Success Stories
Members 1st Federal Credit Union
Marketing Gamified? Bingo!
By Donna Adinolfe
Background
During the COVID-19 pandemic, people have been spending more time scrolling through social media and looking for ways to engage in conversations and activities from the comfort of their own homes. While conducting social media research, Members 1st Federal Credit Union, Mechanicsburg, PA, discovered a trend in organizations and businesses: creating games of “Quarantine Bingo.”
The Bingo card featured quarantine-specific actions that people could identify with such as “had a Zoom call interrupted by a pet or child,” or “binge-watched a favorite TV show.” Audiences were asked to play Bingo by checking the boxes with actions they have experienced and sharing the Bingo card on social media. “This content received high engagement due to its interactive and timely nature,” says Ali McFadden, Digital Marketing Coordinator at Members 1st Federal Credit Union, adding, “that is when a light bulb went off in our heads.”
What They Did
The social media and design teams at Members 1st collaborated to create a Bingo card featuring specific products and services their credit union offers.
“In the past, we have found success with publishing relatable posts asking our audience to complete an action,” McFadden said. “We believed featuring our products and services would not only be relatable to our audience, but could also lead to them considering new products and services that they saw on our Bingo cards.”
The credit union published the card on all of their channels: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.
“Our hypothesis was that our Facebook and Instagram posts and stories would perform best because those channels are more visual-based and feature story-sharing capabilities, which our audience may take advantage of,” says McFadden.
The credit union asked members to take a screenshot, save the Bingo card and mark their spaces. Once they got Bingo, members were instructed to message the credit union or reply in the comments section with a screenshot of their Bingo card (depending on the channel). To increase the reach of these posts, the credit union also asked their audience to tag two friends to fill out their own Bingo cards.
Results
Engagement rates were higher on Facebook and LinkedIn, and the credit union saw the most participants on Facebook (13) and Instagram (tagged in 5 stories).
Key Lessons Learned
“We learned a lot of great lessons from this exercise,” says McFadden. “Considering this was the first time we have published an interactive post that required saving and sharing in comments etc., we believe it was a success!”
Lesson 1: Choose the right channels for your content. We tested this post on each channel and our hypothesis was correct: Facebook and Instagram are the best channels to publish this type of content.
Lesson 2: Encourage story shares in your post copy. While we were tagged in organic stories, we could have asked people to share stories in our post copy to generate more engagement.
Lesson 3: Consistency is key. Now that we have witnessed the content’s success, it is important for us to continue the momentum. We plan to incorporate weekly call-to-action posts and conduct similar product/service games on a monthly basis to help keep our audience engaged.
