Posted by Lisa Hochgraf

I've been thinking a lot about marketing ROI lately for two reasons: Credit Union Management magazine's upcoming October issue will feature a story on it in a section I edit, and marketers will soon be computing the ROI on campaigns and marketing pieces that they enter in this year's CUES Golden Mirror Awards competition.

By Ron Jooss

Posted by Ron Jooss

This weekend I read an article in New York Times magazine about record producer Rick Rubin's latest challenge: Saving the record business. For those of you who haven't noticed, the technology to download songs on line has drastically slashed CD sales in recent years. Consider this: How many CD stores are left in your local mall?

Posted by Lisa Hochgraf

Credit unions definitely find benefit from having "likely" partners--you know, partners you would expect them to have. But yesterday I got the idea that they might also find benefit from partners that might seem less likely at first.

Posted by Christopher Stevenson

Over the past several months, there has been much talk of gloom and doom regarding the collapse of the sub-prime market. Then yesterday on Marketplace on public radio, I heard that the members of the National Association of Business Economics say that defaults on sub-prime loans are the greatest threat to our economy, even greater than terrorism. That's pretty grim. I needed some good news...a little cheer.

By Mary Arnold

In "Fringe Players or Market Disruptors?" I wrote about how easily an established firm can be unseated by a new entrant to the marketplace. The new entrant chooses a niche and, without the legacy systems, history and broad clientele of the established firm to contend with, is able to quickly make inroads.

Posted by Lisa Hochgraf

All ye iPhone owners, please weigh in. The July 31 Forrester Report, "The Mobile Web Vs. the Web on an iPhone: iPhone Wins in a Blowout," suggests the beginning of the end of the mobile banking world as we know it. In particular, the report says:

Posted by Christopher Stevenson

Have you thought about starting a blog for your credit union, but have been unimpressed with the free blogging tools available? Robbie Wright at The Life and Times of a Credit Union Employee has created a cool solution. He has set up cublogs.org, a free blog hosting site for the credit union industry that offers more flexibility and better features than Blogger or wordpress.com. Check it out.

Posted by Christopher Stevenson

Posted by Lisa Hochgraf

OK, I admit it. I will likely soon have a credit card from Bank of America.

How I came to be expecting this card in the mail is kind of a long story, full confession below.

The important takeaways from my confession, I think, are the evidence it provides that 1) affinity cards make a difference, 2) people really do hold on to their first credit cards a long time, 3) disgruntled customers may be expensive customers, and 4) that the big banks can afford to hire really able marketers.