Marketers seem content with a two or three percent direct mail response rate. What if you could do better? That's what we have set out to prove for British Columbia's Westminster Savings Credit Union.
We were approached to launch a new free young adult chequing account. We were given a targeted mailing list and free reign to create something exciting and new! We named the product the Dub Free Chequing Account (Dub is short for the "W" in Westminster). We then developed a distinctive brand identity and look and feel.
That's when the ideas really started to flow.
Since the goal of the direct mail campaign is to get recipients to act on an offer and return a reply card, we asked ourselves "Why not make the reply device fun and interactive?" The idea of dubbing took hold. We deployed a simple microsite built on the open source WordPress blog platform. The microsite is located at www.DubMeFree.com and is designed to feature the postcards with user-generated captions.
The direct mail recipients are given three random postcards to dub. When we receive them in the mail, we will scan and feature them on the blog. We expect the postcards to start coming in next week.
In addition, we have created a Flash Dub Machine that allows visitors to the microsite to create their own dubs online.
For credit unions that want to dabble in social media, an approach like this offers a few advantages.
- Tying a blog to a short-term campaign gives you the ability to test the waters
- Giving yourself the license to have fun and experiment can take the pressure off of writing a lot of educational blog posts
- Since the content is user generated, the credit union's time commitment is greatly reduced
I am a firm believer in utilizing social computing technologies combined with a strong product brand and marketing to communicate and sell product. It has been a fun project to work on and we are really interested in seeing how it performs. And I am sure Westminster Savings is too!
Tim