20% Loan Growth: A FAB “Hot Girl Summer”

Think small credit unions can’t stand out without huge budgets and agency support?

Think again.

In this episode of The Credit Union Connection, host Sarah Snell Cooke sits down with Amber Mooney, Vice President of Marketing at True Energy Credit Union and winner of the 2026 FAB Leadership Award for Marketing.

Amber shares how stepping outside traditional financial marketing norms—and turning to frontline staff for creative input—led to wildly successful campaigns, including a pop-culture-inspired vacation loan promotion that boosted loan applications by 20% and email performance by 15% by:

• Breaking Department Silos
• Calculated Risks
• Maximizing the Tech Stack, and
• Building a Cohesive Brand

Sarah Snell Cooke: Welcome everyone. I am Sarah Snell Cooke, your host here at the Credit Union Connection. I am joined today by Amber Mooney. Welcome.

Amber Mooney: Thank you.

Sarah Snell Cooke: Amber is the vice president of marketing at True Energy Credit Union, as well as our 2026 FAB Leadership Award winner for marketing. Yay.

Amber Mooney: Woo-hoo.

Sarah Snell Cooke: Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about yourself and the credit union?

Amber Mooney: Absolutely. I’ve been in the credit union industry since 1997 when I got my first job as a teller at Infinity Federal Credit Union in Westbrook, Maine. My spouse was in the Army at the time, and we got to move around a lot. So I’ve worked for several credit unions. I’ve been doing a lot of different jobs, working for a lot of different departments in the credit union industry. I have been with True Energy Federal Credit Union for 15 years, and I started as a call center supervisor.

But then I moved to the marketing and business development department, where I did that for 10 years, and I absolutely loved it. I always loved marketing. As a kid, I used to draw on advertisements to make them better. And when I was in college, I was interested in all these classes that I realized were all about marketing: art, photography, psychology, sociology, typography.

I was like, “Okay, I love marketing. What am I doing?” And I’ve been hooked ever since.

Sarah Snell Cooke: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like it’s so much of everything, and we’ll get to that—’cause that’s exactly what you were doing, which caught our eye for the award. But, so you were our FAB Leadership Award winner. Yes. So what was your thought when you heard, when I emailed you, that you had won?

Amber Mooney: Honestly, I was shocked, but I was deeply honored. As a small credit union, we find that it’s hard to compete with the big shops. They have large teams, they have agencies, and way bigger budgets than we’ll ever have.

We do everything in-house at True Energy. Every campaign, email, social media post, event, landing page, and promotion is created by people here who are also wearing multiple hats every day. Small credit union problems, right? So that’s why recognition like this means so much to us. We know what we’re up against, and when our work stands out among organizations with significantly more resources, it’s incredibly rewarding.

So more than anything, I saw it as a recognition for our entire team and our willingness to try new things and take calculated risks and keep improving.

Sarah Snell Cooke: For sure. I know there were a number of reasons that you were named our award winner, but one thing I think—and you just touched on it—was that you made marketing about everyone and not just those labeled as marketing. Talk about that effort, the strategy behind it, as well as how it happened, how you made it actually happen.

Amber Mooney: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things I strongly believe, and this is especially working in so many different departments in the credit union industry, is that marketing doesn’t just belong to the marketing department.

Every employee influences the member experience: every conversation, every phone call, every loan closing. Every interaction that we have with members really strengthens the brand, or it can weaken it. So we worked really hard to make marketing something that everyone participated in. Some of our best ideas came from frontline employees and not me or my department.

When our employees understand that they do play a role in the member experience, they become way more invested. This creates a better experience for the member, and we end up getting better ideas and better results as a result. At the end of the day, members don’t separate their experiences with two departments, they just experience True Energy.

Sarah Snell Cooke: They don’t care what your title is, exactly.

Amber Mooney: Exactly.

Sarah Snell Cooke: And so, as far as your marketing campaigns, and you take input from everyone at every level, it sounds like for these. But you have one that was particularly successful, Hot Girl Summer.

Amber Mooney: That’s right.

Sarah Snell Cooke: Talk about how you guys came up with that and members’ reactions to it.

Amber Mooney: And I love telling this story, so thank you so much. The funny thing about Hot Girl Summer is it didn’t quite start in the marketing department. It started as an internal focus group. So we brought together everyone in our branch, including our CEO, and we asked them a simple question. We said, “What would it take for a summer vacation loan promotion to actually speak to you personally?”

And then we asked everyone to sketch out that perfect promotion. We had a lot of fun with it.

Some ideas were serious and some were completely ridiculous, and some were surprisingly insightful. So our frontline teller, Olivia, said that a Hot Girl Summer promo would catch her eye.

At first, we did have to convince the CEO that Hot Girl Summer was not inappropriate, but empowering.

Which is a book, right?

Sarah Snell Cooke: Right?

Amber Mooney: Yeah. Yes, and during that summer that we were creating this summer promotion, it was in pop culture. It was being used on social media a lot, but we didn’t see it a lot in advertising. So that’s where we were excited that we were able to use it.

So again, what came out of that exercise was a summer loan campaign that we ended up breaking into three categories. So we A, B, and C tested this promotion, and one of those segments was the Hot Girl Summer loan. Another thing that we changed during that conversation was the minimum loan amount, because historically, vacation loans were geared towards larger trips, family vacations.

But as we were talking to the branch, they were talking about how they wanted to use it maybe for a quick getaway, a long weekend, a spa day, concert tickets, or whatever made their summer a little brighter. We focused on the self-care part of that Hot Girl Summer loan, and the response was incredible.

I was ready for a little pushback, but we didn’t have any. The members loved it. We heard about it in the branch, in the call center, and in the loan department. People were genuinely surprised to see a financial institution create something that actually felt relevant to them.

So the biggest lesson was that financial institutions don’t always have to sound like financial institutions. Sometimes a little personality goes a long way.

Sarah Snell Cooke: That’s a differentiator, for sure.

Amber Mooney: Yes. And I can officially say one of my award-winning campaigns had the words Hot Girl Summer in it. Now, I have not gotten our Feral Girl Winter campaign approved, but I’m working on that.

Okay. I’m just kidding. We’re not doing that.

Sarah Snell Cooke: She’s all right looking, so girl.

Amber Mooney: Yep. It would have a picture of me wrapped in a blanket being sad on a couch. That’s Feral Girl Winter.

Sarah Snell Cooke: Now, you guys had an increase of 15% on your email performance from those campaigns, as well as a 20% increase in loan applications, so yay.

Amber Mooney: Yes.

Sarah Snell Cooke: But also part of that was modernizing your tech stack. Can you talk a little bit about what’s in your tech stack today and why?

Amber Mooney: Absolutely. So a big part of our success came from maximizing the technology that we already had before running out and getting new technology. Especially coming from a smaller credit union, we do not have the budgets that other credit unions may have for all that new technology. So we upgraded, modernized, and utilized our existing systems in a way that we hadn’t before.

We also upgraded our email platform, which gave us access to better automation and better reporting. We spent a lot of time becoming more intentional with member segmentation and personalization. And one of the newer tools that we have added is Virtus AI, which helps us identify member opportunities and create much more targeted campaigns.

So instead of sending one message to everyone, we’re becoming much more surgical in how we communicate to our members. So at the end of the day, technology wasn’t the goal, but the better member experience was the goal. Technology just helped us get there much faster and way more effectively.

Sarah Snell Cooke: Yep. And it’s a tool. It’s a good tool. But, you know…

Amber Mooney: Yeah.

Sarah Snell Cooke: …going around running and saying, “We wanna use AI,” or whatever it is, and not having a goal in mind is silly.

Amber Mooney: Right.

Sarah Snell Cooke: So yeah, that’s perfect that you also made it more efficient. And so y’all created this more cohesive multi-channel experience, like you were saying at the beginning: call center, people on the front line, marketing, all aligned, communicating with, I’m gonna say one voice, to steal that from a certain organization.

But, and you had left the credit union a couple years back. You left the credit union and came back at management’s request. And what’s the value of all these things aligned? It really sounds like you built a comprehensive brand experience for the credit union, for the members. What is the value of all that? ‘Cause I feel like it definitely makes your marketing more efficient, but…

Amber Mooney: Absolutely.

Sarah Snell Cooke: …I’ll let you answer.

Amber Mooney: Yes. No, absolutely. And when sometimes we step away from marketing and we think like a member, and we just touched on it, members don’t think in channels or departments. They don’t think, “I interacted with the email department today,” or, “the call center department today.” They simply experience the credit union. If our website says one thing or social media says another, or business development is saying something else, even if our emails sound different than our other authentic voices, our staff, members notice that disconnect.

We have to make sure that our staff delivers a cohesive message across the organization. We’ve worked really hard to align everything: the website, email marketing, social media, branch promotion, digital banking messages, and staff communications all needed to feel like they were coming from the same organization.

And the reason why we really leaned into that is because consistency really builds trust. Our members, when they see the same message reinforced across multiple touchpoints, are more likely to engage, they’re more likely to remember it and take action, and that’s where a lot of our growth came from.

Sarah Snell Cooke: Preach.

Amber Mooney: Yes. You know it.

Sarah Snell Cooke: Yes, it’s not just about throwing out your car loan rate during the summer and then your other rate during the winter. It’s building that brand that underlines it all. So, awesome. And so I always allow my guests to have their final thoughts. What would you like to leave our audience of credit union leaders with today?

Amber Mooney: Thank you so much for letting me come here and speak today. My final thought is, and probably the biggest lesson I’ve learned through marketing, is really marketing is not about marketing. It’s about people. It’s about understanding what matters to the members, what they value, communicating in a way that feels authentic to them, and making it easy for people to do business with you.

You don’t need the biggest budget to make an impact. You need creativity, you need consistency, and a willingness to listen to other ideas. Like I said, some of our best ideas came from employees, even members, and conversations that started with a simple question. So sometimes if you’re totally lucky, and if the right people are paying attention, one of those ideas turns into an award-winning campaign.

And that is my final thought.

Sarah Snell Cooke: Awesome. Thank you, and congratulations again.

Amber Mooney: Thank you again so much. It was such an honor.

Sarah Snell Cooke: Thank you for your time.

Amber Mooney: Yeah.