Test, Learn & Evolve: BECU’s Member Referral Program

At BECU, we’re big believers in giving back. Helping our members achieve their financial goals from start to finish is not just one of our core areas of focus – it’s at the heart of who we are as a credit union. In the true cooperative spirit, financially healthy members make for healthier communities and a healthier credit union overall.

Our goals are simple: Provide the best member care and assist our more than one million members on their financial journeys by offering great rates, fewer fees and affordable services in an effort to improve their financial health.

It’s more than just a transaction, it’s a relationship – no monetary amount compares to knowing our members feel connected enough to their credit union to voluntarily spread the word to their friends and family. It’s this notion that has driven us to create a program that truly brings to life our “people helping people” philosophy in a tangible way: BECU’s yearly Member Referral Program.

With new offers, enhanced requirements and an array of promotional avenues, this program has evolved over the past three years into a driver of membership growth for BECU as we end the year.

2015: Inception

The idea of a member referral program began when we celebrated our 80th anniversary. Originally launching in 2015, BECU collaborated across various departments – from the retail and marketing teams to the information technology and leadership teams – to develop a program that offered a limited-time referral bonus of $80 to both the member and the referral when they opened a Member Share/Member Advantage savings account and a checking account.

Relying on email as our primary promotional channel, buzz around the program continued to spread, recognizing an opportunity to not only reach a larger audience, but also give back to our members in greater ways.

Each year, at the conclusion of the promotion, efforts were made to identify opportunities, learn from mistakes and make improvements. This ethos of continuous learning and optimization has molded the Member Referral Program into what it is today.

2016: Utilization Requirements

Unlike the year prior, 2016 rewarded both the new and referring member with a $100 bonus deposit to their Member Share/Member Advantage savings account as long as they opened a checking and membership savings account and met the new active (utilization) account requirements within a 60-day period. These included having a checking account with five or more qualifying transactions in a rolling month or depositing transactions of $500 or more into the checking account in a rolling month (see “2016 Utilization Requirements”).

As a cooperative, the more people that work together, the stronger we are. That said, in order to reach more people in our communities, we used email, organic social media and paid social media posts to help generate awareness around the program. Other changes were also made along the way to help drive efforts further.

The newly-implemented utilization requirements were essential to the program for various reasons – not only would they eliminate consultants’ fulfillment on the spot, but they would also help mitigate new members opening accounts for the sole purpose of receiving the bonus, among others. Additionally, as the program continued to grow, so did its need for resources, including hiring an operations analyst. This position was responsible for building and processing fulfillment, reporting and escalations, as well as monitoring and evaluating campaign efficiencies and effectiveness.

For the program to run successfully, it was also important to know who our members were and who they were referring, and communicate to the new and referring members on the status of their bonus. These opportunities led to the development of a journey-based marketing approach, setting the tone for our efforts in 2017.

2017: Digital Innovations

As a means to understanding our members, we created a journey-based marketing approach that would provide insights into their actions, motivations, questions and obstacles. Also known as a customer journey, this approach helped share our members’ experiences interacting with the referral program, starting with the initial contact and continuing through all subsequent interactions via all touch points. In this case, we were particularly interested in learning about the new/potential and referring members’ level of awareness toward the program, if they have met the utilization requirements, and what actions were taken by the member and/or the referral, if any.

Overall, the Member Referral Program followed a similar structure to 2016, offering both the new and referring member a $100 bonus deposit to their Member Share/Member Advantage savings account within 60 days of opening qualifying accounts if they met the utilization requirements (referenced below).

In an effort to increase non-member awareness and engage existing members in referring their friends and family, outreach efforts included, but weren’t limited to, adopting new member onboarding strategies and creating an optimized landing page on Sales Force Marketing Cloud, which allowed referring members to obtain their referral code and send an email with offer details to the potential member. Printable mailers were also sent to members in Spokane, Wash., and Boeing employees in South Carolina and St. Louis, Mo., resulting from new market and affinity expansions.

According to a recent article by Pew Research, roughly 77% of Americans own a smartphone and nearly 69% of adults are currently using social media. Recognizing the digital world we live in, we also decided to tap into the digital savviness of our members by using enhanced email programs, targeted social media, search engine marketing and targeted Gmail advertisements to communicate with them.

Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Since launching our Member Referral Program in 2015, BECU’s average number of members in Q4 improved by more than 40%, specifically with a 77% increase in December of 2015 to December 2017. Although Q4 is traditionally slower for the credit union, more than 7,000 new members joined in 2017 alone, with more than 5,700 people referred. This growth not only reflects the level of passion and dedication members have toward BECU, but also demonstrates the value and trust they feel about their financial cooperative.

Nonetheless, despite the tremendous success we have seen from the Member Referral Program, there is always room for improvement. One specific example includes taking a deeper look into our fulfillment process, monitoring how quickly members are receiving their bonus and what may be causing a speed gridlock. To better the process, BECU is not only looking into vendor solutions, but also using learnings from previous mishaps to generate effective solutions moving forward.

We’re proud to look back at what began as a simple idea and acknowledge how it has evolved over time, providing us with even more resources to support the financial health of our members. Throughout the years, we have found that as much as an incentive can help achieve membership goals, it’s not the only measurement of success. In order for a program to be truly successful, and run smoothly, proper measures need to be taken to ensure efficiency and effectiveness, both with employees internally and our members externally.

As we continue to make optimizations to our Member Referral Program, we look to transform all problems into solutions that best fit the needs of our members and communities – keeping our primary focus on putting our members first.

Toby Travis is Director, Marketing Strategy for BECU.

Alexandria Berumen-Taylor is a Marketing Specialist for BECU. They can be reached at mediacontact@becu.org.