Citi is one of the biggest financial services providers in the world. The company was formed via one of the world's largest corporate mergers in history, when in 1998, Citicorp and Travelers Group combined. Originally founded in 1812, Citi now managers more than 200 million customer accounts and operates in more than 140 nations across the world. Given the vast diversity of the group, which includes Citibank, CitiFinancial and Banamex, among others, managing the organisation's social media presence is an equally diverse task - I spoke to Heather Dahill, Director and U.S. Head, Content and Social, Citi Consumer Bank, to get some insights into how Citi goes about doing just that.
"The goal of our social media and content marketing strategy is to bring clients and prospective clients closer to Citi through meaningful engagement, education and experiences," Dahill told me. "These make our brand more relatable and human, and the products more appealing." This was in response to a question about Citi's core mission in social, the core aim the organization strives to achieve via their social presence.
"Our measurement framework is critical to our social approach - all content must have a clear primary objective," Dahill said.
Dahill explained that the four key objectives Citi focuses on are 'favorability', 'engagement', 'traffic driving' and 'brand lift'. "Brand Lift is measured by studies from the social platforms as part of our media commitment. Traffic driving is measured by clicks - like in traditional media," Dahill outlined. "Where we are unique is in our favorability and engagement rate metrics. These are proprietary metrics that allow us to understand if our content is resonating with our audience. Favorability is a measure of awareness and advocacy for our owned content, calculated as a weighted total of all social interactions. We also look at the level of advocacy for our brand and products with respect to overall reach, helping to gauge the relative success of our owned content irrespective of paid media. We created favorability and engagement rate with the help of our agency partners. It helps us to have a single metric that explains the impact of social to senior management across the organization."
This is an interesting approach, and one which no doubt many brands will be looking to achieve, in some form, in future. The idea of a single metric that reflects overall performance is something of a Holy Grail in measurement circles, and Citi is approaching this challenge in their own, unique way.
Planning and Execution
To illustrate how Citi goes about planning and executing a social media activation, Dahill outlined a recent example of a promotion they undertook to bring people closer to a new Citi service - storing their credit card in Apple Pay.
I'm kissing my wallet goodbye #solongwallet #promo165
A photo posted by Cherry Davis (@cherry_la) on Nov 22, 2014 at 12:27pm PST
"Apple Pay will transform the way we use our phones, so we started by looking at how our clients were already using their phones - and what do people do with their phones? They take selfies, and one of their favorite faces involves puckering up... We wanted to connect that habit with the new way of paying. "
Dahill outlined the concept, where Citi provided professional lighting and pull-down backdrops to evoke classic break-up scenes in order to encourage user participation by getting pictures of people literally kissing their old wallets goodbye. When people shared the photo of their wallet breakup on Instagram, along with the associated hashtag (#solongwallet), they received a random giveaway from Citi's vending machine, with prizes including an iPhone 6.
The project aligns with all four of Citi's key content objectives -favorability, engagement, traffic driving and brand lift, all in a measurable way, and supports Citi's overall mission of bringing clients closer to a Citi service.
Primary Platforms
Citi has a strong presence on all the major social networks, with 884k Likes on Facebook, 487k on the company's primary handle on Twitter, 807k followers on LinkedIn and 179k on Google+. Citi's also growing it's Instagram following, with 3.8k followers thus far. I asked Dahill what they considered their primary focus platform/s in social.
"In the U.S., Citi Consumer has six branded social media properties'" Dahill said. "I wouldn't say we have a primary focus, we look at all the channels available to us and pay close attention to where our clients are."
"We think about content first and the platform second. As part of that process, there are four questions we ask - what's the objective for social? Who are we talking to and what do we want them to do? How will we evaluate success? And what's the available investment and the minimum investment required? Answering those questions helps us determine the correct platform, and we create the content with the corresponding mindset for that platform."
Amplifying Conversation
Citi utilises several branded hashtags as part of their social media strategy, most notably #citithankyou, #solongwallet and #incredouble, all of which promote fan interaction and, again, bring clients closer to Citi's services. I asked Dahill about Citi's approach to hashtag marketing and how they relate to community engagement.
"Hashtags are a very important tool for our brand. We use hashtags to participate in a conversation, to own a conversation or to aggregate a conversation with the goal of greater amplification. We take different approaches for different programs," Dahill said.
"For our U.S Olympic Team sponsorship, for example, we used #FTW to tap into what was already happening on social media. We were able to leverage that existing social currency around 'winning' to amplify our own content. With an event like the Olympics, given the short time span of the conversation, it makes more sense to participate in what everyone's talking about as opposed to trying to own a conversation ourselves"
"By contrast last year we launched #ClosertoPro to start our own conversation around a Citi Card benefit that grants our clients access to Youth Sports camps with Pro Athletes. This hashtag was something we started, which gave us the opportunity to drive the conversation ourselves, as parents tweeted and posted about their children's' experiences with their favorite athletes."
Closer to the Customer
Customer service is a big part of Citi's social presence, particularly on Twitter, where, along with the main Citi handle, they also have @AskCiti, a customer service channel manned 9am to 10pm Monday to Sunday. I asked Dahill about Citi's approach to social customer service and how they utilize social platforms for this purpose.
"Servicing in social is critical," Dahill said. "The strength of social servicing is the ability to help solve customer problems and help enhance, or maybe even transform, the customer experience. The difficulty is in maintaining the transparency and timeliness, particularly in a highly regulated industry like financial services. I think our dedicated social servicing team does a good job navigating this challenge."
Dahill outlined the four main focus functions of Citi's social customer service channels - Moderate, Engage, Humanize, Improve.
"We moderate comments on our social platforms to remove inappropriate content - and inappropriate content might include personally identifiable information, profanity or vulgarity, self-promotion or spam, or off-topic commentary. We don't remove negative opinions or servicing concerns - those are addressed accordingly. To facilitate engagement we participate in social conversations to generate a two-way dialogue with individual consumers," Dahill told me.
"We want to use this as a touch point to humanize the brand, so we use a distinct voice and tone that's both professional and courteous. The employee who responds on behalf of Citi uses the first person, aims to be conversational and interacts using good manners," Dahill said.
"When questions arise, social media is often the place customers and potential customers go first. We're always look to improve that experience. Transparency and timeliness of information is key."
The Social Customer Relationship
As our conversation came to a close, I asked Dahill to finish this sentence - "The true value of social media is..."
"The true value of social media is that brands can engage fluidly, on the terms and the turf of consumers," Dahill said. "Brands can walk the walk, they can explore ideas and touchstones that ring true in hearts and minds. And perhaps most importantly, social media allows brands to impact the full range of the consumer relationship, from awareness to consideration to action to advocacy."
Some great insights, a valuable glimpse into how such a large organization like Citi is utilizing social channels from multiple outreach and communications standpoints. Also great to see is the focus Citi places on connecting with individuals, meeting consumers on the platforms that they're actively using, rather than pulling them onto their owned channels. There's some key lessons on how Citi goes about things on social, and I thank Heather for her valuable perspectives.