Traditionally, Florida Credit Union (FCU) had a high volume of web traffic due to its members regularly logging into their accounts and prospects coming in through various digital marketing channels. However, the lack of visibility into what people were actually doing while on the site made it hard to know who was best suited for new products like auto loans.
When Feathr’s Services team took on this challenge in early 2020, they determined that retargeting would be key to driving auto loan applications.
Retargeting can help credit unions introduce their members and other site visitors to new products by showing them relevant ads across the web. This enables the organization to capitalize on web traffic they’re already getting, and it has the added benefit of leaving members to go about their financial business without any interruptions while on the site.
“We knew that FCU would continue using an agency to run robust awareness campaigns where detailed conversion tracking wasn’t the priority,” said Ariana Aragon, Director of Managed Services at Feathr. “Our goal wasn’t to duplicate those efforts but to fit in seamlessly with them. The agency brings in the traffic, and we retarget to convert that traffic.”
To capture initial interest, Feathr retargeted web visitors who had used an auto loan calculator with ads to drive them back to the site. When people clicked on these ads, they were taken to a web page with more information about taking out an auto loan with FCU, including perks like low interest rates and small minimum-loan requirements.
Next up was confirming intent, which involved retargeting people who had visited the auto loan overview page. When people clicked these ads, they were taken to the auto loan application page and encouraged to begin the application process.
Finally, there were conversion campaigns retargeting people who had begun an auto loan application but not completed it. Clicking on these ads led people directly back to their application which they could complete in just a few clicks.
Credit unions often have MCIF or other predictive data about their members and prospects but don’t necessarily know what to do with it. This type of data can be a great fit for email mapping, which lets you deliver ads to people who you know are interested in a specific offering, even if they haven’t been to your site recently and can’t be automatically retargeted.
FCU had gathered MCIF data about which of their existing members were best suited for their next product to be an auto loan, so Feathr ran an email mapping campaign to target those members with ads about auto loans.
“One of the best things about Feathr is that it helps us reach our audience across more touch-points,” said Cherry. “Email mapping has been a great addition to our campaigns and we’re pretty happy about it.”
Within the first year alone, Feathr drove nearly 200 auto loan applications and more than $1M in new auto loans for FCU.
“In addition to seeing great quantitative results from these campaigns, they’ve gotten a lot of clarity on who is actually converting and why,” said Aragon. “They have been the most excited about the improved visibility they’ve gained into the entire customer journey and the ability to prove true ROI.”
FCU was also able to minimize the workload on its own marketing team by hiring Feathr’s Services team to plan and execute digital advertising strategies that kept them well ahead of the digital curve at a lower cost than most agencies. Their marketing team received a repeatable playbook that they can choose to take over themselves – but for now FCU plans to continue leveraging the Services team to drive auto loan applications and sell its other products.