Best Financial Services Social Media Campaign

The cross-functional team in charge of social media at Thrivent Financial wanted to grow our Facebook presence to better pursue our social media strategy of energizing and creating conversations with our fans. We decided that a fan campaign around a social cause would align with our organizational strategy and could help us achieve growth. The campaign was also designed to align with our organization's mission and one of our core values: giving back to others. This was a simple way to engage Thrivent Financial members in giving back. We researched which cause would be a good fit for us and determined that Lutheran World Relief would resonate with Thrivent Financial members and Lutheran prospects. For every new fan of the Thrivent Financial Facebook page, we pledged to contribute $1 to Lutheran World Relief, up to $10,000 between Feb. 15 - March 31, 2010. In five weeks our goal of adding 10,000 new fans was met. At the end of the campaign we had an increase of 10,317 fans. Fan comments increased, with overwhelmingly positive sentiments observed in the posts. Supporters responded organically to negative comments, helping to maintain an overall positive tone to the conversations. As the number of fans increased, fan comments and interactions on the Facebook page also increased. Conversations on the Thrivent Financial Facebook page began building a sense of community among the fans. Conversations are on a range of topics from financial education to sharing holiday traditions and stories about volunteering.

Contributors:

Social Media Relationship Manager:	Stacy Eckes-Borys
Sr. Manager, Interactive Solutions Group:	Linda Hovick
Senior Writer:	Josh McCaffrey
Lead Senior Writer:	Lee Stromberg
Senior Designer:	Troy Peterson
Director, Creative Services:	Gene Smaciarz
Directior, Public Relations:	Brett Weinberg
Application Engineer:	Tony Tassone
Manager, Writing and Design:	Susan Zima

THRIVENT FINANCIAL FOR LUTHERANS

Location: USA