America First Credit Union Manages and Activates Partnerships with Trak
America First Credit Union uses Trak to streamline partnership management for both AFCU and each partner. Real-time visibility into every partnership deal allows the team to track deadlines, requests, critical data, and more while also managing partnerships from initial signing to deal analysis.
With Trak, the team is saving more time for strategic work, working on-the-go with mobile access, and using partner scorecards to better measure which partnerships are working. Plus, with Trak, partners have real-time access to assets and scorecard information, creating a more collaborative and creative partnership opportunity than ever before.
Key Results
→ Real-time visibility into every partnership
→ More time for strategic work
→ A better, more accurate way to measure partnerships
→ Valuable for both AFCU and every partner
Sneak Peek into the Case Study
In 2013, America First Credit Union managed only a handful of partnerships. The process wasn’t standardized, most of the details in each deal were stored in a three-ring binder, and the marketing team focused on meeting deadlines and sending out logos and banners as needed. There wasn’t enough communication between partners and AFCU, no strong drive to increase partnerships, and no way to see what was working and what needed to change.
→ No proactive approach to new or existing partnerships
The marketing team didn’t have any way to be proactive in their approach to both new or existing partnerships. There wasn’t a good way to respond to market trends and the team would often wait for other brands or other businesses to reach out to them with only a few conversations initiated by AFCU employees.
Before Trak, even larger partnership deals like those with the Utah Jazz and the NBA weren’t utilized to their full potential. Brett explained, “I don’t know that either of us saw the big advantages other than monetarily what we could bring to them and the brand recognition that they could bring to us. We weren’t driving any other conversations.”
“We didn’t have any proactive analysis on our existing partnerships and no real foresight into new partnerships,” said Brett Greenwell, VP of Member and Partner Relations at AFCU.
→ Data collection and analysis was time consuming and manual
One of the biggest challenges the team faced was organizing partnership data and collecting the right information. They needed visibility into what deals were in progress, what assets needed to be created, and any possible ROI data.
The team tried to meet the need with an Excel document—building out a large spreadsheet with details about each partnership. It centralized the information, but didn’t offer any insight into what partnerships were more valuable than others, how they could improve the process, or ways to save time and make everything more efficient. Plus, there wasn’t any input from the partners.
Continued.....
To read the rest of the America First Credit Union Case Study and see the specific results, download the PDF
“Trak is so helpful for new employees to hit the ground running. We’re not spending time creating spreadsheets for every partner. Now we can look back at previous years and see program ads or radio spots to make sure we have everything for the current year. And we can see how those partnerships have evolved.”
Brett Greenwell
AFCU