SoLoMo: Kotak Bank Celebrates Foursquare Day in 200 Banking Branches

SoLoMo. Kotak Mahindra Bank organized a social media banking contest on twitter, in close to 200 banking branches, to celebrate foursquare day. Mayors won a goodie bag and a drink.

Every year April 16 is celebrated as Foursquare Day or #4sqDay.  This year marked the 4th anniversary of the service.

Foursquare users, fans of the most popular check-in app in the world, always gather in real life as part of a series of meetups organized all over the world, including in India.

Kotak Bank (@KotakBankLtd) sponsored the foursquare day events both in Mumbai & Bangalore: the bank was keen to reach their fans and promote themself not only on foursquare but also two other popular social media channels, facebook and twitter.

 The rewards of attending a 4SqDay meetup

• Unlocking TWO badges in one day (#4SqDay & Swarm Badge)
• Meeting fellow foursquare geeks
• Winning official goodies and the sponsor’s goodies

Kotak Bank & Foursquare

 In the run up to #4SqDay, Kotak Mahindra Bank ran a special promotion to urge users to checkin in their banking branches by rewarding foursquare mayors.

For 150+ locations across Mumbai, anyone who checked-in at Kotak Mahindra Bank location in Mumbai and successfully became a mayor (with the most number of check-ins for a location in last 60 days) was given on foursquare day a goodie bag and a complimentary drink.

For 30+ locations in Bangalore, the call to action was even more simple, anyone who checked-in at any Kotak Mahindra Bank branches being given a goodie bag.

Twitter contest

In order to build up the amount of buzz and excitement around their foursquare campaign, Kotak Mahindra Bank also tapped twitter and flagged conversations with a dedicated hashtag:

• The #KotakBankMayor contest was held around a series of simple questions about foursquare and Kotak bank
• Contestants had to check-in and share with a creative message about the bank’s twitter contest

Achievements

Please find below the results as shared with me by my main contact at the bank:

• The number of likes for their main foursquare page account grew from 80 likes to 173 likes
• Kotak Bank locations saw multiples of 10 check-ins on the day of the event
• Salt Water Café (the main venue for the celebrations in Mumbai) saw 100+ check-ins, and unlocked the Swarm Badge

It is always good to see engaging initiatives tapping social media banking in the APAC region.  So double kudos to the Kotak Bank team for not only experimenting on foursquare but also aiming to bridge the gap between digital and offline on the same occasion.

The bank, whose Securities division does a great job engaging its customers on twitter and facebook via regular photo contests and giving them a voice on their blog- did a decent job promoting their campaign on their social media channels.

Despite some relatively low stats and level of activity pre-event, with this foursquare experiment Kotak Bank achieved a number of objectives: they successfully connected with the hardcore foursquare users (usually social media savvy and active online), they generated an incremental number of visits to their branches, and they refreshed their brand by demonstrating their willingness to be cool and engaging.

I’ve persaonlly never really embraced the foursquare trend, and I would have to question the overall value of checkins for banks and insurance agencies.  With the increasing popularity and convenience of mobile banking and even facebook banking, do banks even want to drive traffic to their branches anymore?

But unarguably, success in social media still very much relies on a test and learn approach.  So, what are your views on Kotak Bank’s SoLoMo experiment based on Foursquare Day?  I invite you to share your comments and flag your best practices here or on twitter.