Dort Financial Credit Union turned a modest engagement into 19,600+ new accounts, $364M in balances, and a model for growth across two states.
New accounts opened
In balances generated
Cost per account
Primary Objective:
Grow lending and deposits among existing members, expand membership in Michigan and Florida, and cross-sell into business accounts — all with campaign spend tied directly to measurable results.
Solutions:
Acquire, Cross-Sell, Opportunity Assessment
About Dort Financial Credit Union:
Dort Financial Credit Union is a not-for-profit financial cooperative founded in 1951, with a mission of enriching people's lives: members, employees, and community. Dort serves members across all of Michigan and in Palm Beach, Martin, Hendry, and Broward counties in Florida through 16 combined branches.
Learn more at dortonline.org.
Dort Financial Credit Union has been serving Michigan communities since 1951. By the time Adam Koishor joined as Chief Strategy Officer four years ago, the credit union had grown to 12 Michigan branches and was expanding into Florida through the acquisition of a four-location bank in Palm Beach County.
Growth was absolutely happening. Proving exactly how and why it was happening was another matter.
Dort’s internal marketing team was running campaigns in-house, but performance metrics lived mostly in gut instinct, fragmented spreadsheets, and incomplete reporting. There was no clean way to tie a specific dollar spent to a specific account opened. They couldn't definitively say which segments responded, which zip codes outperformed, or which campaigns triggered a deposit.
To complicate matters, Koishor was building Dort's internal business intelligence capability from scratch. The data existed, but the small team lacked the bandwidth to make it actionable at scale while managing a two-state expansion.
The relationship began through a referral from SRM, a credit union consulting partner. What turned an introductory conversation into a full engagement was OptimaFI's Opportunity Assessment.
The assessment handed Dort's leadership team a peer- benchmarked view of exactly where they stood: product penetration by household, member engagement gaps, acquisition potential by market. For a leadership team hungry for data, it provided an immediate, shared foundation for every strategic decision that followed.
“The Opportunity Assessment really told us where we needed to go, what the best targets were, and how to proceed. Each year, several people on our senior team sit in on it because they want to see how the opportunities identified align with our strategic plan.”
Adam Koishor
Chief Strategy Officer, Dort Financial Credit Union
With the roadmap established, OptimaFI deployed a multi-dimensional campaign structure designed to move multiple levers at once: lending cross-sells to existing members, aggressive new member acquisition, deposit generation, and business banking.
The turning point for internal adoption was the business model itself: Pay-for-Performance. Because OptimaFI carried the upfront campaign risk and Dort only paid for verified results, the friction of budget approval vanished. The conversation with the CFO instantly flipped from justifying an expense to tracking a high-yielding return.
“Anytime you go into a relationship and there's a fairly substantial investment, you're not sure quite how it's going to go. CFOs tend to look at the expense and go, 'Hey, are we really going to see a return?' At this point, there's no question on the return we've received. The results speak for themselves.”
Adam Koishor
Chief Strategy Officer, Dort Financial Credit Union
You can't use a Michigan playbook in South Florida. Michigan was a mature, high-penetration market requiring a sophisticated cross-sell and upsell strategy to deepen existing member relationships. Florida was a cold conquest market where brand awareness was low and the very concept of a credit union required consumer education.
“Florida is very different from the Michigan market. There aren't as many credit unions there. People don't quite understand whether they can join. We really needed to hit that market hard — and with OptimaFI's help, we were really pleased with the amount of not only acquisition, but member engagement, cross-selling, and upsell.”
Adam Koishor
Chief Strategy Officer, Dort Financial Credit Union
OptimaFI calibrated the engine for both realities, shifting weight between acquisition and relationship-deepening as Dort's Florida membership base grew and new cross- sell opportunities emerged.
Dort's marketing team shares creative direction with OptimaFI to maintain brand consistency. From there, OptimaFI handles segmentation, targeting, campaign build, artwork, and launch reducing the execution burden on Dort's team significantly. When rate changes required mid-flight adjustments, campaigns were paused, updated, and relaunched without disrupting the broader program.
Quarterly reviews became a standing rhythm: Koishor shares campaign reporting with the executive team, the CFO works directly with OptimaFI to track return on spend, and the team makes adjustments to segmentation and market focus based on what the data shows.
“The reporting OptimaFI provides has raised the bar for what we expect when we track campaigns internally. I've told my business intelligence team I want everything tracked the way OptimaFI tracks it.”
Adam Koishor
Chief Strategy Officer, Dort Financial Credit Union
Since launching campaigns with OptimaFI in 2024, Dort Financial has opened over 19,600 new accounts and generated nearly $364 million in balances across lending, deposits, and new member acquisition. Cost per account has come down to approximately $30 as campaign performance has compounded , and new member household acquisition costs have run as low as $84.
These weren't short-lived, front-loaded wins. Because the program routinely outran its annual performance caps ahead of schedule, campaigns frequently pushed into bonus territory, delivering incremental accounts and balances to Dort at zero additional cost. Response rates consistently maintained double-digit performance, shattering industry benchmarks.
Beyond the core objectives, the strategy triggered a massive relationship cascade, drawing in an additional $38 million in halo balances. For a credit union that started with a modest initial engagement, those compounding wins have made an undeniable case for sustained, growing investment year over year.
“We've opened over 19,000 accounts and seen fantastic balances follow. We're extremely pleased with the results, and going into this year, we expanded our reach and our investment in the campaigns. The results speak for themselves.”
Adam Koishor
Chief Strategy Officer, Dort Financial Credit Union
The wins weren't just financial. OptimaFI's reporting reset the internal standard for how Dort tracks every campaign it runs — including in-house programs. The quarterly data cadence has become a leadership alignment tool, giving the executive team and CFO consistent visibility into what's working and what to build next.
In 2026, Dort added commercial deposit and acquisition campaigns to the program — expanding into business banking with the same approach that drove consumer results. As Florida's membership base matures, cross-sell campaigns are beginning to follow the acquisition campaigns that built it.
“If another credit union was thinking about working with OptimaFI and was skeptical, I'd tell them: have OptimaFI share the results from other credit unions. Our results have been fantastic, far beyond what we ever expected.”
Adam Koishor
Chief Strategy Officer, Dort Financial Credit Union
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