Strategic Integration of AI-Powered Digital Banking Engagement Helps Extra Credit Union Generate $12.7M in Deposits and Earn 2025 Tekkie Award for Revenue Growth

Preetha Pulusani, CEO of DeepTarget

​DeepTarget Inc., a pioneer in AI-powered marketing solutions for financial institutions, today announced that Warren, Mich.-based Extra Credit Union has won the 2025 Finopotamus Tekkie Award for Revenue Growth through their successful partnership with DeepTarget. The award recognizes Extra Credit Union's comprehensive marketing strategy that generated over $12.7 million in new deposits for the credit union from March to December 2024, with DeepTarget's AI-powered digital banking engagement playing a key role in the campaign's success. The revenue growth category highlights technologies that contributed to the nominee's revenue growth in 2024.

Extra Credit Union, with $317 million in assets and 19,000 members, faced the challenge of growing deposits amid rising interest rates and fierce competition from traditional and digital-only financial institutions. The credit union needed to optimize their marketing mix to effectively promote their Certificate of Deposit (CD) products while maximizing their marketing resources across multiple channels.

"Like most financial institution in 2024, we were facing a perfect storm – rising rates, fierce competition, and potential limitations with traditional marketing channels," said Ruthann Varosi, Vice President of Marketing at Extra Credit Union. "We knew we needed a comprehensive strategy to leverage every channel available. DeepTarget's platform was a remarkable addition to our marketing mix, allowing us to deliver personalized loan and CD offers precisely when members were most likely to act through digital banking. This AI-powered targeting, used in collaboration with our other marketing and staff efforts, helped us achieve dramatic results: over $12.7 million in new deposits. This wasn't just marketing success, it expanded our lending capacity while providing members with the competitive rates they deserve."

As part of their comprehensive marketing strategy, Extra Credit Union utilized DeepTarget's Digital Experience Platform (DXP), integrated with their Jack Henry/Banno digital banking environment, to execute the CD campaign throughout 2024. This digital engagement component with strategic, targeted messaging across their digital banking platform, combined with staff referrals, social media promotion, and other marketing channels, delivered remarkable results throughout 2024.

The digital banking engagement component achieved a 7.66% click-through rate far above industry averages---nearly 8 times the typical rate for financial services advertising. The comprehensive marketing approach generated 1,092 new CD accounts and over $12.7 million in deposits in the last nine months of 2024, substantially expanding Extra Credit Union's lending capacity.

"Extra Credit Union's Tekkie award win validates what we've believed all along - that even midsized financial institutions can compete and win when they strategically integrate AI-powered tools into their marketing mix," said Preetha Pulusani, CEO of DeepTarget. "Their $12.7 million result demonstrates how personalized, data-driven digital engagement can amplify the impact of a comprehensive marketing strategy. When you combine intelligent targeting with the right message at the right moment, digital banking transforms from a cost center into a powerful revenue engine that enhances overall marketing performance. This is exactly the breakthrough performance we're helping credit unions and community banks achieve nationwide."

Financial institutions ready to transform their digital engagement like Extra Credit Union can learn more about DeepTarget's AI-powered platform at www.deeptarget.com or connect with the team on LinkedIn.

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