, when you walked in, did you walk into a strategic marketing plan or was there no roadmap or did you have at least a skeleton?

Dawn: I have to be honest, there wasn't really much of anything here. They had not had a marketing leader in probably about two years. It was marketing by committee. They had formed a committee within the organization of people that didn't really have a role in marketing. They just knew the credit union.

Host: Right. And that will happen at times. They were legacy employees and they care. Right? But not everybody's a marketer. Dawn and I know that and our listeners know that, but everybody's a marketer right, Dawn?

Dawn: Everybody. But it was great though. They were able to fill that gap during that time, but that's exactly what they were doing. They were just filling the gap and it needed to expand beyond that. And that's where I kind of started to do that was by picking that fruit and saying, okay, here's what we need to do. First was digital then was social.

Host: Okay. So, your MarTech stack, your marketing technology stack. Paint a picture of that for us.

Dawn: So for continuing down that same journey, it kind of started with digital marketing. So, we, we had a huge SEO program put into place. We looked at all of our keywords. Where were we placing? Where are we missing. Where could we increase our meta-tags that and our website, that was really important, just as a mainstay. Then we looked at who our audience was and digital and who we wanted to market to. Then we looked at social media audiences. We had three brands at the time. We had, We Florida Financial as the credit union branch. We have We Fly, which was its own entity for aviation lending. And then we had We Drive, which was our car lending, our auto lending arm. And they were separated in social media while they had only been up on social media about couple of months before I came in, they weren't even posting really. So we really put a strategic plan in place for that.

In fact, you know, it went very well. We were able to grow our fans. We're currently on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and we added Tick-Tock about two months ago, and that's been going really good for us, but yeah, no, it's been great. It's really, we've been looking at ways to kind of hone into that younger audience. And from that, what we've learned is that we're spreading ourselves too thin as a brand. We just don't have enough emphasis, and kind of manpower behind these three different brands to really get out across to the audience and big enough audience that we want to be, that We Florida Financial is, We Florida Financial and who we are and what we do.

So, I'm narrowing that down for 2022 and we're going to be consolidating everything just down to the main brand pages of We Florida Financial. So, really hoping that that will help increase brand awareness. Because we're just not big enough to be, you know, the Nike of the world.

Host: Well, and you know what I have to say, like somebody from outside our space, listening to our talk today, Dawn, they'd be like, okay, well, big deal. They're on Instagram. Cool. But you guys, it seriously is such a challenge to walk into a credit union and have to start really from scratch and start over and learn new team members and implement new technology and, you know, start to build a tech stack.

So kudos to you. And I think number one, first and foremost, fantastic that you are consolidating and that you're going to polish your brand focus on that, create awareness and target younger audience. So, hats off to you, lady. What do you think for 22, some of your community outreach plans will be?

Dawn: Well, I mean, very excited that we will be launching a foundation and not-for-profit 501 C3 Foundation. That's, still kind of a a pre teaser. It's coming. It's going to be launched by the end of this year. So, 2022 will be big in community give back. The, the name of it is We Give Back Foundation. So we're very excited to, we'll look at hosting about four different fundraising events that are major events throughout the year. We've also, in partnership with that looked at our Businessness Development Department, because we are not a SEG based credit union, we have revamped that area and we are now community engagement. So, we're marketing and community engagement instead of marketing and business development. Because not being SEG based, it was really difficult for us to continue to support that for our credit union.

So, what we're doing is we're going out into different communities. We're really giving back. Even just our employees have volunteered, just this year for so many different things to raise money for epilepsy, breast cancer. We went and did some beach cleanups. Just some of them may seem so little, but they actually make a big difference.

Host: Okay. So it's really important to build up your community, especially when the chips are down, so to speak and COVID was not very nice to Florida. It wasn't nice to the whole world, but talk about a little bit about your membership, in lieu of non-SEG based to being SEG based now. Do folks still really associate you with your old charter?

Dawn: It's interesting you say that Kelly, cause they do. We just did a brand survey. It was both with members and with non-members and brand awareness, you know, it's kind of low, but it was interesting that when our members were asked about We Florida Financial, they refer to us as our old charter name of City County Credit Union. And I think, that's because we were so heavily focused on our SEG based marketing, everyone thought about us.

Host: Yeah, that was the perception. Right? And in people's mind, perception is reality, which we know, is not true, but that's for another talk, another day. So, it's hard to, speaking of perceptions, so it's hard to change those perceptions. So, what have you built into your plan for 22? What's your approach to that?

Dawn: Well, there's a few things I think we're going to have to do. One, we've talked about brand awareness. It's not as high as I would think it was having gone through a name change about six years ago. I just don't think there was a lot of push behind brand awareness and marketing. So, we're really looking at one, a brand refresh, two, more awareness in the market from a partnership relationship standpoint. So we're looking at those local partners that everyone knows, and we're going to associate ourselves with them. One of the things that's been working really well for us is we partnered with iHeartRadio And an actual local DJ VJ, whatever they're called now.

Yeah. So, he's been doing some radio spots for us and just using his voice. Like he gives us that, presence and he gives us that local feel and flare.

Host: Yeah, like a familial local family type mentality. And it's an association. So, that is a great relationship for you all. I want to talk a little bit about artificial intelligence in, cause I just, again, I find your background, so cool. And so fascinating. So, I want to talk about examples, artificial intelligence, machine learning. Talk to us a little bit about that and what your hopes are for We Florida Financial, when it comes to targeting, when it comes to talking to folks and messaging to them personally.

Dawn: It's something that we need sooner rather than later. I think everyone needs to do that. Because there's only so many things and processes that a physical person can manage and understand. So,

Host: Nailed it, those machines can think, it's not that we can't think as humans, but it's that they think so quickly.

Dawn: Right. And they can anticipate while I may be able to anticipate something you're going to do, they have more kind of, you know, head brain behind the idea of going, oh, okay, well this is what they did last time. I don't remember what you did last time, but I can say you might do this if you did that.

Host: Oh yeah, behaviors. It's all based off behavioral. So behavioral science, God bless.

Dawn: iIt's funny you say that too, because one of the things I'm looking at doing is, is really marketing for more of an, a behavioral standpoint. It's not only just looking at generational marketing. Yes, we all have to kind of build the base of our marketing personas from that, but really putting those behavioral and those like emotional ties to it. What does this generation need versus this generation versus that generation. How are they going to behave? What do they like to use to behave these ways? And that's a lot of what I think is missing.

Host: And I know Bob is again amazing, but he's a big supporter, I believe of artificial intelligence and you guys just kind of did some strategic facilitation or strategic planning rather. Cause it's tis the season. Do you guys have anything AI ML built-in that initiative wise that Bob says, okay, this is where I want to be at this point in time?

Dawn: We don't at this moment. I think what we're looking at is because we have really kind of fallen behind the technology side of things. We're just looking, to be honest, to play catch up right now. Is really putting into place these technologies that will help us kind of get to a level playing ground. But we're doing that very quickly. It's amazing how quickly that the team has really come together to implement things. We're going to have texting by the end of this year.

We didn't have that platform before. We have automatic onboarding through our email marketing campaigns, before unfortunately everything was done manual. The marketing team was actually going in every day uploading a list, and connecting the dots to who was getting what email. And it was very time consuming, which again, thankful for machines and AI, because now this can all be done based on things that we've put in there saying, okay, if they become a member, we want this to happen two days out, four days out, 10 days out. And we've kind of planned out the whole year based on that, from the moment you become a member.

Host: Yeah. The moment you become a member. Right? So, it's just behavioral based nurture campaigns and it's all fully automated. That's the beauty of it, so, well good, it sounds like you guys have a lot going on.

Dawn: We do, you know, and getting back to AI, I think the moving forward, the next step is really to do, personalization and emails and knowing that what Kelly has done on our website, feeds into what I'm going to send Kelly in an email versus what Dawn's done on the website versus what information I know she's looking at and send her different email for different products based on the needs and wants.

Host: Needs and wants, and the wants really trump the needs, because what do you serve more? What you want or what you need?

Dawn: What you want, that's coming from the hospitality background, it's aspirational, it's lifestyle marketing. You don't want to have to go get a loan because you need to consolidate your debt. You want to go get a loan because you want to take that big vacation. We had so many products that it became very confusing to our members, so we consolidated a lot of our products and services to make it easier. I think that's really been a theme for 2021, was to make it easy. Easy for our members, easy for our employees.

Host: Yup. And then just kind of really get yourself out there in terms of the community.

Dawn: Absolutely. It was kind of fun. Just trying to think of these things that could be all encompassing for and finding ways to name things. I think the most exciting to date we've we just came off of our cyber weekend sale. Have you ever heard of a cyber weekend sale for a credit union?

Host: I don't think I have. Tell us about it.

Dawn: We did 50% off loan rates for four days only.

Host: Oh, my gosh. That's what how'd the CFO feel about that? Was he a little bit nervous or?

Dawn: I think everyone was nervous. In fact, when I sent the email internally to the team members, they were like, you have a mistake, you mistyped, it should be 0.50. I'm like, no, it's 50% off. They're like, you're crazy.

Host: Yeah. Well, how was it? How did it go?

Dawn: It went great. We're still getting some things are trickling in from underwriting, but it's been, it was a really great concept. It got picked up really well and we were able to grow some of our new membership cause people were like, wait, what?

Host: That's cool.

Dawn: Just some different things that, you know, we're trying, and that's what's one of the things that also that Bob is so great about. Try it, see if it works. If it doesn't, you've learned from it, it's an experience that you've learned from and move on, you can't be afraid to fail. So try it. See what happens.

Host: Nope. You're going to miss 1000% of the shots you don't take.

Dawn: Exactly.

Host: Well, Dawn our time has been amazing and we need to wrap it up a little bit now. So, I like to always leave with just something inspirational, kind of pie in the sky, if you will. So close your eyes. If you could add anything to your marketing tech stack, to your team, to any part of your organization for the betterment of marketing, for the betterment of the member, what would it be?

Dawn: Can I have two things?

Host: Oh, Dawn, just because I adore you. Yes. Oh, wait. You know what? I can give you two, I'll give you one for you. And one for Bob. How about that?

Dawn: Okay. So for me, content creation. Content creation is so important to be able to quickly video wise, show someone how to maybe log into a new platform that you have, or talk to a member about a new service, because they can read about it, but sometimes unless they see it, they don't understand it. So, really creating those experiential videos and, or shortlist schools that are just by video and for Bob, I know, I know what Bob would want, which I would also want, but this one's for Bob. Data. Data, drives your decisions. And when you don't have it, you're kind of feeling around in the dark. But when you have the numbers and the information right in front of you, you can make informed decisions and it's one of the things that I really feel that credit unions can do a better job with. In hospitality, I came in every morning. I knew how many hotel rooms are booked that night. How many restaurant meals were had. I could tell you everything that happened overnight when I was sleeping.

Host: Yeah. Like super granular behavioral details.

Dawn: Exactly and where you were going. I think in having come into this industry and been here for this short time, it's something that I think that can be improved on and that can be, we need more of.

Host: Well, I think that's exciting. And you know, at the end of the day, knowledge is power. And data equals knowledge. So, absolutely. Well, Dawn, thank you so much for your time. Listeners, if you want to talk more big data, you know where to find us empowerfi.org, and let's thank Ms. Dawn Clark from We Florida Financial for her time today. Thank you, Dawn.

Dawn: Thank you, Kelly. It's been a pleasure.

Bill Klaproth (Announcer): And thanks for joining us and to connect with Hillary or Kelly to simplify your credit union marketing needs with EmpowerFi's, full service marketing, and design support team, please visit empowerfi.org. You can also email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for more information. This is the Speak Easy financial marketing podcast. Thanks for listening.