What is a micro-interaction, and why should credit unions care? Fintech growth and business transformation strategist Samantha Paxson joins us on The Remarkable Credit Union podcast to discuss how credit unions could benefit from focusing less on big loans and focusing more on daily financial activities.
We talk about how frequently used financial tools and services, like debit cards and P2P payments, not only help keep your credit union top of mind for members but also help keep member financial wellness front and center for your credit union. We also unpack this month’s BIG question:
When it comes to sustainable growth, what underutilized, high-impact strategies should credit unions be pursuing in 2025?
Katie Stone:
Welcome to another episode of the Remarkable Credit Union Podcast. We created our podcast to help credit union leaders think outside of the box about marketing, technology, and community impact. The Remarkable Credit Union is brought to you by PixelSpoke, a digital marketing agency that works with credit unions to create user-friendly, high-converting, award-winning websites.
As a B Corp and an employee-owned cooperative, we believe that business can and should be a force for good. Each episode, we bring on expert guests from the credit union and broader cooperative movement for conversations about the intersection of marketing and social impact. Our goal is to challenge your preconceptions about business as usual and provide you with actionable takeaways that you can use to grow your membership, improve the financial health of your cooperative, and better serve your community. I’m Katie Stone, CEO and co-owner at PixelSpoke.
Kerala Taylor:
And I’m Kerala Taylor, also a co-owner and the director of Marketing and Impact here at PixelSpoke. Today, we’ll be delving into our big question, which is, when it comes to sustainable growth, what underutilized high-impact strategies should credit unions be pursuing in 2025? Hard to believe that 2025 is almost upon us already. We’re so excited to welcome today Samantha Paxson.
She is a growth and business transformation strategist in fintech with over 25 years of experience. And among many things, she co-founded Co-op THINK 16 years ago, which is an innovation content platform empowering the evolution of mission-driven financial services, and she’s currently the CEO of Power & Light Collaborative, which helps create synergies between tech companies and credit unions.
She’s also serving as an advisor in residence at EY. She served on multiple private and not-for-profit boards and advisories and lives in Manhattan Beach, California, where she likes to spend time at the beach, hang out with her son, and exercise. Samantha, thanks so much for joining us.
Samantha Paxson:
It’s such a pleasure. Love to talk about credit union growth strategies. So happy to be here.
Kerala Taylor:
We’re excited to have you. I saw you speak at the recent MAC Conference in Hollywood, California, and you’ve done some really interesting research about how credit unions can leverage the fintech advantage by focusing more on those daily financial interactions called the micro-interactions. And I’m curious. Can you just start by providing some examples of what you mean when you say micro-interaction and why these types of interactions are so impactful?
Samantha Paxson:
Well, it’s interesting. As leaders, we tend to kind of lean on what has worked well for us in the past, right. We have our set of assumptions that’s worked, and we lean into those. And what I’ve noticed is that those are very product-centric, and the things that have helped credit unions grow and be successful, they get deposits and they make loans that are really great rate for members, and that shows a lot of their value proposition. Well, so much has changed in the world in the last 10 to 15 years.
It’s insane how much change has happened. The average consumer has 40 different financial relationships, and they’re just trying to get their daily financial life done, and they want to partner with an organization that they can trust to help them manage their financial life. So things like paying for things, things like money movement, things like in contactless payments, things that checking your account balances, knowing how your short-term financial performance is doing.
We’re noticing that neo-banks like Chime essentially has double the members of Navy Federal Credit Union. It’s only 10 years old. And when you look at what they’re promoting on their website, it’s get your paycheck two days early, help you get short-term loans to help you with access to liquidity and capital. They focus on payment vehicles. So it’s what the average human needs to do in their daily financial life that will help them break through and get through the noise of their day. And Chime is doing that very well, is growing membership, is growing deposits, and is creating active members.
This is something that credit unions have the ability to do, but when we look at it from a product-line-by-product-line standpoint, it might not look really profitable. When we look at it from a member engagement and interaction standpoint, then you’ve got opportunity. And what are the use cases that are going to create engagement because you’re essentially fighting for deposits moment by moment. You’re trying to win. PFI is primary financial interaction. It’s not necessarily primary financial institution, and that is a new insight and a new learning for credit unions to take advantage of.
Katie Stone:
I’m sorry, what was it? 40?
Samantha Paxson:
40 different financial relationships.
Kerala Taylor:
I mean, I thought I had a lot. I don’t think I have quite that many.
Samantha Paxson:
Well, when you think about it’s your Venmo account. You have your insurance provider. You have your different types of credit cards. Everybody’s credit card usage has gone bananas the last few years because people need… have had pressure on inflation. And so they use the access to credit home equity lines, your financial health account, stored value cards, Starbucks. You really think about it, you might have more than 40 yourself.
Kerala Taylor:
I’m going to have to do an audit after this episode.
Katie Stone:
I’d be fascinated to do a tally and, yeah, an accounting of mine.
Samantha Paxson:
The challenge for the consumer is that they don’t understand their overall financial position. It’s disaggregated. And so they need help understanding their short-term financial performance in addition to gaining value on their long-term financial performance. So things that you check on a somewhat regular basis, your insurance, your wealth, that average consumer needs access to wealth.
Where is that in your credit union website? It’s buried 10 pages down and managed by LPL, which great organization and might only be available to your high-net-worth members. So how are we creating other daily engagement solutions that drive to the big ticket product like loans, and how do we demonstrate what our value is as credit unions that we have the capability to meet your daily needs and your long-term game-of-life needs? So it’s a different paradigm than what… who we were as an industry 10 years ago, even five years ago.
It’s all changing, and the consumer is slowly being disintermediated from their financial institution and/or it’s they’re dormant inside their financial institution. And it’s kind of a hard truth, but we’ll say this particular credit union might have 2.5 million members like even the largest credit unions, but how active are they? How really utilizing the credit union and they need help, the member needs help. How can credit unions really show up and be the hero?
Kerala Taylor:
I’m just thinking about it how I have a credit union as my primary financial institution, and I also have my mortgage through them. But when I’m thinking about those daily interactions, I use a credit card that’s not through my credit union, and I use it as much as possible to get miles and try to pay off that statement balance.
So what’s way more top of mind for me is my credit card it’s actually the debit card I just got for my daughter because she’s always asking me to put money on it and even Credit Karma credit monitoring services just because they’re emailing me all the time and I’m trying to stay on top of my score. So none of that has anything to do with my credit union, even though I consider it my PFI.
Samantha Paxson:
And it’s curious why. It’s some of it. I serve on the board of a credit union, and we look at it’s how we’re measured. We want to show product line by product line positive performance. And because there’s no CEO out there that wants to go to their board and say, “This particular product line isn’t performing as it should.”
We just need to make sure that we’re demonstrating that we have the capability to deliver what members need, which might not be paying off the same value internally economically. So if we look at our income statements and how is the interchange our non-interest income compared to our interest income, and really what’s the relationship between those things because if you… you have your loan there but you’re doing everything else elsewhere? Why?
Kerala Taylor:
Mm-hmm.
Samantha Paxson:
And actually, for credit unions, it’s an expensive member acquisition cost. It’s, on average, $600 per consumer to acquire a lending member. It’s a much lower cost of acquisition to win them on microtransactions. If you could get them using… If your credit union could get you using their debit card for all your daily, have it baked in Amazon, have it on your Netflix subscription, have it on your Apple Pay, have it in… It then pays the Starbucks app, all of those things, they’re starting to get usage.
The credit unions starting to get usage, they’re starting to get interchange and then you start to trust that they have the capability that you need in order to get your daily life done because I have those same needs. I travel a lot, use my card. I use my Venmo app to pay my Uber driver or my driver from the airport, pay my babysitter for my son.
It’s just an opportunity to be out in front of the consumer and to perhaps help them with their daily behaviors. And how do you help them? How do you demonstrate your value as being in support of a member’s financial goals in addition to offering them a great deal on a loan?
Katie Stone:
Well, as a website design and development agency that works with credit unions, we’ve had a lot of clients under pressure to promote their rates prominently on their homepage and really elsewhere throughout the site as well. I’m particularly interested in your perspective as a board member on a credit union.
I know that you argue that competitive rates, of course, they matter, but less than we think. And you’ve already touched on this in this episode, but I’d just love to hear more about why and how we should reconsider rate-driven marketing efforts. What’s the advice that you would give your credit union?
Samantha Paxson:
Well, actually, it’s interesting, and I’ve given them this advice and maybe even laugh and said, “We’ve been so slow to take it because it’s just outside of what we’ve always done.” And I always like to say, “What got you here ar not… isn’t necessarily going to get you there.” So in the research that we’ve done with EY, and they’ve been tremendous partners over the years of mine, and I’m very proud to be working with them as an advisor in residence, they do a lot of research called NextWave Research, and they’ve looked at how do you gain deposits. How do you gain deposits and improve your stance from a liquidity standpoint?
And it’s interesting, they looked at this idea, a rate-driven value proposition, and how that aligns with a consumer’s propensity to choose a credit union. They compared that with convenience-based features like I was just talking about, convenience-based use cases, and they kind of plotted this on an XY axis. Even if the credit union offered the absolute worst rates in town, if you just start with rates, the market would have a 2% propensity to choose the credit union. And you go all the way up. They kept testing the rate level to the most competitive rates, things that we haven’t seen in our market in the last two years.
But the most competitive rates, it gets to about a 13% propensity to choose a credit union. However, when you go to convenience-based features, you get to 13% with the worst convenience-based feature immediately. So if you promote payments products and money movement products, insurance, things that are used more regularly, the consumer has a greater propensity to buy those use cases and to utilize the credit union more. If you are the most convenient and you add in all of those features, it goes up to 66% propensity. So if you are the most convenient. Now we know that’s an expensive proposition.
Like many credit unions have to pull their money and they work with CUSOs or they work with fintechs. They don’t always have the capacity to build all of these technologies themselves. So they partner and they help to adjust these use cases in. But the sweet spot is just finding that balance between, instead of having our value be, let’s go all in on rate, it’s a very expensive customer acquisition cost, member acquisition cost. They typically bounce within a short period of time and don’t fully utilize the credit union. So they’re dormant members. They’ll have you for that one product, and they don’t use you for much else.
This is the opportunity for credit unions to demonstrate their value proposition in a new way and also have a much lower cost of acquisition and a greater propensity of the consumer to buy. And one last point on this, and I said this in my speakership when I got to meet the fine folks at PixelStoke, one of the things that I shared is I did just my own little fine Google search on looking at credit union websites. The majority of credit union websites demonstrate a rate-driven value proposition. The majority of credit unions lead with rates as their way of paying off being a mission-driven organization.
I went to Chime that has grown, like I said, double the size of Navy Federal Credit Union in a 10-year period, leading with microtransactions with daily engagement solutions that has taken them to have 24 million members, and that’s in a 10-year period, and they’re doing really well. What can we borrow from this case study that credit unions can authentically do better? And I think that it’s really demonstrating how you help members with their overall financial performance.
Kerala Taylor:
Yeah, my wheels are turning just thinking about part of it. I think a lot of credit unions actually offer increasingly robust convenience features, but we don’t necessarily know about them. Actually a short anecdote. I was trying to transfer some money to my stepson and asked if he had Venmo, and he said, “No, I don’t, but I have Zelle.” And I was like, “Hmm, I might have Zelle. I don’t know.”
And I had to go into my app for my credit union. I’ve been a member for five years, I don’t remember. I did look on their website, and there is a page buried about four pages deep about Zelle, but I was like, “They never really told me that this was a feature. Maybe it was one email four years ago, I don’t know.” But just the fact that I have it and didn’t know, I’m just thinking about how can we more prominently promote these convenience features on websites and in other communications.
Samantha Paxson:
It’s such a great point. I work with a lot of tech companies and fintechs, and they will sell through a solution to a credit union, and they don’t understand why they don’t have users on it. And the credit union said, “Well, I’ll tell you why. We printed out a flyer about that product and put it up in the teller line.”
And when you think about, I mean we talk about this so much, the average age of a credit union member and really what they’re needing to do and what they’re comfortable doing, members are comfortable. I’m an almost 50-year-old woman. I am very comfortable using my phone to pull down information and understand, try to find out what I need to do in my financial life. The thing that’s also interesting that I think credit unions have an opportunity to do is to organize information according to consumer journey.
We tend to do this based on the way that we’re organizationally set up in a credit union. So you have your lending department, you have your retail banking vertical, you have your auto group. There could be several different functional departments. Websites and the way that product is communicated is based on how the credit union is operationally structured. That is not how a consumer buys or… and how a consumer behaves.
They behave according to, “Well, I’m going to open a new account. I’m going to need a debit card. I’m going to need my digital banking. I’m going to need to set up online bill pay. I’m going to need… Immediately, I’d love to get a credit card. I’d love to get digital utilization of both of those cards. I’d like Zelle.” There’s a bundle of solutions that should be put together based on that consumer journey.
Then there is, “Okay, what’s the next journey that I’m trying to get done? I need to set up all of my protections. So how do I make sure my account is safe? How do I make sure that I don’t have fraud? I set up all of the fraud and preventative solutions, insurance.” It’s bundling things together according to how a consumer behaves, not according to how the credit union is set up as a company.
Kerala Taylor:
That is so fascinating. I’m just scribbling some notes down over here.
Samantha Paxson:
It probably seems obvious, but it also… we just tend to look at things from our perspective.
Kerala Taylor:
Yep.
Samantha Paxson:
Even setting up a new business. I just set up a small business account and I couldn’t believe how… I won’t say the financial institution. Actually wasn’t a credit union because credit unions aren’t as much in small business. The particular financial institution, it had like six forms of authentication to just get in to the digital engagement.
Now, I appreciate that. It keeps me safe, but I couldn’t use it. It was absolutely unusable. And when I got in, I had to be a banker to understand it. We have such an opportunity to think of things from a member perspective and member behavior perspective if we really want to win their business moment by moment. And that’s what we’re fighting against.
Kerala Taylor:
Yeah. And so we’re talking a lot about new member acquisition. I’d love to also talk about getting existing members to just engage maybe just a little more with the credit unions products and services. So you did a keynote and then a breakout session at the MAC Conference and in the breakout session you talked about the ROI of new member acquisition to the ROI of member engagement.
And I think that existing member engagement is so often overlooked. Like you said, people might come in for the rates and then just be dormant. And sure, you can count them as a member, but they’re not doing much. So I’m just curious if you could share some key takeaways from that data and just the ROI of engaging existing members.
Samantha Paxson:
Absolutely. And it’s interesting, as part of the fun setup to the breakout sessions that we did, there was kind of an opening where we talked about, let’s look at demographic data of a member. So you might understand, do you deeply understand who your members are? And so we put some demographic information up on the screen, and we said, “An English gentleman in his mid-70s lives in a castle in the UK,” and everybody raised their hand and said, “Oh, it’s King Charles.” And actually, who we were describing was Ozzy Osbourne.
So the funny thing of it is that demographics can only tell you just a tiny part of a person’s life and what they might need. And so, you need to understand who your current members are and dive deeply into the personas of who those current members are to understand their needs. And you need to do that for two reasons. The first is how are you understanding what they’re going to need in their life and demonstrate your value based on that need. So you almost have to create a business case for the credit union for the member. What we tend to do is push product.
We push product, we push product, we push product. We have to reframe that product to the outcome it drives for the member. So that is a missed opportunity, and we do one little product at a time instead of thinking through how do these products fit together to drive a particular outcome. So you need convenience and paying for things every day. Little did you know that we have Zelle, we have a credit card, we have our debit card and digital banking, so you can see all of your transactions in one spot and understand how you’re doing in your short… in your financial life.
And you get to do this conveniently. That’s one reason is the value proposition. The second reason in deeply understanding your member is that how do they like to engage with you. So the typical credit union leader or credit union marketer ends up sending a lot of emails, and they’re likely promotional emails about specific products. How is that useful? Is email the best way? Does it become spam? Does it become noise? What is the best way to engage and interact and serve up something that’s helpful and anticipatory of your member’s needs?
So you’re not only delivering the right set of solutions to help that member achieve an outcome, but you’re delivering it in an interactive way in the way that they want to engage with you. That’s why really understanding your member and, in addition, to then mapping those solutions to the member with what that member’s trying to do and delivering it in the way that they want to receive, it is the formula that we’re all solving for in this business today.
Katie Stone:
So Samantha, in your 2023 Growth Outlook Report, you talked about not only meeting daily needs, which you were just kind of touching on, but also providing long-term guidance. We live in a very volatile world, economically speaking right now, and I’d love to hear how you see credit unions have an opportunity to help their members feel empowered to take control of their finances, both in the day-to-day and from a big-picture standpoint.
Samantha Paxson:
The research is really important, and this was again what we did with EY. There’s a root cause of why consumers work with financial institutions and work with credit unions. They trust credit unions and so they trust credit unions to do the right thing for them. They want to build more trust with credit unions. “That you have the capability to deliver what I need.” And so it’s really important that we show up in a way that is aligned to what consumers is looking for.
And this idea of product centricity, if I’m looking to not only make sure that my spending habits are aligned with my budget and I’m hitting my long-term wealth creation goals, you have to be pretty educated as a consumer and to know what to do and to have the right advice. And as credit unions, we tend to outsource that to a provider. We have it only for the high net worth leaders and we haven’t embedded it in our products. We’ve kind of made it like a financial education class that might be held in a branch or a webinar or how will trends be impacting.
I think what credit unions could do is say, “These are the trends that we’re seeing in the market. We’d love to let you know how to take advantage of these trends going forward” and put out content that is helpful to members that then could link back to a product but demonstrate show up like you are helping members in their financial life. And that’s how that’s another journey stage of a consumer. How do my solutions and how are we baking in financial performance into our products and into our engagement methodologies for member daily use and understanding how my daily behaviors are impacting my financial life?
And then, also, how are we looking at our members’ long-term financial performance and wealth creation? And how could we be of service and be in that mix to offer up solutions there? This is a missed opportunity. I actually have worked… I had been advising a company called CU WealthNext that is democratizing wealth creation for credit unions and for their members. So it isn’t just the 1% that would get access to an advisor, but consumers they’re turning to their own tools, they’re going to go find that in the app store, and then that’s another solution that a credit union isn’t offering.
Kerala Taylor:
Yeah, that’s a good point.
Samantha Paxson:
So it’s a big opportunity. It’s a big opportunity for us to demonstrate our value to the consumer.
Katie Stone:
Yep. So was there anything else you uncovered in your research for the Growth Outlook Report that surprised you or challenged your initial assumptions? Anything that really caught you off guard maybe was an eye-opening moment?
Samantha Paxson:
The first time we did the research, when I first started doing this with EY and their NextWave Research, I was surprised that the most trusted brand in the financial services space was PayPal.
Katie Stone:
Wow.
Samantha Paxson:
The first year we did it. And so what was cool is that over several years, we got to see how that trust level changed. But it was PayPal, a digital payment use case that was the most trusted financial brand. Now why is that? Because they have the capability to deliver what I need on the daily. And so it shows the power of trust and I think credit unions get this now. We’re finally ticking back up. The American Consumer Satisfaction Index put banks and credit unions on the decline in terms of consumer perception of their service model. And it’s finally back on the uptick.
Credit unions still have not surpassed banks in terms of satisfaction, consumer satisfaction, and partially, it’s because the way that you experience service is through the solutions that you take advantage of. And so credit unions know this now. We’re overcoming tech debt, and now we’re having to reframe how we think about a consumer consuming all of these solutions based on their financial journey. We haven’t thought this way as credit unions.
I go back to my thesis is that we’ve been extraordinarily product-centric. And credit unions, interestingly, I used to work for a payments company. Payments was way down the list in terms of having any sort of emphasis placed or being even… having a seat at the table on the executive team. This was a product and a use case that was very under-considered and kind of it was a set-it-and-forget-it mindset. And so it’s so underpenetrated in the credit union industry and it is the primary way that your members can be engaging with you on a daily basis.
It was really eye-opening to me how the consumer perceives financial institutions, how they see them as trusted. They want these solutions from their credit union. They’re rooting for their credit union. They just want a certain kind of capability available to them that they’re having to go find elsewhere. And it’s convenience. That is the number one thing that drives trust is how are you demonstrating that you’re anticipating my needs and how easy is it for me to use you for those services.
Kerala Taylor:
Yeah, I feel like trust is such a salient topic these days when you’re talking about digital services just with the rise of AI and automation and so much fraud going on now. I mean, when you say PayPal, I now think of fraud emails I get for people fishing for my info. And that’s not necessarily PayPal’s fault, but it’s just an unfortunate reality the times we live in. So I’m…
Samantha Paxson:
Yeah.
Kerala Taylor:
We talk a lot at PixelSpoke about what we call, there’s many terms for this, so we like to call it a human plus digital approach. So recognizing that the digital services, the convenience features are really important, but also it’s like how can you maintain some humanity and really retain that member trust as you foray more into the digital realm.
And then you talk a lot too about human-based leadership in the digital age. So that really resonated with how I feel we approach leadership at PixelSpoke. I’m just curious if you could talk a little bit about that and what does human-based leadership mean to you.
Samantha Paxson:
I think human-based leadership is the right kind of leadership in the digital age and things that we have to have at the forefront. If we understand and have empathy for human needs, we’ll then know the solutions to give them.
Kerala Taylor:
Mm-hmm.
Samantha Paxson:
And what that creates inside an operating structure at a credit union is that vertical silos don’t work in that kind of environment. I was the chief experience officer at Co-op Solutions, now Velera, and my job was reaching across the organization to demonstrate how we have dependencies across vertical functional areas to go drive a big outcome for our clients.
It’s the same thing that happens in a credit union. The lending team needs to work with the tech team, which needs to work with the retail team, which needs to work with the strategy team, which needs to work with finance. It is a collaborative effort that isn’t done in a hierarchical top-down type leadership structure. You have to really understand how a particular initiative impacts the different functional areas to the right and to the left and the top and the bottom.
And the other thing that’s really important about human-based leadership is that great ideas can come from anywhere, and I call them leaders. Everybody can be a leader inside an organization. Great ideas can come from the people that are closest to the member and having a really robust listening engine with both employees and team members and your end member to understand their loyalty, their points of friction, they’re willing to do more with the credit union, their likelihood to recommend, which we know as NPS.
There’s a lot of different components that drive loyalty. And so much of that has to do with listening and empathy and collaboration. That’s why I named my company the Power & Light Collaborative. It’s how do we light the path to growth forward because we have to uncover pockets of opportunity across our organizational verticals and bring them together in horizontal silos, not in horizontal journeys because that’s how our member experiences us.
So it’s a real shift, and I think leading from a place of excellence. I’m a big fan of excellence, and I’m a big fan of empowerment. And how do you empower team members to generate great ideas and find the points of connection within them, have really strong structure around it and strong project management, and then get it done? And that makes work fun, it makes it interesting, and it makes it exciting. And then businesses perform really well.
Kerala Taylor:
Yep. I think you’ve just described how PixelSpoke operates and approaches.
Samantha Paxson:
I love it. I love it.
Katie Stone:
Yeah, I was going to say one of the things I love about PixelSpoke being a worker-owned cooperative is that that structure inherently lends itself to fewer silos, more collaboration, employees feeling empowered. So yeah, love that message. Well, I want to ask some rapid-fire questions before we close things out here. So what is your favorite ice cream?
Samantha Paxson:
Peanut butter and chocolate, hands down.
Katie Stone:
Oh.
Kerala Taylor:
That’s good.
Katie Stone:
Yum.
Samantha Paxson:
Yes.
Katie Stone:
What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Samantha Paxson:
Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room. And so keep your integrity, keep your character, do the right thing. And being in service to others just attracts people to you. And I think that that’s the right way to lead and the right way to live your life.
Katie Stone:
Great. And finally, a place you’d like to visit that you’ve never been.
Samantha Paxson:
New Zealand.
Katie Stone:
Oh, yeah.
Samantha Paxson:
It’s on my bucket list.
Katie Stone:
I’ll go with you. Before I turn things back over to Kerala, I just want to say I really appreciated all of your insights today, but particularly all of the data you shared. I just find it extremely powerful and actionable data, and I just really appreciate it.
Samantha Paxson:
Well, that was the intent of it, and love to be in service to our clients and to the industry.
Kerala Taylor:
Yeah, it’s just refreshing. Sometimes hear a lot of the same messages and takeaways when you’re kind of in this conference loop and anytime somebody’s speaking and just gives me some food for thought that I’m still thinking about the next day, I’m like, “I know we got to get them on this podcast” because just a refreshing take.
And speaking of takes, let’s do our final take. So, as a reminder, our big question today was, when it comes to sustainable growth, what underutilized high-impact strategies should credit unions be pursuing in 2025? So, no, it’s a big question. That’s why we call it our big question. But Samantha, in just a few sentences, can you summarize your thoughts on this?
Samantha Paxson:
My thought is to focus on your member. It’s the number one thing that credit unions need to do, and that means deeply understanding that member, their behavior, and how you can optimize your credit union to be as close to that member as possible and get out of your own way, your old paradigm of thinking and you don’t know how fast that can shift your mindset and shift the results of your credit union.
Kerala Taylor:
Wonderful. Well, Samantha, thank you so much for joining us today.
Samantha Paxson:
Thank you. It’s such a pleasure, and I just really love what PixelSpoke is all about, and what you guys stand for, and all the work that you’re doing. So happy to be on.
Katie Stone:
Thanks so much.
Kerala Taylor:
All right. Well, let’s spend some time thinking about three key takeaways from this conversation that covered quite a bit of ground here. So first I’m fascinated by this idea of a micro-interaction and how key they can be to sustainable growth for our credit union. It just seems like credit unions would be well served to focus more on these so-called micro-interactions, you know, these daily financial activities like paying bills, checking balances, using your debit card, making contactless payments instead of just solely emphasizing traditional products like loans and deposits.
I loved what Samantha said about redefining the value proposition from being a primary financial institution to becoming a primary financial interaction partner. And secondly, in a related vein, just thinking about how credit unions can transition from product-centric to member-centric marketing. I would love to see more credit unions doing more in the realm of member-centric marketing. There’s just so many marketing efforts out there that are solely product-focus, and I really think the sustainable growth in 2025 requires a shift toward addressing members’ more holistic financial journeys.
And part of that entails focusing less on promoting rates. We’ve seen so much of that in recent years, especially through some… a lot of volatility with rates and just shifting the focus away from the rates and more toward promoting those daily use tools and features that just help members feel guided and empowered on an ongoing basis. And lastly, we’ve said this many times before on this podcast, and I always appreciate an opportunity to say it again, is that effective leadership in the digital era requires empathy. It requires cross-departmental collaboration and more of a human-plus digital approach.
So just thinking about how credit unions can replace or perhaps supplement the more traditional hierarchical silos with more horizontal collaborative structures that can really help to identify member pain points. All right. Well, thanks for joining us today for another great episode. The Remarkable Credit Union is brought to you by PixelSpoke, a digital marketing agency that works with credit unions to create user-friendly, high-converting, award-winning websites.
As a B Corp, an employee-owned cooperative, we believe that businesses can and should be a force for good. You can learn more and check out our work at pixelspoke.coop. That’s PixelSpoke, all one word, dot C-O-O-P. Until the next time, I wish you the best of luck in making your credit union remarkable.