SAN JOSE, Calif.-PremierOne Credit Union said its award-winning "Credit Zone" microsite is just one of several initiatives designed to make the CU appealing to young people.
Sara Holtz, AVP of marketing for the $334 million institution that is the result of a merger of San Jose CU and National First CU earlier this year, said its youth outreach started up with a grass-roots effort in 2012. The first step was offering financial literacy seminars at San Jose State University.
"We had such a great response from the seminars, when we emerged from the merger in April we decided to put together a hub with resources," Holtz said. "We are still leveraging seminars with a slap band. It has a recording of one of our seminars pre-loaded on it, and it reinforces the Credit Zone message."
Financial advice website NerdWallet.com offered a Gen Y Credit Union Contest, and PremierOne garnered a $1,000 grant for a credit union with $100 million to $500 million in assets. The CU said Credit Zone includes Gen Y-friendly financial literacy videos, articles, a blog, an interactive quiz and a mobile app. The goal is to teach young adults how to manage their finances, especially their credit score.
PremierOne said it plans to use the grant money to continue developing original content for the site, and developing creative marketing strategies to engage college students and young adults.
"Credit Zone is everything about credit-not only avoiding bad credit but starting good credit," said Holtz, who pointed out the title of one video is "why you should care." In it, the CU tells young adults why they should care about their credit score and what impact it will have on their daily lives.
The site went live in late June. Holtz said in August the credit score impact video had 166 views, a credit tips video had 82 views, and the Credit Zone page had 252 unique visits since it launched.
"All of which was pretty good for a newly launched page when school was not in session," Holtz said. "Since June we have doubled our Facebook followers to 1,058."
CU As A Resource
According to Holtz, PremierOne's goal with Gen Y is to be a resource for credit.
"That is a great way for us to partner with that age group," she said. "Yes, we want them to become members, but as they get into their 20s and 30s we want them to come to us for information."
To that end, the CU sends a Gen Y mailer at age 18 and 22, plus a college package that highlights products and services designed to benefit that age group.
"It all ties together," she continued. "Our strategy is to pick an educational topic for each age group. For teenagers it is checking, savings and debit cards. We feature Twitter to that age group. For youth we focus on money education, with a quarterly newsletter and a contest to get them to come into branches.
"For all these we educate younger members, which leads to more in-depth relationships-they come to us for financial information and education. We are seeing pretty good results, including 5% growth in our youth accounts since June."
