SALT LAKE CITY - Members who use business services at Mountain America Credit Union may feel a little more adventurous, and willing to take advantage of the credit union's services thanks to a unique member appreciation event.
Nearly 300 such members and their families came to an exclusive showing of "Indiana Jones: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," complete with free food and no lines.
Michael Turner, SVP-commercial lending, said he had seen this kind of event work at other organizations and figured it may do the same for Mountain America. While the previous event he attended had but a brief welcome and some free snacks to go along with the movie, MACU's member appreciation day was prefaced by a networking session.
"While we had these people for the event we could really leverage a lot of different things," Turner said. "We could allow them time to network, we could feed them a little bit and we could give them an opportunity to hear about our products and services."
MACU, which serves more than 304,000 members and $2.7 billion in assets, has done member appreciation events in the past, but nothing like this.
"We had done an open house in the spring that was primarily for the purpose of networking," said Turner, noting that the event was a success. "We decided to kind of tag that on, not just have (business members) come in, shuffle them into the theatre and show them a movie. I think we will definitely do this again in the future because we had such positive feedback."
MACU targeted business service members because of the group's growth potential and the fact that it is a hot commodity among credit unions right now.
"It's one of our fastest growing segments and there seems to be a lot of opportunity there," Turner said.
Business account executives and lenders took the lead in promoting the event, said Nathan Anderson, SVP-marketing and sales. "We did some mailings, but we tried to have a lot of them hand-delivered as well."
A number of business representatives attended the appreciation day as well to mingle among the crowd during the networking session and answer any questions that members had.
Measuring return on this type of event is difficult, but it certainly built up goodwill among the business member community. MACU lent a personal touch to the event after Indy was done cracking his whip as representatives shook hands with every single member as they departed the theater. The result, Turner noted, was "300 smiling faces."
"Mountain American is a really family friendly org that emphasizes work-life balance," he added. "In a day and age when large financial institutions are accused of being impersonal, here's an event where people could spend a lot of one-on-one time with them."(c) 2008 The Credit Union Journal and SourceMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved.http://www.cujournal.com/ http://www.sourcemedia.com/
