Best Practices for Your 2026 Marketing Plan
With strategic planning season underway, here are 5 focus areas for your 2026 Marketing Plan:
#1: Don’t just tweak last year’s plan
A few incremental changes to last year’s plan will not be enough for 2026. With broad uncertainty and a shifting technology landscape, market conditions deserve fresh consideration. And resist the urge to pull back on marketing investments because of that uncertainty. Research shows that through economic contractions, organizations who continue to spend on marketing can increase their ROI and come out on the other side gaining market share.
Questions to ask: Where can we cut back legacy investments that are no longer producing results? How can we focus on more trackable tactics? What part of our funnel is leakiest and how can we tighten it up? What internal tools and processes can be more effective and efficient?
This is the time as well to reassess the talent needs on your team, and the strategic partners you have extending your team’s capacity and capabilities.
#2: Push for better data to drive better decisions
If your marketing plan is based on inaccurate, outdated, or limited member data, your whole strategy could be off-base. Make sure you’re using reliable data sources, research, trends insights and competitive tracking. Find ways to bolster and improve the quality, value, recency and data insights around your members lives, needs, behaviors and channel preferences.
Are you lacking a lifestyle segmentation strategy and personas so that priority growth and retention targets are driving your 2026 strategies? Or are you one of the many credit unions struggling to quantify member profitability and relationship value in order to drive bottom line performance? If you know your data heading into 2026 is not in good shape, now is the time to lay a strong foundation to build on.
#3: Set KPIs beyond member acquisition
Acquiring new members is vital to reaching growth goals, but there are two important caveats:
Focus on growth can’t overshadow the need for retention. The average new member costs in the neighborhood of $500 to acquire, and often more. A focused retention strategy, and smart reboarding programs, can reduce churn and improve the profitability of existing members.
Not all members will form high quality, long-lasting relationships with your CU. Focusing on attracting your unique priority growth segments and effectively onboarding them for a lifetime of value is more strategic than just putting up numbers.
Other KPIs that marketers should bring to the C-Suite regularly include campaign ROI, and halo products. For example, did your mortgage campaign also drive new HELOC accounts? Make sure you are telling the full story with your internal reporting. Success here can lead to increased budget and support. Without clearly spelled out goals, it will be harder to claim success or take lessons for next time.
At the same time, beware of “institutional wisdom” driving the internal marketing narrative. Just because something worked well ten years ago, doesn’t make it right for next year. Today’s marketing environment requires ongoing adjustments to optimize performance and respond rapidly to changes.
“Branding is the proactive systematic and strategic shaping of consumer perceptions and feelings about your organization and their experiences.”
#4: Boost your brand’s health
Your brand is either earning trust or eroding it. Outdated style, eligibility confusion, clunky digital experiences - any and all of these are barriers. Whereas a high functioning brand fuels growth.
Branding is the proactive systematic and strategic shaping of consumer perceptions and feelings about your organization and their experiences. Prepping your brand to be a powerhouse in 2026 could mean minor modernizations, or it could be time for a strategic realignment.
Ultimately, your brand should inspire staff, align your culture, and deliver on a bold promise that attracts members. If you’re questioning how effective yours really is, now’s the time for a brand assessment to find out.
#5: Amp up your team’s performance with AI
AI is here, and fintechs are capitalizing, so Credit unions can’t afford to sit on the sidelines. Adopting AI tools for audience modeling, automation, predictive triggers, and more will help you scale smarter and compete harder. But balance matters: AI should enhance human creativity and strategy, not replace them. Every credit union needs an AI adoption roadmap to ramp up sustained performance.
Now is the time to get the processes and tools in place so that 2026 is your most effective marketing year yet.