Case Study
River Valley Credit Union, a $345 million credit union located in Miamisburg, Ohio, serving Dayton, Ohio, and surrounding communities, recently began a year-long celebration of its 70th anniversary serving those areas. While River Valley is well established in the communities and enjoys a good image in the minds of consumers, it faces steep competition from many national bank players and various community financial institutions in the Dayton marketplace—all vying for market share.
When partnering with MarketMatch, River Valley identified growth in membership, checking and deposits as its top priorities. To accomplish this goal, both River Valley and MarketMatch knew the credit union would require a robust digital marketing solution to effectively reach audiences and generate leads for credit union staff.
THE CHALLENGE
• River Valley needed to implement a holistic digital marketing program to fuel lead generation; however, it did not have a strong digital infrastructure to begin with.
• The credit union was in need of creating a pipeline of leads to achieve organizational growth goals.
• After converting new members, the credit union required a means to continue engaging and marketing to members.
THE SOLUTION
Utilizing MarketMatch’s Digital Without Limits approach to digital marketing, we developed a complete digital marketing strategy for River Valley Credit Union. The process included researching the existing infrastructure, researching back-end processes and ultimately implementing a state-of-the-art marketing automation and email platform for the credit union. This established internal lead processes and helped us launch journey-focused paid advertising campaigns to reach buyers.
To begin, paid advertising campaigns utilized Google Search Engine Marketing and Banner Network advertising and Facebook social media advertising. Eventually, video marketing was also added with pre-roll advertisements on the YouTube platform. MarketMatch launched paid advertising with two campaigns, focusing on two core products: checking accounts and certificates.
HOLISTIC APPROACH
When implementing a paid advertising campaign, MarketMatch’s Digital Without Limits approach calls for a well-integrated and strategic process. The end result gives us the ability to accurately measure Key Performance Indicators and more effectively report results to our client.
To successfully implement the strategy, several key elements were needed:
• Link the Google Ads account with River Valley’s Google Analytics for tracking and audience-building purposes.
• Install the Facebook tracking pixel in the River Valley site code.
• Set up multi-level conversion measurements that communicate with Google Analytics and Ads.
• Enable Google Analytics Audiences and installing various audiences for remarketing and advertising reach.
To complete our holistic approach to digital marketing, when designing a digital strategy, MarketMatch creates a complete lead-generation process. This means the end user is guided through the process and not left wondering what the next step will be. With River Valley, this means employing the use of lead-generation forms on the digital campaign landing pages; these forms are tied directly into the marketing automation platform that we implemented, and feed directly into River Valley’s contact database and alert River Valley staff to new lead opportunities.
In addition to the paid advertising and lead-generation campaign, MarketMatch built trigger-based automation processes based on River Valley’s website traffic. Within the marketing automation platform, River Valley is now able to “hands-free” market to prospects and members based on their behavior. The process allows the credit union to actively market and follow up with the members who have the highest propensity.
MEASURABLE RESULTS
Within the first 12 months of implementing River Valley Credit Union’s Digital Without Limits marketing program, we saw the following results:
AD IMPRESSIONS:
9.1 MILLION
Over 9.1 million in display
154,000
Over 154,000 in search
engine marketing (SEM)
7.1 MILLION
Over 7.1 million in
social media ads
AD CLICKS:
12,000
Over 12,000 SEM clicks
60,000
Over 60,000 display clicks
67,000
Over 67,000 social
media ad clicks
8.20%
1,000+
704
192
$31
Achieved an average click-through rate of 8.20% in SEM advertising
Over 1,000 phone calls from ads
704 conversions (form completions) made on the River Valley website
192 conversions (form completions) made from Google SEM ads
$31 average cost per conversion
By implementing this digital marketing program, River Valley began to experience growth on the account and deposit side—the likes of which they had not seen in 24 months. Additionally, River Valley continued to lightly market to leads that chose not to open a new account or membership as a soft reminder of the brand. This has created a sustainable pipeline of prospective members for the credit union.
Leads that have come to River Valley through the digital marketing process are encouraged through automated marketing to grow their relationship with the credit union. To foster that growth, each month messages are sent via the automation platform to targeted groups of new members.
ARE YOU READY?
There are many ways to approach digital marketing but only one that we believe really works: MarketMatch’s holistic Digital Without Limits approach. If your bank or credit union is ready to experience truly data-driven, bottom-line enhancing results, now is the time to act!