Case Study

Credit Union Media Mix


A $4 billion credit union with 30 branches was dissatisfied with its marketing attribution modeling. It desired to answer the following questions:

  • How much does marketing influence sales?
  • Which tactics have greatest impact?
  • How much do other variables play against or with marketing? (accounting for seasonality, economic fluctuations, competitors)
  • What changes can be made in marketing approach to maximize results?


Several methodologies had been utilized to answer marketing attribution.

  • Directional tracking of campaign flighting against consumer sales response, over a rolling 12 month period, adjusting for seasonality. Marketing team would assign value to sales lift over the year-long period. Marketing team could produce positive ROI, but insights were broad-based. When marketing was “on,” sales increased and the lift was quantified. But team still didn’t understand impact of individual drivers within marketing. Which levers were doing the work?
  • Direct mail had its own attribution, comparing recipients to sales. However, marketing team understood this last-touchpoint model as giving direct mail 100% credit for its efforts. Team had hypothesis that other mediums, running concurrently, also provided impact.


After reviewing econometric solutions, credit union engaged Mediastruction’s Media OmniVu. Unifying data from brand tracking research, competitive media spend, its own media spend, sales, interest rates, the team built a media mix model, in context of influential exogenous variables, like brand awareness, rate fluctuations and competitive share of voice. Deliverables included:

  • Cost per incremental sale by media channel
  • ROI of each product, by media channel
  • Media’s overall contribution to sales
  • Sensitivity analysis to identify the point of diminishing return by media channel


Revised media mix investment, redeploying from underperforming channels.

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