Challenge

One of Centra Credit Union’s top business objectives for 2022 was to increase its mortgage business. Centra had previously approached mortgage lending organically through relationships built by their mortgage loan officers. However, they knew that their aggressive growth goals for 2022, combined with the knowledge that the Fed would raise interest rates, meant they needed to reinforce their organic methods with paid marketing.

Primary goal:

• Raise online mortgage applications by 50%.
• Generate 5 million impressions during the first six months of 2022 for the mortgage product line.

Secondary:

• Raise the average time on page for the main mortgage page on Centra.org by 5%.
• See a 25% increase in traffic to the main mortgage page on Centra.org.

Solution

We proposed a plan with a total budget of $110,000 for the initiative. We provided a paid media recommendation and a proposal to conduct two video shoots with individuals who had used Centra for a mortgage and responded positively in their most recent Net Promoter Score survey. Lastly, we recommended revamping the main mortgage page on their website since, thanks to the paid media efforts, we would now have more traffic going to the page.

Knowing interest rates were changing, we advised focusing on the member experience and how Centra made homebuying easier. This isn’t uncommon, so we wanted real customers telling real stories in their homes. After interviewing many candidates, we chose two. One was a retired Cummins employee who had bought two homes through Centra. The other was a 27-year-old pastor who recently moved to Indiana from Dallas. He wanted a local institution like Centra after he had a bad experience with a large national bank in Dallas.

We recommended an initial campaign of 4.5 months from mid-March through late July.

Below are the factors we used for targeting during the test:

1. Geography: Geo-target accounting for the markets they’re located in and growth potential within each of those markets as well as neighboring service areas.
2. Intent: Contextual and behavioral targeting was used to seek out individuals whose online activities signaled an intention to purchase a home (via the articles they read and their search behavior).
3. Age: While home purchases in the U.S. come from a very wide age band, we wanted to make sure the majority of dollars were spent targeting those most likely to become Centra mortgage customers. Forty-three percent of home purchases in the U.S. this year have come from Millennials, so we made them the primary target from an age perspective, with Gen-X being secondary.

Results

Online Mortgage Applications: Comparing YOY results for 2022 versus 2021 and only accounting for January through July of both years, we saw 835 online conversions for mortgage applications in 2022 versus only 59 in 2021. This is a 1,315% improvement, far exceeding the original goal of a 50% improvement. Impressions: From January to July 2022, the campaign generated 5.5 million impressions, 110% of the goal.

Traffic to mortgage web page: From January to July of 2022, the main mortgage page on Centra.org received 4,486 visits versus 3,578 visits for the same time period in 2021. This was a 25.38% increase.

Average time on page: We increased the average time on page by 42.8% (4:39 in 2022 versus 3:16 in 2021), which is especially impressive considering the increased paid traffic to the page.