United Railway beats par with golf promotion

FORT WORTH, Texas - This was no slicing shot doomed to land in a sand trap. United Railway Federal Credit Union sunk a hole in one with its "Above Par" golf theme checking account promotion. In an effort to increase its number of checking accounts, the $71 million credit union targeted people between the ages of 18 and 65 who kept the $5 minimum in a savings account. "This promotion is more of a recruitment and membership growth tool than a competitive one," said URFCU Director of Marketing Greg Barnes. Barnes decided a sports theme would appeal to URFCU's main sponsor-BNSF Railway-which consists mostly of males who are big golfers. Surprisingly, of its 12,699 members served, the promotion appealed to more women than men. Given a $6,000 budget to target checking accounts, Barnes and a local graphic artist collaborated in-house to create the images that would appear on the promotional materials. URFCU was able to launch the promotion just over budget at $8,000. The $8,000 spent included direct mail, flyers, postage, banners, buttons, giveaways and the in-house graphic artist fee. "We try to do at least half of our promotions (in-house) so we can be more creative than the standard promotions," said Barnes. URFCU's Best Checking account, which offered such free services as online banking access, telephone banking, overdraft protection and direct deposit was aggressively promoted and hard to miss. Parked in the front of lobbythe North Fort Worth branch was a golf cart filled with such giveaways as golf bags, buttons and umbrellas. On its Web site, a gopher poking its head out of a hole asked if members had experienced above par checking. In addition to referrals, direct mail and a full page story in its newsletter, URFCU also made quarterly desk drops at its major select employee groups. With so many large SEGs, desk drops were a cheap and effective way to get the fliers into the hands of thousands of members or potential members. Rather than give away the usual free checks to new account holders, URFCU tied in the golf theme by giving away free sleeves of United Railway logo golf balls and tees. All new account holders were also automatically entered to win either the grand prize United Railway logo golf bag or a gift certificate for a cart rental and round of golf at a local golf course. Existing checking account holders could also participate by referring others. Referred and existing members would then each be entered into the drawing. "Honestly, our constant reinforcement of getting the word out is what helped make this promotion a success," said Barnes. URFCU not only exceeded the target goal of 120, but also its "exceptional" target goal of 150 by opening a total of 190 checking accounts. -mbourjolly@cutimes.com