01/30/2009

Are you asking your members for input and ideas?

By Tim McAlpine

My credit union doesn't ask for my input. In fact, it doesn't ask me for anything other than my username and password. I would imagine this is typical for many credit union members, especially as we move away from personal interactions and towards doing all of our business online.

It's really too bad since one of the attributes credit unions lean on most is a claim of better personal service. This loss of personal interaction puts a lot of distance between you and your credit union members.

If you are looking for a way to reconnect with your members and to find out what they are thinking and needing, you should study this website.

This is some information from Starbucks' top-prize-winning entry in the 2008 Groundswell Awards in the Embracing category.

MyStarbucksIdea.com is the first social media website from Starbucks. Our mission is to help us connect with our customers by co-creating the future of the company with them.

MSI (as it is known to the community) has four components:

Share: Where community members post their Starbucks Idea. Anyone can post an idea.

Vote: The site let's you easily see what other people have suggested and vote on the ideas you agree with. The community decides what's important and what is not.

Discuss: Inline comment streams allow community members to discuss ideas with other customers and about 40 Starbucks Idea Partners from various departments answer questions and provide insights to the discussions.

See: The "Ideas in Action" tab is the proof. Here is where we announce what actions have been taken and have further discussion around top ideas.

These four components provide a ongoing loop of discussion, interaction and, ultimately, action.

MyStarbucksIdea.com is the first true two-way conversation point for customers and the company to interact on a wide scale. We've found that customers very much want to have this conversation.

Traffic to the site has been immense right from the beginning. But the participation rates have been what is truly exciting. We've had nearly 75,000 ideas submitted in less than six months, with many ideas receiving thousands of votes and hundreds of comments.

Some ideas have been surprising to us: the top all-time idea is around having "Great Conversations" at Starbucks. More often, however, it has helped us prioritize our current efforts and initiatives.

From big ideas, like healthier morning and food options and bold coffee discussions, to smaller initiatives such as a "reusable cold cup," in just a few short months My Starbucks Idea has become a major force in helping direct the future of the company.

People sure are passionate about their coffee! Being that credit unions are built on co-operative principles, I think something like this could work wonders for a credit union that is really open to member participation.

What do you think?

Subscribe today + RSS + Blog by E-mail + E-newsletter + Follow me on Twitter

---

 

01/26/2009

Do you want some TARP?

By Tim McAlpine

 
I am not an expert on the US economy (or the Canadian economy for that matter). I can't profess to know which side is up in the current economic situation. All I know is that any discussion about TARP funds gets a lot of US credit union advocates pretty upset. See here and here and here and here.

Oh, and the other thing I know, is that if you hit play on the above video, this song will be in your head all day.

Subscribe today + RSS + Blog by E-mail + E-newsletter + Follow me on Twitter

---

 

01/15/2009

You are invited to join our new Living Young & Free community!

By Tim McAlpine

We have just launched a new central site for Young & Free. We had four things we wanted this new site to be able to do:

1. Be a central place to showcase our Y&F Spokester's Living Young & Free financial literacy videos.
2. Have a private area where our partner credit unions can collaborate and discuss research, results and opportunities.
3. Have a forum to discuss financial issues and questions.
4. Have a way to recognize and build on the support and interest we have received for Young & Free from all over North America.

We also wanted an easy way to accomplish these goals. This left us with the choice of custom coding or finding a ready-made solution. We chose the latter and decided to build the site on the Ning platform.

Without further ado, I present Living Young & Free!

It's live and ready to go. You can find the new site at www.livingyoungandfree.com. We have also redirected www.youngandfree.com and www.youngfree.com here as well.

Cheryl Doerksen is the Living Young & Free Community Manager and will be actively involved in the community.

This is my official invitation to all of our blog readers to sign up and get involved. Please join and become a member of your regional group. Regardless of whether you are under 25 or not and regardless of whether you are at a credit union considering Young & Free or not, I think we can all learn something about what young people want and need from their financial institutions.

Mark your calendars—our third Young & Free region goes live on February 2!

We have been diligently working to prepare for the launch of our third program and everyone at Currency is really excited that it is right around the corner. I'll give you a hint—it's not Alberta or Texas!

Subscribe today + RSS + Blog by E-mail + E-newsletter + Follow me on Twitter

---

 

01/08/2009

Challenge marketing for credit unions part 9: goals and measurement

By Tim McAlpine

If you are just jumping into this series, I suggest starting at the beginning. + Part 0: preface + Part 1: introduction + Part 2: it's OK to sell + Part 3: your challenge, your product offer and your reward + Part 4: jump start your program + Part 5: should you require a log-in to participate? + Part 6: building your program on a suitable web platform + Part 7: creating interesting, entertaining and educational content + Part 8: encouraging multiple levels of participation

Setting participation goals and consistently measuring

The first step when planning for success is to agree on what success means to your team. Will you define success by traffic? By new accounts opened? Net new deposits? New member growth in a defined segment? An increase in brand awareness? Share of wallet? Media attention? Increased revenue? The list goes on. My point is, everybody involved in your challenge marketing program should be in complete agreement on the success measures and be open and honest about making changes along the way if your program is falling short.

You should track as much as possible without the task of tracking becoming too onerous. You should also set realistic goals and monitor and adjust these goals as time goes by. For example, if you are going to measure how many blog comments you expect to get, it will be almost impossible to predict before you launch your program. But, you will have a pretty good idea of how many blog comments are coming in on average. The same will hold true with new account openings.

William Azaroff shared with me what he and his team track for Vancity's Change Everything online community, "When we first launched, we had a huge list of stuff we tracked including unique visitors, Technorati authority, RSS subscribers, total registered users, average time spent on site, total changes, total blog posts and total comments. My new way of thinking is that we will only track what is actionable. We now track unique visitors, registered users and total content added. Plus, we also manually track real-world impact (anecdotes about how Change Everything has had a real-life impact) and the alignment of the site content to our community leadership pillars which are 1) acting on climate change 2) facing poverty and 3) growing the social economy (and by that we mean not-for-profits and social enterprises).

For Member Credit Union's What Are You Saving For?, here's what Matt Davis had to say, "The measurables we pay most attention to are: 1) new WAYSF accounts 2) WAYSF deposits 3) blog posts and comments 4) blog unique visits and 5) earned media. While the belief is that increased activity on the blog and in the press should lead to increases in both accounts and deposits, it is mostly just a predictor of potential savings activity. I do believe, however, that all five of these measurables feed each other. Success in any of these categories inevitably lead to success in the others."

And, finally, to give you an idea of what to we track with the Young & Free Alberta program, here is our master tracking list:

• Accounts
  
  • Accounts opened
  • Accounts switched
  • Total accounts
  • Funds on deposit ($)
  • Average per account ($)
  • Total loans held ($)
  • Total investments held ($)
• Website
  
  • Traffic
  • Page views
  • Average time on site
  • Y&F Club members
  • Spokesperson applicants
  • Blog comments
  • YouTube video views
• Online
  
  • Facebook Advertising
    
    • Fans
    • Impressions
    • Clicks
    • Click Through Rate
    • Average cost per click
  • Google Adwords
    
    • Impressions
    • Clicks
    • Click through rate
    • Average cost per click
  • MSN Advertising
    
    • Impressions
    • Clicks
    • Click through rate
    • Average cost per click
  • Twitter followers
  • GoMobile
    
    • Impressions
    • Participants
    • Contest entries
• Direct mail
  
  • Response rate
    
    • Current Y&F members
    • 17-25 non-account
    • Turning 17's
• Public relations
  
  • Hits
  • Impressions
  • Earned media ($)
• Demographics
  
  • Total entities at the credit union
    
    • People
    • Businesses and organizations
  • Total members aged 17 to 25
    
    • Not in Young & Free at all
    • Percentage NOT associated to YF
    • Young & Free only
    • Young & Free and other account
    • Percentage associated to YF
    • Percentage of total personal entities
  • Total credit union memberships
    
    • Held by 17 to 25 year olds
    • Percentage of total memberships
    • Young & Free memberships
    • Percentage of total memberships
  • Average age of persons

This is a very comprehensive list and takes a fair amount of time and energy each month from different people to keep it current. You may decide to track fewer items or track all of these items and more. You may also decide to track weekly, monthly or quarterly.

That's a lot of numbers—now what?

Anybody can track numbers, but what you do with your numbers is most important. What you care most about will depend on your definition of success that everyone agreed on.

Because Young & Free Alberta's first priority is new member acquisition, we concentrate on the correlation between new account openings and web traffic and ongoing interactions on the site. We constantly look at the numbers to see trends. Do we have more account openings during our spokesperson search phase? What happens when there is no supporting media driving traffic and sales? What months perform best? How does this year compare to last year?

Other areas of interest that we pay close attention to for Young & Free Alberta are media hits and also the effectiveness of the media choices made during the search phase. It is important to us to know were each of our spokesperson applicants learned about the opportunity. This information will influence the media choices in subsequent years.

It's easy to get wrapped up in the excitement and newness of social media and lose sight of your business objectives. You can have a YouTube video that has been viewed by tens of thousands of people, but what really matters is how those views are translating into new business or other key success factors that you have defined for your challenge marketing program.

It is so important to consistently monitor and analyze your numbers and to share the results with everyone involved. This will help you to collectively refine and improve your program as time goes on.

Next up: allocating appropriate resources and support.

Subscribe today + RSS + Blog by E-mail + E-newsletter + Follow me on Twitter

---

 

01/06/2009

Challenge marketing for credit unions part 8: encouraging participation

By Tim McAlpine

If you are just jumping into this series, I suggest starting at the beginning. + Part 0: preface + Part 1: introduction + Part 2: it's OK to sell + Part 3: your challenge, your product offer and your reward + Part 4: jump start your program + Part 5: should you require a log-in to participate? + Part 6: building your program on a suitable web platform + Part 7: creating interesting, entertaining and educational content

Encouraging multiple levels of participation that build and reward an army of followers

How do you get people to not only take you up on your initial challenge, but to also continue to be involved with your challenge marketing program website throughout the year?

It's worthwhile to go back and review the 90-9-1 Principle that I cited in Part 3. Remember that 90% of users are the "audience," or lurkers, 9% of users are "editors," sometimes modifying content or adding to an existing thread and only 1% of users are "creators," driving large amounts of the social group’s activity. (Source: 90-9-1.com)

Since participation is driven by your creators, your energy and your thinking when developing your challenge concept should centre on how to get and keep your creators involved. The more compelling your content is, the more likely your editors are to participate and the more likely you are to convert your audience from lurkers to contributors.

Encourage and facilitate various types of interactions

Your blog is key. Everything that is new should be blogged about. Your blog will enable you to disseminate information on a regular basis and to encourage dialogue with site visitors. And because your blog will be the main source of information, you should make sure to offer ready access to various subscription methods. I recommend running your RSS feed through Feedburner because it offers both RSS and e-mail subscription options and lots of free tools to optimize, publicize and track your feed traffic.

I would also suggest going beyond a blog with other forms of interaction. On Young & Free Alberta, in addition to commenting on blog posts, there are various ways to add content and to interact with the site. All visitors can vote on weekly poll topics, submit poll ideas, add events to the calendar, add to the free stuff directory and ask the experts a question.

On Change Everything, casual visitors can view all of the content, vote on the latest poll and comment on blog posts. Logged-in members can initiate changes, write blog posts, create success stories and nudge and follow other site members.

On What Are You Saving For?, casual visitors can use the savings calculators, read blog posts and view videos. Logged-in members can initiate savings goals and comment on blog posts.

Leaving a comment on a blog can be very intimidating for those not immersed in the online world. People who are timid about leaving a blog comment will be far more daring with an anonymous vote on a poll. Make sure to include at least two or three lightweight ways to interact with your site.

Ask for permission within every interaction and communicate often

Gaining permission is the key to building long-term return traffic. The time to draw people back for their next visit is while they are involved in the current visit. A typical visitor will likely be drawn to your site through a referral, a link, a shout out on a social site or maybe even through a paid advertisement. Take advantage of this momentary attention. If you are lucky enough to have encouraged this visitor to interact with your challenge marketing site, now is the time to ask for permission to enter into an ongoing dialogue. We recently upgraded the database functionality of our Young & Free platform to include e-update opt in options throughout the site. Every time a visitor comments on a blog post, submits a poll idea, adds an events to the calendar, adds to the free stuff directory, asks the experts a question or votes for their favourite finalist during the spokesperson voting phase, he or she is asked, "Would you like to receive e-updates and the chance to win great prizes?" More than 75% of participants on the site opt into the the Y&F Club.

To sweeten the pot and reward our visitors for ongoing participation, we offer simple, yet attractive monthly prizes that range in value from $50 to $150. To keep our audience in the loop, we send out an informative Y&F Club e-update every month. Because we have gained permission to e-mail our visitors, fewer than five people unsubscribe every month.

Constantly remind your staff and members about your challenge

Out of sight out of mind is not a winning strategy! Take advantage of the branch setting by putting your challenge marketing program in front of your staff and your members. Consider dynamic point-of-purchase posters and displays, ATM screen graphics, short videos for your plasma screens and banner ads on your corporate website. And remember, your members are not coming in through your homepage, they are bookmarking your online banking URL, so don't forget to include links within your online banking system and on the exit screen.

Additional participation strategies for a short-run annual program

If you are running a 12- to 16-week annual program, your schedule will likely culminate with the bestowing of your reward. Much like any popular reality or game show on TV, after the prize has been handed out, you will see participation, interest, traffic and attention drop off abruptly until your program is relaunched next year. This is to be expected. If you plan to run the program in the same period of time year in and year out, you will see the participation, interest, traffic and attention build again as you approach relaunch, because you've created built-in anticipation and interest.

You should not put much energy into promoting your challenge in the off season, but since you have likely grown your e-update and blog subscriber base, you should keep up the blog and e-updates from time to time. Consider tracking what your winning contestants have done with their reward or build excitement as you near the next year's challenge.

Additional participation strategies for a 52-week program

If your program is perpetual, you are going to have to work very hard to sustain a high level of interest year round. A good strategy is to break your year into phases and to make your reward in the competitive phases something that can fuel the rest of the year.

You can expect a high level of participation throughout a competitive challenge phase especially if the challenge has an exciting and appealing human interest story coupled with a significant reward. With Young & Free Alberta, the 12-week competitive challenge phase is broken down into three mini-phases. The applications, the shortlist and the public vote. The drama and excitement of young people gunning for a great job and doing everything within their creative powers to impress voters is undeniably exciting. Not only are our competitors actively participating on the site and around the social web, they are driving friends, family and fans back to site for more. The sheer excitement builds as more and more people are drawn into the story. This challenge phase finally culminates with the winner being surprised with the reward.

Since the prize with Young & Free is a full-time spokesperson position, the rest of the year has built-in sustainability. Our Y&F Alberta Spokester's job is to talk, type and tell good stories on the site by creating daily blog posts, weekly video blog posts and podcasts and getting out and attending and speaking at events.

Another worthwhile strategy to explore is to split your year into short bursts of excitement. Change Everything has a series of mini challenges with smaller rewards throughout the year. Some one-time challenges, like the Bike Share program, and other annual challenges, like the Viva la Resolution challenge surrounding the New Year, fill the calendar with reasons to get involved and to repeatedly return to the site.

What Are You Saving For? account holders are eligible to win monthly cash-prizes of at least $100 and can compete for a $2,000 share certificate in the semi-annual Biggest Saver Contest. These periodic competitions ensure that participants are engaged and casual visitors are intrigued on an ongoing basis.

No matter which way you slice and dice your year, you will need to leave your visitors wanting more and to give them a number of ways to interact and plenty of reasons to return.

Next up: setting participation goals and consistently measuring.

Subscribe today + RSS + Blog by E-mail + E-newsletter + Follow me on Twitter

---

 

01/02/2009

2008 in review: a year of travel, YouTube and Young & Free!

By Tim McAlpine

Please note: If you are viewing this post in an RSS reader, I have embedded six YouTube videos that might not show up for you. Please click through to the actual blog post to see everything.

Travel, speaking and transition is how I would categorize the past year. My team and family have been extra supportive while I spent nearly 50 days galavanting all over North America. At the midway point, I stopped to reflect on the madness, and although the second half of the year was a little less hectic, it was still too much time away from home!

January

In January, I started podcasting. In just under 12 months, I interviewed 16 people for our Credit Union Innovators podcast. I hope you have enjoyed listening. I've certainly enjoyed putting each episode together and getting to know more about people that I admire in the credit union movement.

On January 23, 2008 and only three weeks on the job, Larissa Walkiw, the 2008 Young & Free Alberta Spokesperson, posted The Difference Between Banks and Credit Unions - Part 1. Almost one year and 43,000 views later, it is still being talked about and the blog post continues to be one of the most viewed pages on the Alberta site.

March

Larissa and I travelled to Steamboat Springs, Colorado to present the Young & Free story to a group of directors and senior executives at the CUES Execu/Summit. To illustrate the power of social media, we interviewed attendees before our morning presentation. During a break, we edited and posted this video to YouTube. By the time we revealed it to the group in the afternoon presentation, we already had more than 30 comments from all over North America.

April through July

This period was a blur. I presented a mix of three different presentations—The Young & Free Story, Small is Beautiful and Where Does Traditional Marketing Fit into a Web 2.0 World?—at events all over North America including:

• Doxim Exchange in Toronto
• CUTech Spring Forum in New York
• CUES Canada West AGM in Ottawa
• CUES Experience in Minneapolis
• Millennial Financial Services Forum in New York
• Member Gateways Spring Meeting in San Antonio
• Forrester's Financial Forum in New York
• CUES Annual General Meeting in Cancun
• Indiana Credit Union League in Indianapolis

August

We launched Young & Free Texas with TDECU based in Lake Jackson, Texas. This was a real milestone in the evolution of the program. Ed Speed, Trey Reeme and the rest of TDECU team were so open to our ideas and have been great to work with.

September through October

Back on the road for three more conferences.

• US Central Moving Members' Money Conference in San Antonio
• FORUM Solutions/Trabian Partnership Symposium in Indianapolis
• Forrester Consumer Forum in Dallas

A highlight in September was BarCampBankBC in Vancouver. I helped organize this event with Gene Blishen and William Azaroff. It was a great success, drawing about 70 people from all over North America.

Young & Free Alberta had an incredible year of awards culminating in winning the Forrester Groundswell Award in the Talking Category.

On my third trip to Texas, I had a blast with Trey as we surprised DeAndre' Upshaw with the news that he is the 2009 Young & Free Texas Spokesperson.

November

And finally, I was off to Edmonton to let Myles Peterman know that he is the 2009 Young & Free Alberta Spokesperson.

Throughout the year, I managed to meet a lot of great people and somehow I kept up with blogging. I published 176 blog posts, Twittered regularly and was able to keep up with the rest of my work without working weekends.

2009: The road ahead

If 2008 was a year of transition, 2009 is a year of fulfillment. We have put the groundwork in place and will continue to march towards our dream of one Young & Free credit union in every US state and Canadian province. Watch for our next launch within the next 30 days (you know me and secrets)!

Thanks for every visit to our site and every comment. You've made blogging and being a part of the credit union community a real pleasure for me. I hope your 2009 brings you everything you hope for.

P.S. Two housekeeping items as we go into 2009.

• I tweaked the CSS on the site to try a different font family and to increase the font sizes. I had a few requests from those with slightly older eyes. Hope you like it.
• I am changing my title from chief strategist back to creative director. It seems everybody is a social media strategist or marketing strategist these days and the chief strategist title is just too high and mighty for me. Thinking is good, but my first love and strength is doing.

Subscribe today + RSS + Blog by E-mail + E-newsletter + Follow me on Twitter

---

 

Viewing 1 - 6 of 6      |  

 

BLOG SEARCH

BLOG CATEGORIES

30 Things (24)
A Day In The Life! (56)
Announcements (27)
Awards (7)
BarCampBank (15)
Big Evil Banks (17)
Blogging (22)
Blogs To Read (7)
Board of Directors (2)
Book Reviews (2)
Branding (47)
Challenge Marketing (19)
Collaboration (2)
Community (4)
Conferences (46)
Co-op Advertising (2)
CU Branding 101 (11)
CU Innovators (19)
CU Movement (15)
Cuckoo Campaigns (6)
CUES Podcast (4)
Currency Work (21)
Demographics (3)
Economy (1)
Endorsements (2)
Guest Posts (10)
I Heart CUs (33)
In The News (8)
Innovations (10)
Marketing (80)
Member Acquisition (1)
Member Service (16)
Musings (4)
Naming (3)
New Competitors (2)
Off Topic (3)
Opinion Polls (6)
P2P Lending (4)
Podcasts (26)
Positioning (8)
Press Coverage (2)
Product Dev (10)
Productivity (2)
Public Relations (8)
Ranting (5)
Scary Big Ideas (4)
Segmentation (2)
Service Not Enough (3)
Shout Out! (25)
Small CUs (5)
Social Economy (6)
Social Media (137)
Speaking (40)
Technology (20)
The Truly Weird (4)
Tips: Bad Practices (2)
Tips: Good Practices (3)
User-Generated (31)
Viral Marketing (6)
Web 2.0 (154)
Wet Blanket (1)
Young & Free (78)
Youth Marketing (83)
YouTube Videos (76)

ARCHIVES

August 2010 (3)
July 2010 (2)
June 2010 (2)
May 2010 (2)
April 2010 (3)
March 2010 (2)
February 2010 (7)
January 2010 (5)
December 2009 (5)
November 2009 (6)
October 2009 (7)
September 2009 (27)
August 2009 (5)
July 2009 (3)
June 2009 (3)
May 2009 (6)
April 2009 (8)
March 2009 (6)
February 2009 (7)
January 2009 (6)
December 2008 (11)
November 2008 (17)
October 2008 (11)
September 2008 (25)
August 2008 (20)
July 2008 (18)
June 2008 (18)
May 2008 (18)
April 2008 (21)
March 2008 (21)
February 2008 (14)
January 2008 (11)
December 2007 (7)
November 2007 (6)
October 2007 (6)
September 2007 (7)
August 2007 (9)
July 2007 (12)
June 2007 (11)
May 2007 (7)
April 2007 (3)
March 2007 (3)
January 2007 (1)
December 2006 (3)

OUR WRITERS

Nala Henkel (38)
Tim McAlpine (354)
Colleen Pepper (1)
CU Skeptic (1)

RECENT POSTS

August 31, 2010
Want to attend How Magazine's Mind Your Own Business Conference? I've got a code for you!

August 20, 2010
Lack of young blood runs deeper than membership
(1 Comment)

August 8, 2010
Young, Free and Super-charged

July 28, 2010
There actually IS meat on bacon!

July 19, 2010
Co-op Vegas?
(2 Comments)