"If we can't lower your auto loan, we'll give you $500"

"If we can't lower your monthy auto payment, we'll give you $500."

Here's how the ad is displayed on the sports channel of a mobile device.

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Site: WSBTV.com
Market: Atlanta
Owner: Cox Enterprises
Traffic: 2.3 million UVs and 42 million page views
Mobile traffic: 944,000 UV's and 8.7 million page views; News, 4 million; Weather,  2 Million;  Home, 1.5 Million; Sports, 400,000.

Key Executives: AJ Punjabi, Interactive Sales & Marketing specialist; Matt Moldovan, AE; Andy Dimenstien, Promotions Director

Background: WSB-TV (stands for welcome south brother) and is the oldest TV station in the south, the dominant local broadcast TV station in Atlanta and reaches 75% of households weekly and 91% all households monthly in the Atlanta DMA (June 2010 Nielsen book).  Key online advertisers include include and HVAC company and the local gas utility who run on the weather channel. On September 21, 2009, when the city flooded during a rain storm, the channel recieved 16 million pageviews in one day. 

Challenge: Georgia’s Own Credit Union (yes, that’s its name) key marketing challenge is to "make more noise than the other 4 or 5 other larger credit unions that are going after the same customer: Young males (18 to 45) who wanted to refinance their auto loans .

The company had sponsored onair campaigns around  high school sports,  which have a passionate following from Georgia residents. Two years ago they had also bought a push-down online ad to support a contest on their own website; the response was good enough that they were open to looking at online ideas. They  realized that "if they shaped the message correctly they could create real response from digital strategies."

Strategy: The sales team that took on the challenge included the AE, the head of interactive and the promotions director. They decided to continue to target males using the sports channel, only this time on a mobile device. The offer would also appeal directly to people who were interested in an easy way to get out of a "bad loan". 

They came up with the tag line: "If we can't lower your monthy auto payment, we'll give you $100."  The immediacy of "click to call" directly from a mobile device also promised highly convertible traffic. Conversion rates on mobile have also been double the rates of computer platforms, Punjabi says. 

Eventually the offer was increased to $500.  The splash page also contained the legal jargon, location for branch and a click to call feature, that connected customers directly from the ad to a a loan specialist.

Results: So far the offer has run for four months. About 2200 people (over 2%) have clicked on the splash page that contains a zip code locator and click to call featured. More than 900 queried to find a branch. The software (from Local Solutions Network) does not report click to calls, but Punjabi estimates a 10% click to call, with 20% converting to a sale,  would equate about 40 new clients a month.

Lessons learned:
• Customers are still grasping the power of the internet to engage customers in large scale direct response. Educate them on what digital campaigns can do in terms of delivering conversions at the bottom of the sales funnel. 
• What drove customers to take an action was a  "guarantee" offer, that convinced them they would not be wasting there time.  The Credit union was will to increase as it got used to handling the volume of customers effectively. Paying a check for $500 if the credit union can't make the loan sounds too good to be true; exactly the kind of offer that gets the most results. 
• Click-to-call on mobile devices also offers customers the instant gratification.
• Keep building mobile traffic! Even if your organization doesn't know how to sell it yet, this can be a good new revenue source in the future.
• While this customer's investment is undisclosed, mobile campaigns with sizeable traffic can run in the $8000 to $10,000 a month range.

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