Then when someone checks in to a place within a 1/2 mile of the ATM the TIP will pop up about the ATM’s location. Great service for those who forgot their money or need more money. If nothing else it’s a great way to position your brand in front if your customer and come across as relevant and helpful.

Thanks
Scott Townsend
Marketing Director
United Linen & Uniform Services
800-259-6808
scott@unitedlinen.com

The point of the article wasn’t to ridicule an idea or embarrass anyone. It was to put mayor promotions into perspective. The financial industry is full of lemmings — monkey see, monkey do (to mix metaphors). From my desk here as editor of The Financial Brand, I was starting to see one mayor promo after another. This article needed to be written before the idea went full-blown viral, so that other financial institutions might feel compelled to muster some creativity before they just simply press the xerox button.

What I’d like to see is something analogous to Augmented Reality on the payments side initially, where bank card usage could get you badges, etc. Sort of a combination of NY Subway, FourSquare and Mint, but backed by your bank. We have to tap in behaviors, and sorry to say but branches are just not part of the behavior set of most customers these days.

In respect to credit unions – their strength is in community. Perhaps if they can adapt that to virtual communities they’ll really have something!

BK

We don’t see Mayorship specials as the end-all/be-all of Foursquare promotions. However, the promotion we ran earlier has already paid for itself, just from the positive reception and potential new business opportunities.

So far the tools that have been released by Foursquare have allowed us to monitor the check-in activity at our 40+ offices. Going forward we would like to craft additional promotions, including offers like restaurants are able to do now. Another intriguing feature is the ability to post tips and to-dos on our venue pages as a way to drive traffic and introduce the bank’s convenient services, like nearby ATMs, to people on-the-go.

You offer many good points and ideas here, some of which we are exploring. Fourquare and other location-based social networks offer us a chance to bring online conversations face-to-face, where personal relationships remain a critical part of doing business.

Jeff, I agree that mayorship only promos is not worth the effort. But as other commenters have suggested, as well as the end of your post, you need to think of the other ways the service can be used to add value.

As for not wanting traffic in your branches, this is only the case because most banks have yet to figure out a way to trigger branch visitors in wanting to learn more about the plethora of other services available from their institution. This is part due to the mindset of most consumers when entering a branch – “just here to drop off a check” – and part because most financial marketing looks like this – “free checking”. If you move away from product marketing and more towards education-based marketing (also known as content marketing), you’ll want more traffic because it means greater exposure to your helpful resources and more opportunities to start dialogs.

The ultimate goal of marketing, in my opinion, is to have as many conversations as you possibly can with your customers and prospects. If you can achieve this in person, it’s much better then online.

Also, the comment about the majority of your customer base not knowing about Twitter is slightly off. A recent poll showed that 87% of the US population are now aware of the service. The statement may have been better positioned by saying the majority of your customer base are barely using Twitter. I think it’s something like 7% of the population are on Twitter in the US. (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/30/BUP81D7L37.DTL)

But keep in mind that people who use Twitter are often well connected outside of the online world. Their recommendations can often go a long way. I’m reading the book The Referral Engine by John Jantsch and the best companies out there are taking advantage of social media because they understand the power behind this kind of referral activity.

@MP – love the video… that’s freekin’ amazing

I would only add the importance of making sure your CU info is up to date on Foursquare. I noticed for a few CUs here in Madison (haven’t tested this Nationally) that their Foursquare page(s) come up fairly high in search engine results. Same thing applies to Yelp.

An easy and low investment way of doing this would be to add some simple signage to the front line, ATMs, drive through lanes along the lines of “Check into Foursqaure for your chance to win ABC. We will draw one winner every day”.

Just some quick food for thought.

Yes, promos for Mayors may not be a good fit, but that’s not all Foursquare offers.

A few creative examples:

Pepsi is using Foursquare to notify users when they are near a restaurant – http://bit.ly/9o2zP3

Jimmy Choo using Fourquare for treasure hunt promo – http://bit.ly/9aQh3Q

Think outside the box. The biggest hurdle for Foursquare isn’t adoption by users. The biggest hurdle is businesses finding a way to utilize and monetize the service. Think beyond the Mayor.