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Problem: Increase Quorum Federal Credit Union’s membership by 6 percent in one month.
Solution: Create a referral program that provides monetary incentives for both lead providers and referees, who legally only can be family members or partner company employees.
Results: Quorum saw a 13 percent increase in membership, a figure that rose 122 percent above expectations.
The phrase “spread the wealth” instantly creates two major impressions on those following current events. For one, the president-elect, Barack Obama, has been associated with the principle. But far earlier, a marketing campaign of the same name netted a Gold ECHO Award in October for bringing in a 13 percent increase in membership for Quorum Federal Credit Union of Purchase, N.Y.
Quorum charged True North, a New York-based digital direct marketing agency, with bringing in 6 percent more members. The agency took on the challenge by creating a multichannel approach to the referral program that gave monetary incentives to both existing members and the colleagues and family they invited to join.
The campaign spread the word through direct mail, e-mail, in-branch posters and referral cards, as well as a landing page. Quorum’s lucky number, 13 percent, represented a 122 percent rise over projections for the “Spread the Wealth” campaign.
Kim Schade, vice president of marketing for Quorum, says her organization’s goal for this campaign was to remain a stand-alone entity.
“We’re challenged with trying to grow or be merged into,” she says. “And so we’ve chosen, obviously, to grow.”
So grow it did, like the beanstalk in its referral literature.
“The results were just completely unexpected, and we had never done anything like this—such a widespread campaign—and had never had to do anything like this in our past history because we just were growing naturally,” Schade says of the membership spike. “I think the messaging really spoke to our membership base, and certainly the incentive helped.”
Neil Feinstein, director of brand and creative strategy for True North, says the month-long effort began when members received referral e-mails with buttons linking them to a landing page where they could list family members and colleagues they thought should join Quorum. After members submitted the referrals, auto-generated e-mails landed in the inboxes of those family members and colleagues.
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