ROSEVILLE, Mich.-For Christian Financial Credit Union, winning the $2,000 grand prize in NerdWallet's Gen Y Credit Union Contest is the gift that keeps on giving.
Rebekah Monroe, Christian Financial's marketing manager, said the $288 million CU was looking for a way to drive engagement on Twitter, which it was not able to do previously because it had a smaller marketing department. For the Gen Y contest, the CU devised a "social media scavenger hunt."
"We did a test run earlier this year," she recalled. "We posted photo clues on Instagram and Twitter telling people where our representatives were out in public that day. The first to find the representatives won $100."
Another part of this initiative was encouraging followers to post a picture of something they wanted to save for, Monroe noted.
"Every day for a week we had something engaging on some level," she said. "We want to educate and engage Gen Y folks through social media, so getting them to talk about what they want is a good start. We want to continue to grow that. Winning the grant from NerdWallet really will help. We have not yet nailed down all the details of what we are going to do next. We will have a bigger prize, but we also will be purchasing a video camera for the marketing department to do more videos on YouTube."
The next, larger version of the social media scavenger hunt probably will take place in July 2014. Monroe said summer works "really well" because college students are off school.
"We tested the pilot in July and that worked well. We wanted to stay away from August since so many people go back to school."
Short Attention Span
The importance of video in credit union marketing is big to Monroe, who said videos are getting shorter and shorter. The Vine mobile service shows only seven-second videos, while Instagram limits videos to 15 seconds.
"That is the world Gen Y members live in-their attention spans are so short," she said with a laugh. "How do you sum up everything your credit union does, everything you believe in, in seven seconds? It is imperative to tell our story in a concise way. I do not think we have cracked the code yet, but that is part of the development process."
Christian Financial will use the prize money to "really drive that engagement" and help the CU bring in younger members, she continued.
"I think we are doing a good job on Gen Y growth. We have the products Gen Y folks are looking for, but there are other ways we can continue to engage with them. We revamped our youth programs over the past year to add more tools for life decisions and landmarks-going to college, getting their first job, first house, getting married."
