Case Study:

Avidia Bank

5 Social media tactics an innovative

bank used to launch a new product
Banks around the world are rolling out various versions of Cardless
Cashor mobile phone access to your money at ATMs. This trend is a
big step toward digital innovation for the financial services industry. What
happens when one bank executes a social marketing campaign around
the launch to stand out above the rest?

About Avidia Bank

Avidia Bank formed in 2007 with the merge of two longstanding American
banks, Hudson Savings Bank and Westborough Bank. It is now a $1.2
billion community bank headquartered in Hudson, Massachusetts. We
spoke with Mike Allard, Chief Marketing Officer, CarrieAnne Cormier, Retail
Operations and Strategy, and Kate Cwieka, Marketing Specialist at Avidia
Bank.

13%

83%

Increase in mobile
app enrollments

positive sentiment
for Cardless Cash

101.3%

Boost in Twitter engagement during

the campaign

CASE STUDY: AVIDIA BANK

The best way we can promote mobile banking is by

marketing where our customers are. More likely than not,
they are on social media on their phone, so its a natural
extension to download our mobile banking app and use it
wherever they may be.
Michael Allard, Chief Marketing Officer, Avidia Bank

What they did

How to use social media to successfully launch a product
Theres a transformation taking place at Avidia, says Cormier. Having
top-down support of social media marketing has positioned us among
brand leaders in our industry. The chief marketing officers top goals
for social media marketing are to drive brand love, sales leads and web
traffic, and customer advocacy. With Allards support, the marketing
team created a comprehensive digital campaign strategy to market the
launch of Avidia Banks Cardless Cash product.
Weve always been early adopters in digital banking, but weve basically
kept our updates to ourselves because change comes with the territory
of staying current, says Cormier. Giving our product launches the
marketing they deserve is part of our differentiator, positioning our
brand among other innovators.
Cardless Cash is a new feature available in mobile app form, which
allows customers to draw money from ATMs and branch locations
directly from their smartphone. It reduces the transaction time from
one minute to 10 seconds and reduces the risk of security and fraud
issues because no card data is transferred. Not only is it more secure,
but its more user-friendly and just plain cool.

CASE STUDY: AVIDIA BANK

How they did it

The social media strategy behind a product launch campaign
A majority of their marketing strategy revolves around social media,
with some traditional marketing, such as in-branch posters, signage,
and swag t-shirtsall with download app codes. With the launch
just around the corner, Avidia Bank shared a teaser social media
post saying that something exciting was coming and asked whether
customers were ready to go #CardlessCash. That one post was their
top rated content for the month, with 2,030 impressions and 70
engagements.
Cwieka and Cormier did a live Q&A on the young but popular social
network, Periscope, where customers tuned-in and asked questions in
real timea first among most banks. They also hosted a fun battle on
Periscope between ATM versus mobile app to show the difference in
time and convenience. The team repurposed this engaging content on
other social networks to increase their reach.
Using Hootsuite to publish content and engage in secure
conversations
Their social media strategy relied entirely on organic social, rather than
paid ads, but they did do some influencer targeting. This was because
the launch was the first of its kind for the bank and they wanted to see
how much growth they could gather organically. Using Hootsuite, they
found social media influencers in financial services and reached out to
them directly to let them know about the campaign.
Avidia Banks marketing team used Hootsuite to publish campaign
content every step of the way. They created streams to monitor
#CardlessCash, brand mentions, industry conversations, and general
news. Because streams refresh automatically, Cwieka could easily see
relevant conversations, jump in, and connect with customers directly.

CASE STUDY: AVIDIA BANK

With Hootsuites integration with Proofpoint Social Media Protection,

a pioneer in social media security and compliance, the team can feel
confident that all social engagement with Avidia Bank is happening
on Hootsuite. With Proofpoint, any non-compliant messages or
commentary will trigger a warning and enable the team to respond
quickly and mitigate risks of poor quality engagement. Proofpoint
automates the review and remediation of content by monitoring
for brands risks. These risks range from inappropriate language to
compliance violations and security risks like malware and phishing
links. Proofpoint allows the Avidia Bank team to take real-time action to
protect its brand on social.
Employee advocacy program to increase reach and brand love
Avidia Bank has an internal employee advocacy program called Avidia
Smarties. This is one way for them to grow their brand love, show the
human side, drive reach, and have real personalities respond on behalf
of the bank. Avidia Smarties are people who work in various branches
and departments of the bank and are socially savvy and interested in
driving business with social.
The Avidia Smarties are required to go through Hootsuite University
training before they become ambassadors. As ambassadors, they
have access to the organizations Hootsuite dashboard and can pull
on-brand content from a central Content Library to share on their
personal channels. During the Cardless Cash campaign, Avidia Banks
marketing team uploaded pre-approved content into the Hootsuite
Content Library for Smarties to share and help promote the launch.

CASE STUDY: AVIDIA BANK

The results
Avidia Bank has seen a 13 percent increase in mobile app
enrollments since introducing Cardless Cash. To the surprise of
stakeholders that believed the solution favored millennials, Cardless
Cash adopters ranged from ages 17 to 79, with a median age of 41.
Social media posts normally see around 700 impressions with an
engagement rate around 3 percent. The teaser post alone had 2,030
impressions and 10.13 percent engagement rate.
In just a few months of the post, they doubled their Twitter followers
and had a 10 percent growth in Facebook followers. Sentiment
around the campaign was 83 percent positive, which, for a new
banking product, is overwhelmingly affirmative.
Avidia Banks Twitter engagement saw an overall 101.3 percent
boost from the time of the Cardless Cash launch in July to September.
Trying out content on new social networks like Periscope shows the
banks willingness to innovate and meet young customers where they
already feel comfortable. Overall, the campaign was a major success in
building brand love and employee and customer advocacy.

CASE STUDY: AVIDIA BANK