Global Credit Union increases site engagement by over 20%

Global Credit Union’s continuous pursuit for growth

Global Credit Union (formally known as Alaska USA Federal Credit Union) is one of the United States’ largest credit unions based on asset size, servicing over 760,000 members with an asset portfolio upwards of $12 billion, operating in Alaska, Arizona, California, Washington, and Idaho.

Global Credit Union’s initial successes utilizing Optimizely’s Content Management in 2017 to power its marketing landing pages helped to build confidence in Optimizely’s ever-expanding digital experience capabilities and cemented the case to move the organization’s flagship website to Optimizely’s Digital Experience Platform.

Global Credit Union's goal has remained the same – to grow the organization by increasing its membership and demonstrating its value to members and prospects in all the regions it serves. 

The challenge of relevant and timely communication with members

Global Credit Union’s previous website stood in the way of its goal for growth. Marketing Operations Manager, Heather Resh, shared that the previous website was unable scale to meet the organization’s goals. The on-premise hosted, IT-owned and managed website had restricted internal access, making it difficult for the marketing team to deliver updates to customers in an agile manner. With the organization growing rapidly, Global Credit Union needed a secure site that helped streamline internal workflows and approvals—without increasing the burden on IT.

The team was also aware of the importance of communicating Global Credit Union’s wider presence to prospects through geo-targeted content to dispel the impression of being an Alaska-exclusive organization, despite its operating throughout the western United States—something the previous infrastructure could not support. 

Overhauling Global Credit Union’s digital experience, inside out

Global Credit Union surveyed and evaluated several top-tier CMS providers, including Sitecore and Adobe. The strategic acquisitions made by Optimizely to enhance customers’ DXP capabilities solidified Resh’s confidence in Optimizely’s capabilities and future as a holistic digital solutions provider, a key reason for the decision to renew with Optimizely.

Global Credit Union partnered with Extractable as the project’s implementation partner for their expertise in user experience and digital strategy specific to the financial industry.

Extractable drove the content strategy and implementation on the Optimizely DXP while working closely with the Global Credit Union team to ensure seamless and secure integrations with internal systems.

Resh shared that the marketing team now maintains full ownership of the site, allowing numerous content authors, reviewers, and publishers to expedite content updates and approvals. With Optimizely’s ability to support multiple authors with varying permission levels, the team is empowered to deliver content in a timely fashion, supporting the organization’s goal for growth.

In addition, Extractable also kicked off Global Credit Union’s personalization and analytics roadmap by segmenting visitors into groups and setting up analytics dashboards that help the team gain a holistic understanding of site visitors and behavior using Optimizely’s AI-powered Recommendations.

The team leverages Recommendation’s Targeting and Visitor Groups to deliver geo-personalized messaging to site visitors supporting Global Credit Union’s quest for growth across the west coast and Arizonan markets by showcasing content that speaks to their individual communities.

Global Credit Union’s marketing team is building on the foundation that Extractable laid in Content Management’s Targeting to go one layer deeper and deliver personalized content based on previous site interactions.

With a strong foundation laid out for its website, it was important for Global Credit Union to ensure that future decisions were based on real user feedback and data. The addition of Optimizely Web Experimentation allows the team to make data-informed decisions instead of relying on industry best practices, intuitional knowledge, and anecdotal feedback while evaluating future changes and enhancements.

The member-centric improvements pay off

Global Credit Union experienced immediate benefits relaunching its site on Optimizely’s industry-leading digital solution. Extractable’s effective setup of analytics monitoring enabled Global Credit Union to harness data, including traffic source and user engagement information, to gain a holistic understanding of site visitors and behavior.

Resh shared that overall engagement increased by 20% since launching the site in October 2022. This success is attributed to the increase in published content and addition of interactive tools, providing site visitors with more reasons to engage. Further, with Optimizely’s intuitive interface, the Global Credit Union team now publishes a minimum of two to three new financial wellness articles in a month, consistently and with ease, further engaging return visitors.

The team also shared they have measured a significant decrease in overall bounce rate, a 10% increase in sessions originating from organic search, and have increased traffic to several key product pages by over 50%. 

Global Credit Union has also received compliments from its members about the security upgrades launched with the new site.

Resh believes the partnerships with Optimizely and Extractable have helped to eliminate some of the technical debts Global Credit Union accumulated and empowers the organization to deliver modern digital experiences that members expect from their financial institutions.

The new Global Credit Union site scales with the company’s growth and puts it on the right track to increase membership.

Global Credit Union’s goal for growth and beyond with Optimizely

Rapid growth is at the forefront of Global Credit Union’s goals as the team heads into 2023.

Global Credit Union has identified the Phoenix, Arizona market as a key area for future growth. While Global Credit Union has operated in Phoenix for over a decade, the team believes the market has untapped potential and will be focusing its efforts on increasing brand awareness outside of Alaska. 

The team’s game plan? Leverage Optimizely’s industry-leading Web Experimentation to test for optimized digital experiences for different groups and deploy them using Optimizely’s personalization tools. 

Eliminating groupthink is one of the primary reasons Global Credit Union integrated testing into its work processes. Instead of relying on institutional knowledge and anecdotal feedback, Global Credit Union will test updates to evaluate if they meet at least one of three objectives:

• Increase membership
• Increase product adoption
• Enhance self-service capabilities

Resh shared that the team has had early successes with testing and will double down on experimentation efforts to increase conversions.

Resh shared that Global Credit Union is also in the works to move its subsidiaries’ websites onto the Optimizely DXP in order to provide users with a consistent digital experience reflective of the Global Credit Union brand.