13 credit unions tried their hand at paid influence and are ready to do it again

Even within the buttoned up financial services industry, Credit Unions may not be the first organizations that come to mind when you think about the vanguard of digital marketing, but a new report from Filene Research Institute, a non-profit think tank for credit unions, describes how a baker’s dozen of them partnered with paid social media influencers to reach that most fickle and elusive of species—the Gen Z consumer.

Campaigns included a Northern California lifestyle influencer with 159,000 Instagram followers who grew their credit union partner’s Instagram Story views by 125% and a Michigan based lifestyle and family content creator who helped grow TikTok views by 573%. The average total campaign spend was just $4,300.

While working with influencers was new to 11 of the 13 participating lenders, they uniformly reported a positive experience.

The bottom line: They all said they’re going to keep going in working with influencers.

Research results

Each credit union teamed up with a social media influencer for a roughly two-week content campaign across Instagram, TikTok and other channels and sought to measure improvement in reach, engagement and conversions, as tracked by each organization’s platform analytics

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While the sample group was small and the data should be viewed as directional and not dispositive, the study suggests growth in three areas.

• Reach: Average follower growth was 42 new followers or 3%, greater than is typical for financial services, according to Filene. Top performing video reels reached up to 53,000 views, with the strongest growth on Instagram and much of the gains in new followers coming in week one of the campaign

• Engagement: Likes per post averaged 1,700, versus a baseline of 11. Filene noted there was strong correlation between organizations that reported close collaboration with their respective influencer and higher rates of engagement with their content

• Conversions: Data on conversions was thin, as only a handful were able to capture data. Average click-throughs ranged from 20-300, with one participant noting a nearly 30% increase in site traffic it attributed to the influencer campaign

  

Lessons learned

While the study was geared toward credit unions, there are some great takeaways that can apply to most financial services organizations:

First of all, working with influencers may be easier than many people realize. The entire Filene research experiment took just four months from initial planning & budgeting to influencer engagement and campaign implementation to ex post data analysis.

The decision to use regional influencers with modest following and the correlation that was noted between the degree of collaboration and results both highlight the importance of one thing: authenticity.

The ability to connect with prospective customers in their everyday element and build trust through authentic storytelling is the reason anyone chooses influencer marketing over traditional approaches in the first place.

And finally, the paucity of data on conversion points to the criticality of a robust analytics capability. It’s not easy, but everybody knows it’s true: Whether embarking on a paid influencer campaign, paid social, a traditional advertising spend, or an earned media campaign, not having the systems in place to quantify the ultimate return on investment is going to be frustrating.

Read the full 2025 Filab Results: Finfluencer HERE.