It’s a pretty indisputable fact that CUInsight has found a home at the heart of the credit union community.
And this week on CRMNEXT’s Banking on Experience, we’re honored to have CUInsight Co-Founder and host of The CUInsight Experience podcast, Randall Smith join us to share the story of this fantastic organization.
What’s covered?
How CUInsight came to be.
Randall and his business partner, David Miller started CUInsight as a side hustle in 2008, but they were always all in when it came to credit unions. As he says, “At CUInsight, we are not fair and balanced. We are credit union focused and credit union fans.”
He also attributes a lot of the success of the organization to “luck with timing” and feels grateful to “be a little slice of” the family experience that comes from credit unions.
Love at first click: how they gained adoption so quickly.
CUInsight saw their email list grow from zero to 50,000 email subscribers in fairly short order, and Randall believes a lot of that had to do with:
- The addition of the community section – bringing thought leaders in from all over to one place
- Keeping it simple, so there’s not a barrier of entry
- Gathering an amazing team who were intentional about providing those in the CU community what they were looking for (sans anything “salesy”)
- Listening to feedback
Lessons from failure.
Our guest shares about the time they started a sister site for community banks and — though they realized very quickly just how different the two markets are — held on to the project too long.
A couple of lessons learned:
- They now make sure that what they’re adding to the company still fits what they love doing and the community they’re a part of.
- If something’s not working, don’t marry it — no matter how much time, money, and energy you put into it. If it’s a drain, just “fail fast and fail cheap.”
Top successes (and how they got there).
You’ll definitely want to tune in to hear details here but suffice it to say their Community section and their Mini-Con series have done spectacular things for the business and for the CU community itself.
Partnering with CUInsight: what vendors need to know.
Lots to learn here. For one thing, if they feel a vendor’s “not there yet” with what’s needed to partner, they’ll encourage them not to spend the money yet.
“A lot of it is content-driven. And a lot of it is activity,” says Randall. “Just putting your name on CUInsight is not gonna make it rain dollars and new credit union clients.”
What’s next for CUInsight?
Looking ahead, CUInsight continues to be all about finding ways to better connect, and they’re in the process of upgrading a lot of technology to make sure they deliver what Randall calls “that 2022 experience.”
Want to reach out to Randall or get involved with CUInsight?
Email him at rsmith@cuinsight.com, find him on twitter @cuinsight or LinkedIn, and of course listen in to the CUInsight Experience podcast.
Find this interview, and many more by subscribing to Banking on Experience Podcast on iTunes. You can also find us on Spotify, Google Podcasts, or visit our page on Casted.
