On this week's podcast we have Citibank's Julie Booth. She is a senior vice president in the cards group focused on social and content strategies for North America. She spoke at the Tradestreaming Money Conference in New York City on November 14.
Her presentation described how marketers at leading financial firms can target customer passion points. Julie's team works to create social ambassadors — customers who scream from the mountain tops how happy they are to be working with Citi. Julie describes Citi's surprise and delight campaigns that identify social opportunities to provide extraordinary service to a customer. From there, social teams encourage happy clients to share their experiences with their own networks.
Listen through to the end as Julie fields a couple of interesting questions from the crowd.
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Below are highlights, edited for clarity, from the episode.
From business priorities to passion points
We don't have a large team at Citi, but we service various categories, including proprietary products, services, co-brands, entertainment, and cross franchise, with social media, content, and innovation. We pump out ten thousand pieces of content every quarter and every single one of them needs to be approved by compliance and legal. We're trying to speak to our customers' passion points.
We identify the things our customers are excited about, whether it's travel, retail, auto, dining, or sports and we offer experiences and access for any of these types of customers. It's an experiential one-stop shop. No matter what you have a passion for, you need money to do it. You need a reliable payment method to do any of these things. Can a financial services firm offer great value for using its card that others aren't? What kind of experience can you offer that would get your customers shouting from the mountaintops that they're proud Citi customers? That's how you build social ambassadors — the access you provide to say, a Billy Joel concert, needs to be unique, memorable and community-driven (customers should be encouraged to share images from the event). Lastly, curate that community element to show everything you're giving card members.
Data
“You can't control what you can't measure.” What we've noticed is that when it comes to bragging about corporate wins, you're not going to dump a data set on a managing director's desk. She just doesn't have the time. Talk to your line of business, determine your priorities, take a cluster of metrics and construct a narrative summary to deliver to the higher ups. You need to tell a story. Hard metrics are always available but you need to control the narrative to show what success looks like. We tailor our performance narratives to different groups within Citi.
Key takeaways — surprise and delight
We sponsor thousands of events with our partner, LiveNation. We offer special access to Citi cardmembers to things like football pro camp with Rob Gronkowski. When we promote these experiences across social media, we don't just publish dryly. For example, our social team shares images of music artists, asking our audience about their favorite songs. You have to amp it up.
We do social listening and sentiment to identify opportunities to surprise and delight our customers. When someone tweets that they want to go to a concert, our team direct messages them with two free tickets courtesy of Citi. But you can't just say, "We have 2017 season Mets tickets." You have to say something like "Bleed blue and orange.” Understand who these people are, so you can tailor your content and copy to the passion points of each person.
We identify the things our customers are excited about, whether it's travel, retail, auto, dining, or sports and we offer experiences and access for any of these types of customers. It's an experiential one-stop shop. No matter what you have a passion for, you need money to do it. You need a reliable payment method to do any of these things. Can a financial services firm offer great value for using its card that others aren't? What kind of experience can you offer that would get your customers shouting from the mountaintops that they're proud Citi customers? That's how you build social ambassadors — the access you provide to say, a Billy Joel concert, needs to be unique, memorable and community-driven (customers should be encouraged to share images from the event). Lastly, curate that community element to show everything you're giving card members.
Data
“You can't control what you can't measure.” What we've noticed is that when it comes to bragging about corporate wins, you're not going to dump a data set on a managing director's desk. She just doesn't have the time. Talk to your line of business, determine your priorities, take a cluster of metrics and construct a narrative summary to deliver to the higher ups. You need to tell a story. Hard metrics are always available but you need to control the narrative to show what success looks like. We tailor our performance narratives to different groups within Citi.
Key takeaways — surprise and delight
We sponsor thousands of events with our partner, LiveNation. We offer special access to Citi cardmembers to things like football pro camp with Rob Gronkowski. When we promote these experiences across social media, we don't just publish dryly. For example, our social team shares images of music artists, asking our audience about their favorite songs. You have to amp it up.
We do social listening and sentiment to identify opportunities to surprise and delight our customers. When someone tweets that they want to go to a concert, our team direct messages them with two free tickets courtesy of Citi. But you can't just say, "We have 2017 season Mets tickets." You have to say something like "Bleed blue and orange.” Understand who these people are, so you can tailor your content and copy to the passion points of each person.