Case Studies – Yorkshire Building Society, Loans.co.uk

The Most effective advertising campaign category was arguably the most competitive sector of the 2004 awards. Judge for yourself by reading the case studies by the joint winners – Yorkshire Building Society (who also picked up the award for the Best contribution to marketing learning), and Loans.co.uk – also commended in Most effective direct marketing campaign.
Yorkshire Building Society – Category: Most Effective Advertising Campaign; Best Contribution to Marketing Learning
The challenge
The growth of our mortgage business has been based on using “best buy” products to stimulate mortgage sales. The problems with this are:
• It uses a large amount of budget to discount the products.
• It creates huge peaks in volumes that are difficult to deal with operationally.
• The surge in inquiries means that a proportion of the service calls from existing members are lost.
• During a best buy period, our staff become processors rather than advisors.
• It attracts “rate tarts” who display little loyalty to the society, but as a mutual we have a duty to attract customers wanting long-term benefits.
• It stimulates existing borrowers to transfer onto the best buy products.
• It does not provide a sustainable marketing message, as the products could be withdrawn at short notice.
We wanted to test whether product advertising could be used to drive mortgage business that would not have these problems, and also to determine:
• What volume of business could be generated compared with best buy.
• What type of customer and mortgage would be acquired.
• What effect advertising would have on brand awareness.
• The impact on staff motivation.
Proposed strategy
Our strategy can be summarized as taking the most effective and differentiated message that we have; reaching as many of our target audience as possible; through the most credible and impactful media; in the right operational regions; with an incentive to encourage people to act today; and with pull-through to branch/local level.
To read the full article, please download the PDF above.