Test Your 2027 Plan Against One New Member's First Year

By Amanda Marshall, Vice President of Marketing, ADVANTAGE

By October, most credit unions have 2027 planning split into familiar pieces. Marketing builds the acquisition budget. Retail and operations own onboarding and service. Finance tracks fee income and expenses. Each piece has its own goal and its own report, and each team will probably hit its number next year.

It's worth testing that plan against one member's first year.

Her First Year, From Both Sides

She opens a checking account in January after seeing an ad for fee-free checking. She's leaving a large bank because she's tired of paying for an account she barely thinks about. The campaign that brought her in knows exactly why she came. That information lives in a campaign report and an ad platform, and it never reaches anyone who talks to her afterward.

In February, she gets a welcome email and her debit card. She means to switch her direct deposit, but her employer's form asks for information she doesn't have handy, so she sets it aside. Direct deposit is on the onboarding checklist. No checklist item covers someone checking a few weeks later whether it happened. The welcome series ends after three emails.

In April, an automatic payment comes through when her balance is short and is returned. She pays a merchant fee and may also owe a credit union fee, depending on its policy. For someone who switched to avoid paying unexpected fees, this is the moment the relationship starts to go sideways. The credit union’s written procedure calls for employees to explain available overdraft options, but no one walked her through them at opening. How consistently that conversation happens depends on the branch and the person.

A different gap can hide in program settings. In one overdraft review we conducted, program penetration was 47% against a peer benchmark closer to 90%. Part of the gap came from exclusion settings put in place years earlier that were keeping some eligible accounts out of the program. Nobody had decided to keep excluding those accounts. The system was following an old instruction.

By summer, she's getting the same promotional emails as members who've been there 15 years, because once onboarding ended, she joined the general marketing calendar. By fall, she's using the account for one bill and keeping her paycheck at the old bank.

Viewed separately, the internal reports don’t reveal the full story. She was counted toward the January acquisition goal. Her account was funded at opening. The returned payment appears in the transaction data, but no report connects it to her later inactivity. When she closes the account a year or two from now, the attrition report will say she closed it, and nothing else.

What Her Experience Says About the 2027 Plan

The campaign brought her in. The welcome series went out. The returned payment was processed. But the plan never asked anyone to own whether she’d become a member who stays.

That’s a planning problem more than an execution problem. Acquisition reports count new account openings. Communications reports show what was sent. Overdraft reports show who has access to the service and who uses it. Each department enters budget planning with its own measure of success. A shared outcome changes that. For some credit unions, it might be the number of new members with a funded, primary checking relationship after 12 months. For others, it might be net revenue per new member after 12 months. The right measure depends on the credit union’s priorities, but every team should plan against the same outcome.

With that number in place, budget conversations get more specific. A request for more acquisition spend raises the question of how many of last year’s new members were still active a year later. A proposal to review the overdraft program considers income alongside access, usage, and the returned-item costs members may face. Operating expenses enter the conversation, too. A vendor contract review may uncover savings that could help fund the follow-up she never received.

A Few Questions Before the Plan Goes to the Board

Would your current reporting have shown where this member stalled? How many of last year's new members moved their direct deposit, and how long did it take? What happens to a new member's communications after onboarding ends, and who decides? When did someone last compare your overdraft settings and branch practices against your written policy? And what one number would tell you, a year from now, that you kept more members like her?

We work with credit unions on several of these handoffs, from acquisition through overdraft and member communications. If you want help looking at where your own members' first year breaks down, reach out to our team.

Connect with ADVANTAGE to learn more.