CO-OP Financial Services
Debit Benchmark Study Drives High-Value Leads
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Category: B2B
Type: Content Marketing / Demand Generation
Channel: Digital, Email
Industry: Finance / Technology
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Challenge:
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In 2017, Mastercard approached CO-OP Financial Services (CO-OP) with promotional marketing funds to help boost payment transactions. Within the CO-OP Marketing department, team members were challenged to come up with ideas on how to best spend the funds to drive the biggest impact. CO-OP’s CMO would select the top entry and then submit to Mastercard for approval.
Solution:
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I proposed a two-part project consisting of primary research followed by a benchmark report. Credit Union executives (CFO, CEO, CLO, COO) were the key audience for participating in the survey as well as receiving the report.
I chose debit payments for multiple reasons:
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Debit transactions were the largest driver of revenue for CO-OP and the company was seen as the market leader—the average processing contract was 5 years in length and exceeded $1 million.
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Debit transaction growth had been slowing down considerably compared to credit and we wanted to provide insights on what credit unions could do to encourage member usage.
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Credit unions had historically enjoyed a competitive advantage over big banks through the Durbin Amendment which allowed them to collect higher fees for transactions.
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Payments were becoming the single largest driver of growth within Credit Unions.
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Debit cards are a key growth strategy with Gen Z members.
Out of over 20 entries, my proposal was chosen and approved by Mastercard. I partnered with Mercator Advisors to assist in survey development, research analysis and benchmark study development. In addition, I negotiated for their debit payments analyst to participate at live speaking events.
The online survey consisted of over 60 questions and took 30 minutes to complete. Because of the large time commitment for executive participants, we offered a $100 donation to Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals for every fully completed survey. Our goal was to have 100 completed surveys, 250 unique downloads of the report and generate 35 MQLs.
Result:
The final benchmark report was 57 pages—with an estimated value of over $500 per copy (based on similar reports). Here are key metrics:
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More than 241 credit union executives participated in the survey and 185 completions garnered $18,500 in donations for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals—this exceeded our participation goal by 85%.
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During a 12-month period, there were more than 1,000 unique downloads of the report—exceeding our goal by over 300% and far exceeding any other content ever produced by CO-OP.
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Over 80 marketing qualified leads (MQLs) were attributed to the report—exceeding our goal by 128%. As a by-product of the research, we were able to gather additional information. These competitive insights garnered through participant answers aided the sales team with valuable insights regarding propensity to buy debit services or renew existing contracts.
The report was additionally used as a key bonus content piece for multiple webinars, THINK 19 Annual Conference (including a Power Sprint on Debit) and 2019 Roadshow events.
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