Member get Member

Challenge

Founded in 1997, Keytrade Bank was the very first 100% online bank in Belgium and is still the undisputed leader in online trading. Three years ago, Keytrade Bank was taken over by the Groupe Crédit Agricole, one of Europe's largest banking. With 75.000 customers on the Belgian market, Keytrade Bank has achieved an aggressive growth during the last two years.

Keytrade Bank entrusted us to build up a customer acquisition campaign based on the “members get members” tactic: existing customers are given an incentive to attract new ones on their personal recommendation. As Keytrade Bank wanted to test out the effect of a campaign using “word of mouse” only, we banned mass media of any sort from the campaign strategy.

Primary objective: recruiting 500 new customers.

Time period: 15/04/08 - 27/05/08.

Execution

How it worked

The core principle of this campaign is called member sponsorship (“parrainage” or “peterschapactie”): as a Keytrade Bank customer, you were prompted to invite your friends and relatives to open up 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). Of course, the more new members you sponsor, the more money you get from Keytrade Bank.

Keytrade Bank used two channels to activate its customers database:

• An e-mail was sent out to the Keytrade Bank customers (61.400 recipients).
• A banner was displayed prominently in your private account on KeytradeBank.com.

Both of them led the customers to a dedicated micro-website where they had the ability to send a message to their friends and relatives. Some parts of the e-mail were personalizable (“Dear X, …”) to increase the impact of this invitation. Once you got the message template in your mailbox, a link brought you straight to the Keytrade Bank website to sign up and receive 20 euro on your new bank account. Technically, each new customer was identified by a unique promo-code hidden in the e-mail template.

PR effort

One week before the end, we sent out a press release about the early campaign results. This PR action generated media coverage as well as some very valuable buzz on the Net:

• The search volume on the "Keytrade Bank" query increased on Google.
• A blogger even became a self-proclaimed “Keytrade Bank fan” after getting 160 euro from eight blog readers who registered on Keytrade Bank.
• The buzz also included classifieds, messages in forums and even Google Adwords from Keytrade Bank customers searching for people to sponsor.

These figures have been achieved through PR/viral effect only: no TV spot, no print ad, no radio commercial, no Internet display ad. Probably the first successful "members get members" campaign made in the Belgian banking sector… without the help of traditional media.