Baxter Credit Union (BCU) is a not-for-profit, member-owned credit union dedicated to empowering people to discover financial freedom. “Our goal in a very crowded, commoditized space is to stand out because of how we make our members feel about their money matters,” says Jill Sammons, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Well-being & Wealth Advisory.
Serving over 350,000 members, BCU reaches all demographics from low-income rural families to high-income urban executives. But to give them the customer experience they deserve, they not only needed to make mobile banking better, they also needed to make financial education better.
BUILDING A VIDEO PROGRAM IN MARKETING
BCU’s video initiative began while Sammons was discussing the future of the marketing team with the CEO and EVP. Sammons recalls, “They said, ‘If you could add resources and tools to your department to prepare us better for the next five years, what would you do?’ And it just instinctively came to me: video.”
The next step was finding the right partner, which Sammons recalls they discovered through their web hosting platform, Sitecore. “We told them what we wanted to accomplish, and the more we discussed it, everything kept coming back to Brightcove. We’re not sorry we took their suggestion because Brightcove has been fantastic in so many ways.”
I can’t think of a better partner than Brightcove to help us achieve our goals better, faster, and cheaper.
JILL SAMMONS
SVP, MARKETING, WELL-BEING & WEALTH ADVISORY
To kickstart their video efforts, the first thing they needed to do was to identify the initial areas where video would have the biggest impact. They pinpointed two primary applications that felt like a logical fit.
- Tutorials. As they were rolling out a new online banking platform, video became a valuable resource for guiding members through the transition. Both the marketing team and the members saw how it more effectively demonstrated common tasks like setting up an account, transferring money, and configuring account alerts.
- Explainers. Most adults don’t wake up and decide to dig around for some financial education today. The key is to help them consume the educational content without them really realizing they’re doing it. As Sammons explains, “We wanted to put some friendly faces in front of the camera and have them explain money matters to people in an inviting way.”
One “game-changing feature” that saved BCU countless hours along the way is the ability to update video content without republishing or changing the original link. “There might be links in 50 different knowledge base articles or in new hire orientations our company partners use. It would be nearly impossible to republish a new link every time we needed to update a video,” says Sammons.
Similarly, making content changes without affecting member or customer experiences is equally important in an industry with constantly updated regulatory requirements. With a single embed code for a landing page, the web team can set it up once, and any subsequent video updates can be easily managed. This is especially useful if they’ve sent out an email with video content that needs to be quickly updated.
EXPANDING THE VIDEO PROGRAM TO OTHER DEPARTMENTS
While initially Brightcove was only used by the marketing department, they’ve since found other use cases throughout the organization that have created additional efficiencies.
For example, video has become a key part of driving engagement in the more than two million emails they send per year. “We’ll put a video thumbnail at the top of the email and a call-to-action button a couple sentences below,” Sammons notes. “More often than not, the video gets more engagement than the CTA, so we know that people would rather trust the person on the other end of that video conveying that message than read it themselves.”
The social media team, too, creates efficiencies using Brightcove to consolidate all the social tools they typically use to distribute content. Now they simply upload a single video and publish it to multiple platforms without having to sign in to each one. “It’s like a one-stop shop to send it out to all of the platforms we’ve integrated,” Sammons tells us.
BCU’s business development team and frontline staff especially appreciate sending out recorded meetings, presentations, and webinars without linking to a separate platform like YouTube. “It’s easy to generate a link and send that to members without the distraction of other videos that have nothing to do with us or finance,” Sammons notes.
Even Sammons saves both herself and board members valuable time while delivering more engaging presentations. “I present the status of our marketing efforts to our board of directors once or twice a year. It would probably take me an hour to go through slides and talk to them about the different achievements, initiatives, and results. But I can show them a 10-minute video and capture so much more.”
EXPLORING THE FUTURE FOR THE VIDEO PROGRAM
BCU has come a long way in their video efforts, but they’re just as excited about the potential it holds for the organization. Specifically, they’re looking forward to integrating interactive video data with unique viewer information in their marketing automation platform (MAP). Their goal is to have these efforts better personalize and automate member journeys.
They also plan on using analytics and insights to determine which content could create internal efficiencies that improve the customer experience. The right videos, for example, could reduce volume for the call center while empowering members to quickly resolve their issues. Sammons says, “If a video has strong engagement and an agent is getting 50 calls a day on the same topic, then we know to send them the video.”
Most importantly, BCU is excited to have the support they need. “I can’t think of a better partner than Brightcove to help us achieve our goals better, faster, and cheaper,” concluded Sammons. “We have a relationship, not a ‘vendor-ship.’ That’s how we know we have the right partner.”
