LEXINGTON, Ky.-One credit union's message that putting lipstick on a bank doesn't change the fact it's a bank is being credited for driving new memberships here.
University of Kentucky FCU is reporting new member sign-ups were up sharply during January following launch of its new brand awareness campaign.
More than 700 new accounts were opened at UKFCU in January, 529 of which included its checking product. During the same period one year earlier, 576 new members joined, with 362 signing up for checking.
The campaign uses the theme "You can put lipstick on a bank, but it's still a bank," playing off the old saw that lipstick on a pig still leaves you with a pig. Megin Morgan, member development specialist at the CU, came up with the concept more than a year ago, but it was put on the backburner in favor of other campaigns.
"Looking back on it, I'm not sure why we waited so long," said John Heimlich, director of marketing.
A Little Buzz
The campaign includes billboards, social media, postcards, print ads and more, all directing consumers to the campaign's landing page, www.lipstickonabank.com.
"We threw that out there without much explanation, so we got a little buzz going on as to 'What is this, what's this all about?,' and we really directed people to go to the site," said Greg Baker, VP of sales & marketing. "We didn't use any of our logos until you get to the site, so there was a surprise factor or curiosity factor that I think helped drive a lot of this."
Since it was launched at the start of 2012, the microsite has received more than 3,300 unique visitors, but Baker noted that the campaign will "be difficult to track in terms of what real lift we got from this from new accounts. But January was our largest month of new accounts for January in our history. ... That's normally a fairly sleepy month for us."
He added that University of Kentucky FCU has not yet delved deep enough into other metrics to determine the number of other relationships new members are establishing..
UKFCU plans to run the campaign for just 60 days, but Baker indicated it might revive it later this fall. The microsite will stay up even after the billboards go down, however. Whether or not the campaign comes back in the fall will depend on how the final numbers come out.
"We're going to look at January and February, and we'd like to see at least a 10-15% lift over our January and February new account numbers," said Baker. "That, for me, would be a success story. So far I can say that our January numbers are about 25% over where they normally are."
Even after the campaign ends, UKFCU will have an aggressive onboarding process, including following up with phone calls and mail after the member joins. Beyond that, the credit union tries to primarily reach the member via the channel that originally brought the member to the CU. "Increasingly, that's electronic," said Baker.
The 'E-Branch Unit'
UKFCU utilizes an "e-branch unit" within its call center, "and these are the people that really just deal with members on the channel through which they want to be communicated with. If you opened an account online, that's how we're going to communicate with you. We're going to use your e-mail address and communicate through e-mail. These are also the folks that use our (online) Live Chat."
Despite a growing number of members using online channels, Baker said that new members for January joined through a variety of avenues. "You would think because we're promoting a website that you might see more coming through e-channels, but it was pretty spread out."
