Lessons from the Chase/WaMu Merger on Twitter
[Editor's Note: This is a follow-up piece to yesterday's article from Freddy J. Nager, "The post-WaMu blues: Chase has lost ‘that lovin' feeling." Chase just recently completed remodeling WaMu's branches which has triggered an outpouring of emotion from former WaMu customers and employees.]
The Financial Brand hopped on Twitter to see what people were saying now that the WaMu brand has almost been fully devoured by Chase. If you don’t yet “get” Twitter, don’t worry. You’ll get a sense of why it’s important after reading this, even without any prior experience with the popular social networking tool. Here are selected excerpts from a day-long scan of tweets mentioning “WaMu” (the bank, not the radio stations with the same call letters), which included about 30 in all:
WaMu is becoming Chase. I am becoming annoyed.
@KiltedDad (Seattle, WA)
In case u didn’t know, WaMu sucks now!!!
@dubyabejay (Seattle, WA)
my local wamu is now a chase bank. boo!
I liked the wamu brand 
@bensonlee (National City, CA)
WAMU now Chase – you really screwed up. As a small business owner you really screwed us. Customer lost.
Looking to switch banks. I loved Wamu dearly,
but Chase is not cutting it for me!
@kgandstuff (New Jersey)
The Chase makeover of the Seattle WAMU branch is fugly. Time to switch banks.
@evermeire (Seattle, WA)
WAMU/Chase just lost a customer today. I loved the customer service at WAMU. So sad that it went away with the name.
@PlumCrazyRE (Duvall, WA)
You don’t have to know how Twitter works at all to find such an outpouring of emotion over the loss of a financial brand fascinating. These are people who took time out of their day to share their feelings with their friends (called “Followers” in Twitter)… about a bank. And these aren’t whacked out nut jobs, or digruntled Gen-Y types with nothing better to do. These are regular people.
Key Question: Would people mourn the loss of your brand if it went away? Would anyone pen a eulogy in song for your brand? Has any common consumer ever voluntarily mentioned your name and the word “brand” in the same sentence?
You’ll notice that four of the seven tweets above come from people in the Seattle area. If you are in sales or marketing with a financial institution in Western Washington, wouldn’t you be interested in reaching out to these people?
@coachandrew Have you ever considered switching to
[your bank]? We’d love to have your business. Send me
a message and I’ll give you a call.
Think about it. Four people a day, 365 days a year. That’s over 1,400 qualified leads a year. And we’re only talking about monitoring Twitter for conversations referencing one financial institution. Here’s the key thing: These people are at that critical moment when inertia in their financial relationships is weakest.
Using the advanced features at search.twitter.com, you can perform super robust scans of Twitter conversations. You can look for people who are talking about “banks,” “fees,” “switching,” “WaMu,” “Chase,” “BofA,” “Wells Fargo,” or any number of your competitors. You can limit your search to a targeted geographic area. You can even search for people who have a negative attitude. And the best part is, you can automate your Twitter searches, like this RSS feed that will give you almost-realtime updates for people mentioning “WaMu” within 100 miles of Seattle.
What makes this particularly interesting is that Chase has an active Twitter account. They use it around three times a week. But they don’t talk to- or acknowledge anyone. Why aren’t they in Twitter playing a little defense, responding to people’s questions and concerns?
Compare these tweets for Chase (shown left) and Bank of America (shown right). Again, you don’t have to know squat about Twitter or how it works to tell who is using the medium more effectively.
Chase vs. BofA on Twitter
Notice @chasebank only publishes a one-way, self-serving stream of tweets,
while @BofA_help is actively engaging other Twitter users with “@ Replies”
(a way to respond to a specific person directly in Twitter). Also, notice the highlighted
tweet in Chase’s Twitter stream making the announcement that “Chase is now in California.”
[Editor's Note: Look for an upcoming report on Twitter from Jeffry Pilcher, publisher of The Financial Brand. The report, titled "A Comprehensive Guide to Twitter for Financial Professionals," will be available for purchase through Online Financial Innovations, publishers of the Online Banking Report and Netbanker.com. Send an email if you have any questions or would like to reserve your copy today.]
Search For More: Marketing, Social Media, BofA, Chase, mergers, Twitter, WaMuAll content © 2013 by The Financial Brand and may not be reproduced by any means without permission.
Jeff,
This is an excellent post on how to strategically use Twitter and how not to use it simply as a tool to “hawk your wares”. My senior management team at my credit union are still on the fence about using Twitter. I’m the only one currently using it and guess what…I am not Gen X or Y (there are some Gen Xers on our team). I am sending this to them in the hopes that others will “get it” and embrace Twitter both corporately and personally.
Now I’m going to run some searches in the Dallas, TX area and see what opportunities may be available to encourage switching! Thanks as always for insightful articles.
One difference between Chase and BofA (regarding their use of Twitter) that I notice is that Chase’s twitter icon is its logo, while BofA’s is a picture of the person doing the tweeting.
Now let me think, who do I know on Twitter that uses his company’s (or blog’s) icon instead of his picture ….
Our tool (findabetterbank.com) helps people compare banks based on features, fees, and their own banking activity. We have the 100 largest (by branches) banks in the us in our database…
…we haven’t been too clear on how to approach people on twitter though. is it rude to search and then message them? I know I personally wouldn’t want to be approached that way. At the same time, i feel pretty confident that our tool could help a lot of people, so it’s unclear whether or not contacting them (from “out of no where” ) is a good idea.
What makes it the most interesting to me is–I know how I want to use twitter, but how do OTHER people want to use it? i want my “privacy” and “personality” to not be watered down or compromised by the twitter babble world, but do other people mind? and maybe most importantly, if I act on twitter differently as my company than I do as myself, am I compromising my own take on “online courtesy” or does the fact that I represent a company mean it’s OK to act differently.
I imagine you’ll touch upon these things in the upcoming report. I look forward to seeing/hearing more. Thanks.
@Ron – Good observation. In BofA’s case, it definitely helps to have a picture of a real person — the actual person, who’s staffing the account. BofA’s Twitter strategy hinges entirely on interpersonal interactions (i.e., customer service).
I think the components that go into a Twitter profile — name, user name, profile picture, bio, background, colors, location, URL — are all entirely driven by each organization’s strategy, and many of the variables are interdependent. What are they there to accomplish? Who are they talking to? What are they saying?
These are some Twitter profile icons I pulled for my upcoming Twitter report. They weren’t pre-screened to make a point (I made these graphics two weeks ago). They were just handy. Nevertheless, they illustrate that most organizations on Twitter pick a brand symbol as their profile picture — usually their logo.
Companies putting a picture of a person — a real person — on their Twitter account is less common. It’s a good strategy for sure, because (as many argue) “Twitter is about dialogue and conversation.” But I think it’s a bit misleading to suggest there is some sort of rule that “everyone on Twitter should use a picture of themselves.” It’s certainly a good guideline, but there are a lot of different approaches that might work in any number of various strategies.
For The Financial Brand, the Twitter strategy is pretty straightforward: it is a publishing tool. Every single thing The Financial Brand tweets is a link to an article or website of interest. It’s an “overflow valve” or outlet for all the other stories that are worth taking a look at, but there just isn’t enough time to write about.
@Andrew – You bring up an excellent point. Do people want to be harangued by marketers on Twitter? I think it boils down to this: Are you trying to actually help someone? Or are you just trying to sell some shit? People can tell the difference. I don’t think anyone minds when someone is genuinely trying to help them out.
So in the WaMu example in the article, I don’t think it would be appropriate to solicit the business of @KiltedDad. He’s just complaining. But you could try something a little more passive, like Following him.
But look at this tweet from @coachandrew. He says, “I predicted WAMU, once a great bank, would turn to dreck once Chase bought it. Today they proved me right. Tomorrow I’ll enjoy closing acct.” He has announced that he is in the market for (presumably) a checking account. You could send him this message: “@coachandrew Sorry about your troubles with WaMu. Are you looking for a business or checking acct?” Would you be offended if that showed up in your Twitter Timeline? Maybe at the most you’d shrug it off and ignore it.
I’m guessing most people will like the idea that they have some sort of personal connection with “their banker.” I can imagine a lot of people thinking, “Hey, this is neat. I get personal, privileged attention here on Twitter. No bank ever took the time to really acknowledge my existence before.”
In your case Andrew, I think most people wouldn’t mind hearing about findabetterbank.com — provided that they have already expressed an interest in something relevant to what your service provides. I’d be looking for people wrestling with this kind of question: “Time to switch banks? But who? Aren’t they all the same?” Or maybe, “Bank or credit union? Which should I choose?” If someone says they are “in the market,” as it were, for a new bank or credit union and needs help deciding, I wouldn’t hesitate to send them an @Reply. (Note: Not everyone has Twitter set to show @Replies from everyone. Some select to see only @Replies from people they are Following, and some people have @Replies turned off entirely, although that’s rare.)
@Carolyn – The introduction of Twitter’s advanced search features, along with the ability to create an RSS feed out of any search, are two of the most important developments. It is now possible to find people who may be talking about stuff you’re interested in.
You can also use a third-party application like Tweetdeck to monitor conversations. That’s what I did for this article on WaMu. I just added another column (the 7th) to my screen. It refreshed the stream of tweets every 2 minutes all day with anything anyone had to say about “WaMu.” It’s a superb way to monitor the zeitgeist of any given issue.
Glad you enjoyed the article. While not for every financial institution, Twitter does hold a lot of opportunity. We’ll see how it all shakes out.
great article
now if we could just convince legal and executive management…
Jeffry,
A belated thanks for the insight. Yes, it does seem like a shrug-off would be the worst response to an unsolicited but well-intentioned response. I will be a bit more “forward” in getting the word out, and we’ll see how many people we can help. Thanks again.
It seems the Chase Twitter account has been suspended for suspicious activity. Where does that fit in to this article?
The @ChaseBank account was not an official account. It was streaming mortgage rates and nothing else. It was probably set up by a squatter, or someone in the Chase mortgage dept. Twitter probably closed it following a direct request from Chase.
The @CitigroupInc account is another fake account that should probably be closed down. But right now, if Citi doesn’t complain, nothing happens.