HONOLULU-The notion that membership in a credit union is restricted continues to haunt CUs well into an era of community charters and expanded FOMs - prompting one to take a direct approach to addressing the misconception.
Hawaii State FCU launched a microsite in 2009 whose URL was the slogan of its membership acquisition campaign: "
Visitors are greeted by three pictures: a Gen Y female proudly standing in front of a new car, a Gen X couple hugging a baby, and a retired couple enjoying a sunny day on a golf course. Hot buttons across the three pictures say, respectively, "I so want to be eligible," "I'm feeling eligible," and "Check my eligibility."
Tricia Buskirk, Hawaii State FCU's corporate development and marketing manager, said the microsite was accompanied by a membership campaign that included traditional print, radio and television media.
"All of our ads were focused on educating prospective members on how they are eligible for membership with our credit union," she said. "However, the twist was not sending prospects to our corporate website, hsfcu.com. Instead, the call to action on all of our ads was to visit the newly created microsite, ur-eligible.com. We wanted this microsite to be the membership portal for all our prospects."
The strategy behind the microsite was to be clean, simple and easy for potential members to learn about the CU, to check if they were eligible for membership, and then self-enroll, she explained. "All this without having to navigate through all of the extraneous information usually found on corporate websites that can sometimes overwhelm or even dissuade prospects from taking action."
Since launching the microsite and the media campaign, Hawaii State FCU has seen a 20% conversion rate for all visitors who submit inquiries through ur-eligible.com.
"Not overwhelmingly successful by any means, but still moderately successful enough that we see its potential to grow," assessed Buskirk. "We also have been very mindful of the type of traffic that we drive to the site. We do not want to mindlessly drive traffic for the sake of increasing click rates, such as by advertising giveaways, sweepstakes or chances to win prizes just by visiting. We only want truly interested prospects to visit the site; not people who just want to enter a sweepstakes or win prizes."
