Sun East Federal Credit Union is a not-for-profit institution serving the financial needs of more than 52,000 members throughout Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey. The organization provides members with a wide range of financial services, including savings, investments, loans and insurance.

We sat down with Courtney Ballauer, Senior Digital Strategist at Sun East, to learn how the marketing team uses Hive to streamline its day-to-day workflow and support its hybrid working culture. 

The marketing workflow before using Hive

Courtney is responsible for assisting in developing, designing and deploying various multimedia assets to support Sun East’s marketing and eCommerce strategies. She champions Hive’s capabilities to the rest of her marketing team as they work across various digital and traditional marketing channels.

Before using Hive, the marketing team used email to manage projects and workflow. However, keeping track of a high-traffic workload using email alone proved challenging. 

“Before we started using Hive, we had so much email clogging our system,” Courtney says. “Our projects require a lot of back and forth, with large files, and involve multiple team members and various levels of approval. So many people have to touch each project. We needed to find a better way to handle our workload.” 

The marketing team needed a new, efficient way to streamline its work, so senior team members began exploring different project management software products. Hive stood out due to its functionality, flexibility and capacity for customization.

Smoothing the transition to remote & hybrid work

Courtney and the marketing team began using Hive during the summer of 2021, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’ve always had the goal to have at least a little bit of remote work in our department. So when the pandemic accelerated remote working, Hive helped ease the transition and enabled us to work from home,” Courtney explains. 

Today, the team follows a fully hybrid working model, with different members of the team working in the office on different days. Hive has enabled them to work productively as a hybrid team and has eliminated unnecessary emails and calls. “Hive puts everything in one place, so work is streamlined, and everybody is clear on their tasks and timelines,” Courtney explains. “For example, if I am working on a design mock-up, I can move it into my Director’s tasks for review as soon as I’ve completed it.” 

Let’s continue to learn how Courtney and the marketing team use Hive to streamline their work processes and stay connected today.

Using Hive Forms to streamline work requests

The team works on a wide range of multimedia projects. Depending on the specific marketing campaign, particular assets might be used for social media posts, digital ads, or promotions for one or more of the Sun East Federal Credit Union branch locations.

The marketing team receives work requests from various teams across the organization via Hive Forms. To submit a request, anyone at SEFCU can access Hive Form via a URL on the company intranet, fill it out with necessary information about the request, and submit it to the marketing  team. From there, the work requests (internally called tickets) are reassigned amongst the team.

How Projects are organized in Hive

Within Hive, the team has set up color-coded folders for each type of financial product at the Credit Union. For example, all of the loan projects are colored bright blue, and they sit under a bright blue “Loan” parent project folder. On the other hand, all savings campaign projects are purple. This helps the team stay organized and keep all projects in the correct place. 

The team creates a new Hive Project for each campaign, and action cards are added for each deliverable, starting with the project kickoff meeting. So, for example, if assets are required for the website, social media, and display ads, the marketing team creates separate action cards for each of those deliverables. Each team member has a folder for their own projects and campaigns as well.

Work for each deliverable is broken down into subactions, which are assigned to different members of the team. “On the action cards, we add subactions for tasks and assign them to the right people, so everything can happen in order. So, for example, our graphic designer creates an asset, which then goes to another team member to be reviewed. The asset keeps moving from one person to the next, until it’s finished and sent for final approval.” 

Each project ends with a “Reporting” action card, where the marketing analysts will attach all relevant reports or documents from the campaign. This keeps all project data in one place and is helpful when the team is reviewing what worked and what didn’t work. This also makes it easy to track down past project details and performance if the team wants to reference it in the future. 

Customizing Projects in Hive 

Flexible Project Views 

The team typically uses Hive’s Status View (also known as a Kanban board) to keep track of day-to-day work. Status View displays the specific stage of each action, so the user can see if each action is unstarted, in progress, or completed. The team uses Hive’s custom statuses and has created specific statuses for their work, such as Ready for approval, and Ready for launch. Once projects are completed, they move up to the ‘Live’ folder. 

Leaders on the marketing team use Gantt view to oversee actions and timelines, which is useful for checking that work is appropriately resourced and on schedule. Managers can also use Hive’s high-level reporting features to surface specific information.

Templates 

When setting up a new project, Courtney often uses an active project as a template. In terms of resourcing, everyone has specific roles in the team, so much of the information stays the same across projects. 

To apply a template from an active project, Courtney goes to the menu within the project, selects ‘Apply project template’ and chooses a template from the team’s active projects. Once the actions have populated automatically, Courtney can customize the new project by adding or removing details. 

Conclusion

The marketing team at Sun East has a fast-paced workload creating multimedia assets for a range of campaigns, so reducing unnecessary admin and promoting collaborative, efficient workflows was vital. 

Using Hive has enabled the team to create a solid process for each campaign launch, streamlining the process from start to finish. With multiple people working across a wide range of assets, Hive enables the team to move work back and forth between team members and through the approvals process efficiently. Being able to view all the work in one place enables managers and team members to make quick decisions and spot any issues with resourcing before they occur. 

“Being able to see all our projects and ongoing work in one place enables us to make better decisions and sculpt our strategy according to our team member’s workloads. That’s been really helpful.” – Courtney Ballauer