If JP Morgan Chase randomly contacted 1,000 of your members today, how many would even remember being a member? How many haven’t meaningfully engaged in years? How many of your indirect members know your name?
Not all members are created equal – and the gap in value is enormous. Ideal Members (those with 5+ products and deep, consistent engagement) represent just 5–8% of most credit unions’ membership base, yet they are 13x more profitable than indirect members and 3.9x more profitable than average members. Most credit unions are growing their membership count without growing their profitability.
The Ideal Member Deficit diagnoses the five interconnected reasons this gap exists – from weak first impressions to demographic drift to technology stagnation – and lays out a four-pillar strategic framework for turning member acquisition into lasting, compounding engagement. Because creating Ideal Members should take minutes, not decades.
