Revolutionizing Credit Union Marketing: Unlocking the Power of Generative Artificial Intelligence

Orianna Valentine, CCUFC, CDMP, aPCM®, Marketing Strategist
April 2023

Credit unions have long been known for their community-focused approach and member-centric services. As the financial industry continues to evolve, credit unions must also adapt their marketing strategies to stay relevant and engage with their members effectively. One cutting-edge tool that credit unions can leverage is generative artificial intelligence (AI). In this blog post, we will explore how credit unions can use generative AI as a powerful marketing tool to enhance member experiences, streamline operations, and drive growth.

Enhancing Member Experiences:

Member experience is a critical aspect of credit union marketing. Generative AI can play a pivotal role in enhancing member experiences by creating personalized and relevant content. For instance, credit unions can use generative AI to analyze member data and generate personalized offers, promotions, and recommendations based on their financial needs and preferences. This level of personalization can help credit unions build stronger relationships with their members, increase member loyalty, and drive higher engagement and conversion rates.

Additionally, generative AI can be used to create interactive and immersive experiences for credit union members. For example, credit unions can leverage generative AI to create virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR) experiences that allow members to explore different financial scenarios, simulate financial decisions, or visualize their financial goals. These experiences can provide a unique and engaging way for credit unions to educate and empower their members, creating memorable experiences that differentiate them from competitors.

Streamlining Operations:

Generative AI can also streamline credit union operations, making marketing efforts more efficient and cost-effective. For instance, credit unions can use generative AI to automate content creation processes, such as generating social media posts, blog articles, or email newsletters. By automating these tasks, credit unions can free up valuable time and resources, allowing their marketing teams to focus on higher-level strategic initiatives.

Generative AI can also optimize marketing campaigns by analyzing data and providing insights to improve targeting and messaging. Credit unions can use generative AI to analyze member data, identify patterns, and generate recommendations on the most effective marketing channels, messaging, and timing to engage with members. This data-driven approach can help credit unions make informed decisions, optimize their marketing efforts, and achieve better results.

Driving Growth:

Credit unions are constantly striving for growth, and generative AI can be a powerful tool to achieve that. By leveraging generative AI in their marketing strategies, credit unions can drive growth in several ways. For instance, personalized and relevant content generated by generative AI can attract new members, retain existing members, and increase cross-selling and upselling opportunities.

Generative AI can also help credit unions identify and target new member segments. By analyzing data and generating insights, credit unions can identify patterns and trends that may indicate potential new member segments. Credit unions can then tailor their marketing efforts to reach and engage with these segments effectively, expanding their membership base and diversifying their revenue streams.

Additionally, generative AI can help credit unions stay ahead of the competition by providing them with a competitive edge. The ability to generate personalized and relevant content, automate marketing processes, and optimize campaigns can give credit unions an advantage in the market, allowing them to differentiate themselves and attract more members.

Conclusion (and Confession):

If you have read the article to this point, it’s time for me to confess that everything before the conclusion was written by OpenAI’s ChatGPT with a simple prompt, “Help me create a blog article for credit unions about using generative artificial intelligence as a marketing tool.” In less than ten seconds, ChatGPT responded with this fully formatted content. By modifying the prompts, the system was able to create equally impressive alternatives to choose from. One can experiment by asking for content ideas, specific article formatting, outlines, codes, recipes (including automation recipes), detailed analysis, and so much more. New generative AI tools continue to hit the market and are also worth exploring - including the overhauled web browser, Microsoft Bing, which includes a new chatbot feature based on Open AI’s ChatGPT.

The issue of generative AI’s content copyrights has not yet been settled and is currently a bit of a grey area. The Congressional Research Service has presented Congress with a Legal Sidebar to consider copyright law as it pertains to generative AI. However, no official guidance is currently given. Open AI does state in its Terms of Service, “OpenAI hereby assigns you all its right, title and interest in and to Output.” I ran the ChatGPT content through a plagiarism checking application and it found the content to be original.

ChatGPT offers a few disclaimers before interacting with the tool, and these are important to keep in mind if you are using it for professional purposes. Because the system has been trained on a vast amount of data from the internet, it does not always present valid, verified information. You will still need to fact check any content it produces. At times, it can even present harmful information or information beyond its ability (check out news stories on AI “hallucinations” for some truly interesting and terrifying reads). It is also limited to information before 2021, so it may not be able to help problem-shoot software and tools that have more recent updates, nor will it be able to generate accurate content based on recent events. Lastly, and this one is very important, do not input any of your credit union’s sensitive member information, proprietary content, or custom codes into the models – doing so exposes your credit union and you to very high risks as it will use that to modify its own knowledge and could present it to unknown participants with unknown intent.

While I am only at the beginning of my journey exploring generative AI, the capabilities and speed with which the system works is impressive. I recommend credit union marketers (and everybody else) begin experimenting with the tools before they are fully monetized. I created a follow up prompt for ChatGPT to assist in creating a more exciting close to this article:

The future of credit union marketing is here, and it's powered by generative artificial intelligence. With its ability to create personalized and immersive member experiences, streamline operations, and drive growth, generative AI is revolutionizing how credit unions engage with their members. Remember to always tailor the content to your specific brand and tone, and feel free to modify it further to suit your needs.