Cornerstone Advisor’s Latest Report Shows CUs How to Mind the ROI Gap in Marketing

By W.B. King

Credit union and fintech marketing leaders who are unsure of how best to budget for campaigns aren’t alone. Nearly six in 10 of the senior marketing executives said their core or CRM system limits the ability to measure marketing’s ROI. These are among findings in Cornerstone Advisors’ latest report, The Marketing ROI Gap in Banking: How Financial Institutions Spend, Measure, and (Struggle to) Prove Marketing’s Value.

“The tools available to marketers have never been more powerful—or more complex. Search platforms, social networks, affiliate partnerships, programmatic advertising, and AI-driven discovery channels offer unprecedented targeting and reach,” noted report authors Chief Research Officer Ron Shevlin and Director Abbie Jones. “But these same channels also fragment the customer journey across multiple touchpoints, making it harder to know which marketing efforts influence account openings, loan applications, and customer relationships.”

The report was commissioned by the Vancouver, British Columbia-based Fintel Connect, which provides marketing solutions exclusively for the financial industry. “Financial institutions are being asked to make smarter marketing decisions in an environment that is more complex, more competitive, and harder to measure than ever,” noted the company’s CEO and Founder Nicky Senyard. “This report gives bank and credit union marketers, for the first time, a scorecard on marketing ROI: clear, industry-specific insight into how their peers are spending, which channels are performing, and where measurement is breaking down."

Evaluating Outcomes

In January and February 2026, 126 senior executives at U.S.-based banks and credit unions were surveyed for what Senyard explained was a “first-of-its-kind report.” Two-thirds of respondents are senior marketing leader in their organization, and 13% are CEOs. Over half (52%) work at credit unions, 48% work at banks. Approximately six in 10 of those polled work at institutions with assets between $1 billion and $10 billion.

Thirty-one percent believe they credit the wrong marketing channel, while another 26% remain uncertain. Not one institution surveyed, Senyard added, said it could reliably attribute marketing results to all the outcome measures evaluated in the report.

The respondents were also asked, “How is the marketing budget allocated across key marketing objectives?” The response: “In 2026, 22% of the budget will go to new customer (or member) acquisition, with slightly smaller percentages allocated to product campaigns, brand awareness, and customer engagement. The year-over-year decline in the percentage spent on brand awareness is driven by banks who allocated 20% of their 2025 marketing budget on this objective but have only allocated 17% to that objective in 2026.”

To adjust for campaign misfires, or simply trying to hit a moving target, seven in 10 institutions polled said it’s common to modify budgets throughout the year. “Executive requests and competitive actions are the most common triggers for changing where the marketing dollars go, cited by just over half (53%) of the respondents,” the report stated.

Among the 10 marketing spend evaluated, 54% of banks and 80% of credit unions invest in six or more of the following: email marketing (85%), branch/in-person (83%) display/programmatic (78%), paid social (77%), paid search (73%), organic search/AI-driven discovery (71%), direct mail (60%), OTT (over-the top/streaming)/CTV connected) (59%), and affiliate/partner marketing (32%).

While paid search and display/programmatic were cited as the two marketing channels representing the largest share of marketing spend, the report also noted: “Although email marketing wasn’t mentioned as one of the channels that account for the largest share of marketing spend, nearly half of the survey respondents put it in their list of the two channels delivering the strongest ROI. Paid search was cited by 38% of institutions as delivering a strong ROI.”

Claiming a Strategic Role in Growth

The 31-page report offered additional research, feedback and advice on marketing budgets, channels, measurement and effectiveness.

“The biggest challenge facing marketing leaders in financial institutions may not be channel selection or marketing technology, but how marketing is perceived inside the organization,” Shevlin and Jones said. “In many institutions, marketing still operates as an internal ad agency for the lines of business, executing campaigns after product, pricing, and target market decisions have already been made,” they added. “When marketing’s role is defined this way, its impact is judged by activity rather than outcomes.”

In conclusion, the report’s authors said marketing leaders must be willing to place a target on their back and claim a strategic role in growth, which requires accepting a higher level of accountability.

“It means moving beyond campaign execution and inserting marketing into the conversations where decisions about products, segments, and distribution are made. Until marketing leaders take ownership of that role, the perception of marketing as a support function will persist,” the report noted. “And debates about which channels deliver the best ROI will continue to distract from a more fundamental issue: whether marketing is leading growth or simply promoting it.”