Social Charge: Driving Traffic & New Customers With Social Media

Transcription

1 Social Charge: Driving Traffic & New Customers With Social Media Gremlin Social Customer Case Study: Heartland Bank & Trust Heartland Bank and Trust is an independently owned and operated, full-service community bank headquartered in Bloomington, Illinois, recognized for their fast, efficient service. Heartland employs over 700 employees in 40 communities who value customer relationships and make individual attention a top priority. With $3 billion in total assets, Heartland Bank and Trust is one of the strongest community banks in Illinois. Heartland Bank and Trust is committed to digital solutions that provide a convenient, easy experience for customers. Since Heartland began connecting with customers via social media, the company has increased traffic to mortgage website pages by 60%, and 50% of website traffic from social are new users. TIMOTHY BILL, Digital Marketing Strategist, has been overseeing Heartland s social media strategy since its inception in August EMPLOYEES: COMMUNITIES: TOTAL ASSESTS: $3 Billion

2 Heartland Bank s Social Presence HEARTLAND BANK S SOCIAL MEDIA GOALS Compliance Process Automation Tools Grow Social Media Community Automation Tools IN SOCIAL SINCE 2014 PAGE LIKES 5.7K 605K 7.5K FOLLOWERS K 460 FOLLOWERS K 809

3 Challenges Like many banks, Heartland Bank and Trust struggled to make a business case for social media, and balance that with the compliance risks. Once they were able to understand the benefit of social media marketing for the bank, the next challenge was creating engaging yet compliant content, and a process to make social publishing easy. Compliance plays a large role in our social media process, Bill said. Compliance approves the static content, images, and messages we post on social media. They request to see almost all pieces of social media communication. Recognizing the need for technology to help manage content and compliance, Heartland started shopping for tools. Heartland Chose Gremlin Social Gremlin Social Guardian - the social media marketing and compliance platform endorsed by The American Bankers Association* provided Heartland Bank and Trust with an easy to use, one-stop solution for its social media marketing and compliance needs. After testing several tools, Heartland felt Gremlin Social was the best fit because it provided integrated marketing and compliance solutions, was easy to use, and was reasonably priced. We considered Hootsuite, Hearsay, Meltwater and Gremlin Social. Gremlin Social won our business because they developed a social media tool with banks in mind and offered an attractive price point. We were attracted to the content workflow that included compliance options. Gremlin Social Guardian is endorsed by The American Bankers Association through its subsidiary the Corporation for American Banking as the preferred social media solution for its members.

4 The Big Step Forward: Using Social for Brand Awareness & Employee Advocacy Heartland needed technology that would allow bank employees and their 20-person sales team to post, while giving the compliance department access to moderation and workflow functionality. We not only use Gremlin Social for our corporate social media pages, but our sales staff uses Gremlin Social for their professional social media pages, Bill said. The biggest advantage to using Gremlin Social is the ease of posting to our social media sites while seamlessly including compliance in the process. Heartland also leverages Gremlin Social for their team of five loan officers to build business through personal social media accounts. The biggest value to our loan officers using social media is their ability to build their own personal network and talk directly to their own customers and prospects, Bill said. Sure, we have our corporate social media sites, but loan officers can lend their own The biggest advantage to using Gremlin Social is the ease of posting to our social media sites while seamlessly including compliance in the process. voice to their personal sites, which makes their social media presence more genuine. The Gremlin Social Content Library offers loan officers the ease of choosing pre-produced, compliant content to use on their sites. When they choose to write their own posts, Gremlin Social facilitates the process of sending posts through compliance. Finally, implementation and training on the Gremlin Social platform, as well as guidance on social media best practices has been seamless. We have received excellent customer service from Gremlin Social. The Customer Success team has been a tremendous resource and always responds quickly.

5 The Results Since implementing Gremlin Social, Heartland has gained 872 Followers on LinkedIn and 5,000 Facebook Followers. As a result, social media is responsible for almost 60% of the traffic to their mortgage pages, and over 50% of website traffic from social are new users. Facebook alone has produced over 16,000 clicks to the Heartland Bank and Trust website. Gremlin Social allows us to connect with our customers in a way that was previously not available, said Bill. We now have channels to instantaneously communicate with our network ,000 NEW LINKEDIN FOLLOWERS NEW FACEBOOK FOLLOWERS 60 % 16, % of website traffic to mortage pages comes from social of website traffic from social are new users new visits to the website produced from facebook