NEW YORK — Befitting a credit union with a heavily international membership, United Nations FCU has seen a strong response to a World Cup bracket challenge that it launched shortly before the quadrennial soccer tournament kicked off in mid-June.
The game was the brainchild of Natalia Grgurev, senior marketing associate at the $4 billion credit union, who suggested the game after barely a month on the job.
"I have a personal love of soccer, so given the United Nations and the international landscape of [the CU's staff and membership], I was curious to what we do-if we do anything-around the World Cup," Grgurev said. "My colleagues gave me some background, and I thought it might be a good idea to create this kind of game." The aim, she continued, was to engage members and staff, boost membership "and hopefully gain some business from it."
Known as the UNFCU World Football Championship Challenge, the competition asks participants to select winners from the World Cup's opening group stage on through the knock-out round, quarterfinals, semifinals and championship game.
The winner will receive a $100 gift card from the credit union and soccer balls autographed by select players from the 1970's New York Cosmos squad, which was a perennial powerhouse in the North American Soccer League, fielding players such as Pele, Franz Beckenbauer and more. Grgurev's father Fred played for the Cosmos during the 1978 season and was able to help the credit union secure the signatures.
Grgurev pitched the project just four weeks before the World Cup kicked off, which meant that UNFCU's Web design staff had to hustle to design and complete the site.
"We knew it would be quite challenging-we had four weeks to get it up and running," said Carlos Morales, marketing technology manager. The project was split into two teams, with one team each managing front- and back-end functionalities of the website and building out the contest.
"Over the period of time that these guys had to do it, they did an incredible job of piecing this thing together," said Morales. "For the back end there was a lot of database interactivity for us to stare the information and allow individuals to come back and make changes to their brackets. There was a lot that came into it."
On the front-end, said Jeff Lambert, web specialist, "really it was me and a computer going through all the different brackets that are available on different websites. All I found was real flat, white-page bracket designs, and I talked with Natalia about it and we wanted to incorporate more of a football feel to it. We started from there and within a week the design and front-end development were pretty much complete."
Goals, Goals, Goals
While the contest's website does have a series of rotating ads for various credit union products and services, "my idea was to maximize engagement," said Grgurev, adding that "I really wanted to incorporate UNFCU and our products and members into this game as much as possible."
The credit union promoted the World Football Championship Challenge via its website, social media and e-mail, sending emails to nearly 65,000 members. E-mail blasts got the most significant response, with 13,142 "unique opens" (20.3%). Ten percent of those who opened the e-mail took action, and two follow-up e-mails were sent to members who had opened the e-mail but not yet participated (with 17.7% and 11.7% unique open rates).
All told, more than 2,300 people signed up over the course of a ten-day registration period. Participants were not required to be UNFCU members to play.
All three UNFCU representatives said that it is too soon to say if the bracket challenge has garnered any new business for the credit union, but it is tracking click-through rates on all of its banner ads.
"The one that caught the most engagement was 'Become A Member,' and it did have a lot of individuals participating who are not members at this time," said Morales. "But in regards to the rest of the banners, all the banners have some traction. I'm not going to say it has had as much traction as we have on our home page, but we did pick up on engagement with our individual campaigns."
Because the competition won't end until after the World Cup final on July 13, Morales said it was too early to say to what extent the challenge has had an effect on business.
There were no major expenses associated with developing the game, aside from the developers' time and the costs of purchasing the soccer ball and the $100 gift card. UNFCU has never run any sort of bracket challenge like this, though web specialist Lambert said that he took some inspiration from the "Billion Dollar Bracket" challenge that is popular during March Madness
'How Much This Means To People'
Morales credited the "sincere loyalty between UNFCU members and the credit union" as fueling the strong interest in the game.
Grgurev, who is Croatian, said that she "wasn't really fearful that it wouldn't resonate with the members; Being of European background, I completely understand how much this means to people."
While the credit union may be diverse, the participants' predictions for the 2014 World Cup champion were not. Brazil, the host nation, was overwhelmingly selected as the likely champion, with Germany following at a distant second place to win.
Both nations' teams are scheduled to play each other in the semi-finals Tuesday.
