Emakina Academy #11 : "members get members" campaign for Keytrade Bank

Keytrade Bank “Members Get Members” Campaign

Thibault de Barsy Marketing & Sales Director

Keytrade Bank

About Keytrade Bank

•  Founded in 1997 as the first 100% online bank in Belgium

•  Today, subsidiary of Groupe Crédit Agricole

•  Present in Belgium, Luxemburg and Switzerland

•  75.000 clients on the Belgian market

•  Aggressive growth during the last two years

Rationale for MGM (Members Get Members)

•  Starting point : a very high customer satisfaction (according to a competitor’s study)

•  Your customer is your best ambassador

•  Prospects’ profile = customers’ profile = friends of your customers

•  MGM = a catalyst

Campaign Briefing

•  Customer acquisition campaign: attracting new customers on recommendation of existing ones (« members get members » system)

•  We banned mass media of any sort: pure « word of mouse » campaign (no TV, no radio, no print ad)

•  Primary objective: thresold of 500 new customers for Keytrade Bank

•  Time period: 15/04/08 – 27/05/08

How it worked (1)

•  Core principle: member sponsorship (« parrainage » / « peterschapsactie »)

•  As a Keytrade Bank customer, you were prompted to invite your friends and relatives to open a bank account at Keytrade Bank

•  For every new person becoming a Keytrade Bank customer, you and your friend received 20 euro as reward on your respective Keytrade Bank accounts (win-win deal).

•  The more new members you sponsored, the more money you cashed in from Keytrade Bank.

How it worked (2)

•  Activation of Keytrade Bank customers through 2 channels:

* Banner in your private account on KeytradeBank.com

* E-mail sent to Keytrade Bank customers database (61.400 contacts)

•  All the trafic was driven to a micro-website where you could send a message to your friends and relatives with a « send to a friend » form

•  Possibility to personalize some parts of the message (« Dear X, … ») to increase the impact

•  Each new client was identified by a unique promo-code contained in the e-mail template

P.R. 2.0 approach (1)

•  Press release on early results sent out one week before the end of the campaign

•  Generated media coverage (La Dernière Heure, De Morgen) and some valuable buzz in the blogosphere

•  The volume of search on “Keytrade Bank” also increased on Google (see next slide)

•  The “word of mouth” also included classifieds, messages in forums and even Google Adwords from Keytrade Bank customers searching for people to sponsor

→ fed the viral effect and attract even more members

P.R. 2.0 approach (2)

“I registered eight blog readers and got 160 euro. Tell it to the world: I’m now a fan of Keytrade Bank”

PWNT blog

Results

So, did we meet our objectives?

•  2.258 customers invited 9.157 friends (average of 4 friends per existing customers who participated to this campaign)

•  1.715 new customers acquired by Keytrade Bank = conversion rate of 18,6% = + 243% above initial expectations !

•  Only 6% of them had the "take the money and run" attitude (i.e. retrieved their 20 euro and dropped their new bank accounts)

•  Total acquisition cost of each new customer : 54 euro (roughly 100% cheaper than the standard in the banking sector)

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Thank you!

Any question?