Today’s Interview:

David Dirks, the Vice President of Marketing for the Hudson Valley Credit Union

Welcome to another episode of The Marketer’s Edge, a series designed to share senior level marketing perspective about marketer challenges, opportunities, and agency relationships.

Today, we are talking with David Dirks, the Vice President of Marketing for the Hudson Valley Credit Union.

Hudson Valley Credit Union is a full service not-for-profit financial cooperative, 300,000+ members strong. They extend membership to their neighbors who live, work, worship, volunteer or attend school in Albany, Columbia, Dutchess, Greene, Orange, Putnam, Rensselaer, Rockland, Saratoga, Schenectady, Ulster, or Westchester Counties.

The company started in October 1963, when a group of IBM employees had a vision—to create a financial cooperative for IBM employees and their families, where the needs of the individual would be placed before profit.

What We Discussed:

In today’s interview with David, we discussed a wide variety of issues:

  • The relative importance of calling out the differences between credit unions and banks – today, as compared to a decade ago.
  • How they effectively kept engagement with their customer base strong during the pandemic.
  • Some of the more unique things he’s doing to bring the credit union and its community closer together.
  • Predictions on what the banking and credit union world will look like in the future.
  • Any advice David would give to marketers thinking about bringing a new agency on board.
  • And lastly, if an agency was trying to knock down David’s door and attempting to win business from him, what advice he would give them.

Thanks David for a great interview!

A little bit about David:

David’s career in marketing & sales management spans the course of multiple industries including financial services, advertising, professional services, and the food industry.

He has worked with companies to help them blend traditional data with “big data” analytics to provide a strategic framework translating data into a tactical framework for developing marketing campaigns that drive business results.

Creating and executing marketing campaigns & programs built on a foundation of solid data (marketing) analytics is what he delivers. Focusing on revenue growth AND profitability.