MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif.-Kinecta FCU here boosted its Facebook engagement by using mustaches and an online slot machine.
Kinecta launched it "Stache & Save" campaign as a way to increase engagement on its Facebook page and grow its number of likes. To do so, it created an online slot machine, and when users pulled the digital handle, it rotated through three different mustaches. Three matches made for an instant winner of a $50 gift certificate and was entered into a drawing for a $2,500 gift certificate.
VP-Marketing Shannon Doiron said Kinecta latched on "the obvious connotation of 'mustache' and 'stache' versus 'stashing your cash,' and we thought there was a cool connection there."
Mustache Growth
He noted that facial hair are having a resurgence in popularity, in part due to the "Movember" campaign to raise awareness about men's health issues. "We felt like the values behind what was going on with those mustache campaigns were very in line with our values as well, given that we're non-profit and focused on the community," he added.
That pairing appears to have worked.
"We saw way more growth than we were expecting," confessed Doiron. "We got 6,330 likes, and we started with just over 9,000. We saw phenomenal growth in our Facebook likes. The great thing about it is that we haven't seen any runoff since the contest. We have continued to see growth. We expected to see people play and then leave, and for the most part we kept all the new likes."
Part of the reason Kinecta FCU expected the drop off, said Doiron, is non-members were allowed to participate as well, provided that they "liked" the Kinecta Facebook page. The CU has more than 17,000 Facebook fans.
Kinecta tracked its results by using Scoreboard Social, and as a result of Stache & Save, Kinecta's engagement rate jumped to 16%, said Doiron. The $3.2-billion CU measures itself against all other major FIs (including BofA, American Express and others) that tend to average about 4% engagement. Doiron noted that a 16% engagement rate is impossible to maintain, the CU's average engagement rate remains at about 6%.
Doiron said that much of the ROI is coming in the form of the increased brand exposure the credit union received-he noted that 6 million impressions for $5,000 is pretty tough to beat-and that Kinecta has also seen an increase in usage of its Facebook loan calculators and an uptick in loan applications, though he did not have final numbers because some loans had still not been funded.
Kinecta promoted Stache & Save via its website and in-branch signage, as well as handing out small, fuzzy mustaches at the branch. Doiron said that part of the campaign's strong success lies in the fact that front line staff was integrated into it to help drive members to the CU's Facebook page.
Getting Younger
Doiron admitted Kinecta officials had a bit of hesitation about using a slot machine in its promotion, but he said that "prior to this campaign, our major Facebook demographics were from 35-55, so we are maybe missing a bit of a younger demographic that we weren't penetrating enough on facebook. While we did think maybe some of the older, more mature members might have reservations about (the slot machine), we felt like it fit in really well with the demographic we were trying to rope in on this campaign."
Doiron said Kinecta has seen "large movement in our base of 18-25 year olds through that campaign," and is starting to see an uptick of auto loans from that same demographic.
