ILWU Credit Union | Long Beach, CA | Assets $503.7 million

 ILWU Credit Union is a dynamic institution focused on delivering personalized financial solutions to the ILWU Community across California, Hawaii and Alaska. With a small but mighty marketing team, ILWU CU strives to provide seamless onboarding experiences, despite facing challenges with manual processes and limited resources. 

New member onboarding was time-consuming and inefficient for ILWU CU’s marketing team of two. They relied on their IT department to pull the data they needed. Then they would have to format the data collection and upload the list to send one-off emails. This manual workflow delayed new member communications by up to a week, impacting the onboarding experience and limiting personalized follow-up. 

When ILWU CU expanded into Hawaii, the complexity increased. New members from Hawaii required unique messaging, reflecting different services and ATM access. This further stretched the team’s capacity, making it clear that a scalable, automated solution was necessary. 

To meet the challenges of their growing member base and expanding footprint, ILWU Credit Union partnered with Marquis. Their Marquis strategist suggested Marquis’s “Engage” offering which includes the creation and implementation of financial-institution specific campaigns on Marquis’s digital communication platform. By leveraging Marquis' resources, experience, and expertise, ILWU CU’s marketing team could create a fully automated, customized  onboarding program—something they never thought possible with their limited resources. The team could rely on Marquis to handle the heavy lifting. 

Marquis collaborated with ILWU CU’s Marketing and IT teams to integrate the necessary member data into the platform, enabling effective triggers and personalized touchpoints.  

Based on ILWU CU’s objectives and business goals, Marquis crafted a 90-day onboarding campaign that begins with welcome messaging, followed by a series of four personalized emails sent every three weeks, which includes:  

• Day 1: Welcome email and letter, an add-on ILWU opted to include, sent to new members, tailored by state.
• Day 30: Follow-up email introducing mobile banking features.
• Day 45+: Series of product-specific emails sent based on members’ existing accounts, such as checking, or credit card offers.

In addition to their onboarding campaign, ILWU Credit Union utilized Marquis’ digital marketing suite for their auto loan campaign, which gave them the ability to send personalized, pre-approval offers segmented by member profile. 

The automated marketing campaigns now deliver consistent, timely messaging without manual intervention, ensuring that every new member is welcomed and supported from day one. 

Since implementing their new automated campaign, ILWU Credit Union has seen remarkable improvements in onboarding efficiency and member engagement: 

 New member onboarding:  

• 69% ILWU CU’s Unique Open Rate (44% Industry Average)
• 7.9% Click-Through Rate (2.9% Industry Average)

 Auto-loan campaign: 

• 52% Unique Open Rate

 The automated program has not only saved the team hours each week but has also empowered ILWU CU to deliver targeted, personalized communications, supporting better cross-selling and increased member satisfaction. 

 They also have the campaign data available to them to draw insights into their most popular products and how they can optimize their marketing campaigns even further.  

With Marquis Engage, ILWU experienced the following benefits: 

Automated, Timely Onboarding: Members receive onboarding materials quickly and consistently, enhancing their first interactions with the credit union. 

Personalized Experience: Custom messaging by state and product improves relevance, leading to higher engagement and product adoption. 

Resource Efficiency: Freed from manual processes, the marketing team now has more bandwidth to focus on strategic growth initiatives and scaling up their campaigns.

Actionable Insights: Marquis’s digital communication tools have given ILWU CU the ability to move from one-off emails to a strategic onboarding campaign with built-in tracking to measure results and track ROI and performance. 

With Marquis’ support, ILWU Credit Union continues to drive meaningful engagement, nurturing long-term relationships with members from day one. 

“With Marquis’ Engage solution, we’ve transformed our onboarding process. Now, our new members receive a warm welcome communication tailored to their needs right from day one. This automation has been a game-changer for our small team, allowing us to focus on growth rather than logistics.”  

— Kathy Kielbasa, Marketing Manager, ILWU Credit Union