MAC Award Winners Reveal Social Media Campaign Secrets

The ubiquity of social media has made it part of most credit unions’ marketing conversations these days, but creating effective social media campaigns isn’t easy – just ask the six credit unions that won awards from the Marketing Association of Credit Unions (MAC) for their social media campaigns this year.

They’ll tell you that effective social media campaigns require far more work than just sending tweets or posting on Facebook a couple of times a week, and they require knowing far more than just the difference between a Snap and a Pin or how to upload video. They’ll also tell you that effective social media campaigns can do far more than just “get your name out there.”

Here, two of those 2018 MAC award winners share details about their award-winning social media campaigns, what trends they reflect and how other credit unions can create killer social media campaigns.

USF Federal Credit Union

Campaign name: “Show the Love”

Timeframe: February 2017

Goal: Increase the size of the credit union’s Facebook audience.

Approach: For a chance to win $100, members “like” the credit union’s Facebook page and describe what they love about being a member.

Notable tactics: The credit union bought $500 in Facebook ads targeting 25,000 credit union members who didn’t already “like” the page. Primarily they were 18 to 34 (65%) years old and 62% were female. It also promoted the contest via banner ads on the credit union’s website, online banking platform and branch digital screens.

“Our credit union has had a presence on social media – Facebook and Twitter – since 2011. Several years went by and those pages were not actively maintained,” USF FCU Digital Strategist Reagan Pape said.

The credit union focused on Facebook because that’s where its biggest social media audience was, and those audience members were engaging with the credit union’s posts, Pape noted.

“During the promotion we had around 300 participants, and we saw roughly a 25% increase in page likes. Our goal was a 10%, so this was much more than we expected,” he said.

The momentum continued after the campaign ended, too. “At the conclusion of the sweepstakes, we had around 1,000 members that had liked our page. This was around March of last year. And now that number has doubled to almost 2,000,” Pape explained. “So we’re growing at a very steady pace, and the sweepstakes really put the fire behind that to really get us moving.”

The campaign work was done in-house, he said, and it was the credit union’s first time doing paid advertising on Facebook.

“That was kind of something new for us, but it was very manageable and something that all credit unions could do. Very affordable,” Pape explained.

LGE Community Credit Union

Campaign name: Achiever Scholarship video contest

Timeframe: February and March 2017

Goal: Increase engagement with high school seniors and undergraduate college students, ultimately to increase membership.

Approach: Avoid the humdrum, essay-based scholarship contest format and instead challenge students to create a 60-second video about why it’s important to be smart with your money. Five winners each get $3,000 scholarships.

Notable tactics: The credit union had its own YouTube channel to host the videos; promotion also took place via Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

“For us it’s trying to reach a younger audience to get them an introduction to our brand when they’re in high school,” Scott Brooks, LGE Community’s vice president of marketing and business development, said. Educating that target audience when they’re about to make some big choices was important.

“They need a checking account. They need a credit card to help pay for some bills here or there. Or they need their first car loan, or they need a student loan. So it’s really that decision-making for an early life stage,” he explained.

Dodging the traditional written format for applications and using video was also important.

“We got some really unique, creative students who submitted some things, and it was very well received,” he said. “You could tell the ones that put the time and energy in versus some of the essays that we got in the past – it seemed like parents were writing those. It was a win-win to see the creativity as well as ultimately being able to share those on social media.”

The credit union also set aside one scholarship for the entry that got the most votes on YouTube, Brooks said.

“It gave them the chance to go out and ask their friends and families to watch, and so for us it’s that word of mouth that’s getting the introduction of the credit union brand to people who maybe didn’t see us or didn’t know about us,” he explained. “And so it created a different traffic for us that we typically wouldn’t see.”

The campaign generated over 4,000 votes and over 24,000 visits this year, and the production costs were $330, according to the credit union.

The credit union does contents almost monthly, Brooks added.

“We’re trying to do some fun things because to be honest with you, who really wants to follow their financial institution on social media/?” he said.

Six Steps to Building Great Social Media Campaigns

1. Acknowledge that social media management is a real job. Building and running social media campaigns requires actual skilled labor. Whether that’s a full-time job at a credit union, however, depends on resources and goals, Amber Fielder, MAC’s board chair and marketing manager at Xceed Financial Credit Union in El Segundo, Calif., said. “Realistically, most credit unions don’t have that luxury, so I think that adding it to someone’s job description and having them split their time 50/50 between social media and some of the other marketing tasks is typically the way I’ve seen it.”
2. Use the correct platforms. “If you’re a SEG-based credit union, you’d better make sure you’re on LinkedIn. Be on LinkedIn, be on Facebook, be on Twitter,” Fielder advised. “If you are a university-based credit union, make sure that you have a Snapchat presence – Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, all of those things. It’s knowing who your core is and going to those platforms.”
3. Show it. “One of the things that I notice more than anything is that a lot of [winning credit union social media campaigns] have a really great use of video, which we keep hearing now: Video, video, video, that’s what people want,” Fielder said. Some of the best aren’t much longer than 15 seconds, she noted.
4. Choose what you’re going to measure. One of the distinctly useful aspects of social media is that credit unions can measure how many people saw, clicked on and engaged with their promotions. But early on, decide which specific metrics will measure your success, Fielder warned. That data helps calculate true returns on investment in social media, and it allows marketers to prove that social media is worthwhile, she said.
5. Make sure it’s in the budget. “If a credit union has a very small social media presence and they want to see significant results from growth initiatives, a marketing budget is a must. Every business of every size you can imagine is now on social media and fighting for space in users’ newsfeeds. It’s very much pay to play in 2018,” Pape said.
6. Don’t try to do it all in a day. Successful social media campaigns have a lot going on behind the scenes, so factor that into the timing. For Brooks, putting the video-submission process together took time. Plus, the judges had to watch over 100 videos and select the winners. “It’s a lot of work to do a contest,” he said. But it’s worth the time and energy, he added. “Ultimately when you’re creating something, if you can have fun with it and the member or the person who’s participating can have fun with it, then they’re getting something out of your brand that maybe they’re not getting out of other brands that are associated in the financial world.”

Meet the Winners: 2018 MAC Awards for Social Media

CoastHills Credit Union

Headquarters: Lompoc, Calif.

Assets: $1.1 billion

Members: 67,000

Financial Center First Credit Union

Headquarters: Indianapolis, Ind.

Assets: $565 million

Members: 61,000

Hawaii Central Federal Credit Union

Headquarters: Honolulu, Hawaii

Assets: $277 million

Members: 19,000

LGE Community Credit Union

Headquarters: Marietta, Ga.

Assets: $1.3 billion

Members: 110,000

Listerhill Credit Union

Headquarters: Muscle Shoals, Ala.

Assets: $786 million

Members: 91,000

USF Federal Credit Union

Headquarters: Tampa, Fla.

Assets: $656 million

Members: 59,000