ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.–More than 450 credit unions are now participating in a new program that not only provides a steady stream of social media content, but which also offers new tools for dicing up that content, gets “fans” to push the content out themselves, and even speaks to the Holy Grail of social media investments by providing data around specific effectiveness and ROI.
Called “Engagement Builder,” the program is the culmination of three years of lessons learned and experiences gained as PSCU has offered the “Make Your Money Matter” and “Make Your Loan Matter” campaigns, both of which targeted members and consumers. The company has also announced a new partnership with Salesforce as part of Engagement Builder.
The result of all that, PSCU said, is that it has “unlocked a valuable formula for transforming happy credit union members into active brand advocates. We’ve found that credit union members of all ages are eager to support, promote and defend their credit union on a long-term basis.”
Myles Bristowe, VP-marketing strategy with PSCU, said the Make Your Money Matter campaign has reached 31 million people on Facebook over the past three years, and another 4.6 million on Twitter.
“We have been creating content for credit unions to share through their social channels, and that has allowed us to test content at scale,” said Bristowe. “We can see it in every market and at CUs with 500 fans and 5,000 fans. We have learned some interesting lessons in engagement.”
Going 'Crazy Viral'
Bristowe, who noted credit unions have some of the highest satisfaction levels among consumers of any industry, said one of those lessons has been which content goes “crazy viral” and which does not.
“The best stuff is written in the first person, such as ‘I love my credit union,’” shared Bristowe. “The largest group of friends and followers are already members, so if it’s true for them they are likely to share. The ‘These are our rates’ messages are OK, but don’t work as well and do not go viral. So we have been doing more and more campaigns with something the member could believe in. Members are the largest marketing force in credit unions.”
The goal behind Engagement Builder is to do just what its name implies and to turn members into “advocates.” A feature piece of Engagement Builder is an arrangement PSCU has with Salesforce, which has made numerous acquisitions in the social media space. As part of its agreement, PSCU is able to extend its license for Salesforce’s Social Studio, a sophisticated tool that allows users to “analyze conversations from over 650 million different sources across the globe,” to credit unions for free.
“It’s a huge market advantage,” said Bristowe.
Four Tools For Engagement
Engagement Builder includes four tools:
1. Listening. “We are pulling in all mention of credit unions and then providing it to credit unions to filter and use,” said Bristowe. “It is anything credit union related and includes a sentiment engine that is very powerful and can sort the positives and the negatives. The social media tool has a great dashboard that allows you to monitor by channel, mainstream media, trade media and more. You can dice it up how you wish.”
2. Publishing. “We provide credit unions with content,” said Bristowe. “For those who subscribe to Engagement Builder you can use Social Studio to send out content.” Bristowe said there are also workflows available to help credit unions manage their communications via social media.
3. Measurement. “This was asked for the most by credit unions that want to be able to measure ROI,” he said. “We can track social down to accounts being opened as a result. Every tweet has its own unique URL, so we can see this led to this, or generated this click, or led to this account. Social media often has soft metrics, but we can also now measure the bottom line.” Performance benchmarks can also be set.
4. Engage. This piece helps to create localized campaigns and streamlines responses, said Bristowe. “This is using Salesforce for social CRM,” said Bristowe. “You can build a social influencer score; it’s like a real-time Net Promoter Score. We have three years of testing effectiveness.”
The 'Secret'
Bristowe said PSCU has been beta-testing Engagement Builder since June and it’s now fully available.
The new tool does allow credit unions to integrate their own content with that being produced by PSCU, said Bristowe, emphasizing how important that is. “You can use ours or not. They can edit text and graphics and make it their own. Credit unions want to have local relevance and their own brand.”
Another critical function of Engagement Builder, said Bristowe, is that it allows credit unions to generate content with regular frequency, which most CUs lack in the social space. Some credit unions, he said, are posting social content a few times per week, while others are posting several times per day.
“Fans and followers come to expect it,” he said.
The new tools can also tell a credit union the times of the day its social content are most effective, which he said has proven to be different for different credit unions.
“But being consistent is the secret,” said Bristowe.
Engagement Builder is available at three levels:
- The first is the Open Plan, which is available for free and provides monthly content.
- The second is the Easy Plan, which is $199 a month and provides weekly content.
- The third is the Plus Plan, which provides daily content to credit unions.
For more info: https://engage.pscu.com/the-impact.html