Play ball
The Woodbridge, Va. credit union had launched a "For Life" awareness campaign, aligning its products with the different "life stages" of its members – everything from buying a first car, to having a baby, to changing jobs, to entering retirement. To promote the campaign, the credit union realigned its website around this theme. But it needed an effective way to drive more members to the site, where they could learn more about the credit union's products suited to their life stage. Belvoir FCU found the solution through an interactive CU Web Hunt game.
Working with its e-marketing provider DigitalMailer and the CU marketing technology company Code Green, Belvoir FCU launched the Web Hunt game and contest this past spring. To play, members explored the website, read about the credit union's products, and found "slices of life" icons that completed a pie chart. Once members had navigated the website and found all nine pieces of the pie, they were entered in a prize drawing.
To help announce and promote the contest, Belvoir turned to the Automatic Relationship Builder (ARB) email program to target its members with tailored messages and measure the delivery and open-rate responses. Belvoir FCU members were sent a series of five customized emails to alert them to contest dates and prizes. Over the course of the 45-day campaign, more than 70,000 messages were delivered, measuring above-average in click-through rates. On the first day alone, 95 visitors logged on and entered the contest.
The CU Web Hunt game system was developed by Code Green, which used the credit union's website as the "game board" for the Web Hunt. The marketing company, which develops interactive web technologies specifically targeted to the challenges facing credit union marketers, has worked with Belvoir FCU for many years on a variety of projects, including a previous online treasure hunt game, the BranchMap ATM and branch locator, and the MemberCheck membership eligibility tool.
Final Score
Overall, the contest helped Belvoir FCU surpass its marketing goals by 400 percent. "Our expectations were greatly exceeded when we saw the final numbers," said Belvoir FCU's Amy Shanks.
During the 45-day contest, the credit union's website drew 134,380 viewers – nearly 40,000 more than during Belvoir FCU's new website launch the previous year. In addition, total page views almost doubled, and visitors spent an average of 12 minutes navigating through the site. "That's a very sticky website for us," said Shanks.
And considering the original purpose of the "For Life" campaign was to increase members awareness of Belvoir FCU's products and services, Shanks says there's no doubt of its success. "We definitely know our members are aware of what products and services we have now," she said.
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Ron Daly is president of DigitalMailer. Contact him at rdaly@digitalmailer.com. For more information on Code Green, visit www.codegreen.org.
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