This document discusses marketing strategies used by 15 leading fintech startups. It describes how Atom Bank created a unique customer experience with their "World's Most Relaxing ATM" campaign. It discusses how Monzo turned customers into brand advocates through referrals and involvement in product development. It outlines how Revolut focused on building the best product to solve real user problems and provided a simple onboarding process.

1.
How they did it:
Real-world growth marketing
strategies from 15 leading
fintech start-ups

2. 2
Foreword
Fintech, short for Financial Technology, is one of the hottest
buzzwords that’s been dominating the finance world over
the last few years. Born out of the financial crisis in 2008,
Fintech represents a new type of financial institutions aiming
to revolutionise the traditional financial industry by means of
new and disruptive technologies.
The rapid development of technology, lower post-crisis
consumer confidence in the sector, and increasingly
stringent regulations paved the way for newcomers to enter
the market and provide improved, innovative and more competitive propositions.
Focusing on 4 core pillars – innovation, simplicity, transparency and personalisation –
fintech disruptors have already started actively reshaping a wide range of financial
services including payments, wealth management, peer-to-peer lending and
crowdfunding.
With more than £95b investments over the last 3 years, the fintech sector has now
reached a matured stage and is steadily making its way into mass adoption. According
to the latest EY Fintech Adoption Index report the average fintech adoption globally is
up to 33%, compared to only 16% in 2015.
Despite the exponential growth of the sector, fintech start-ups have been facing some
unique challenges in bringing their novel products to the market. From gaining
consumer trust and building brand identity to effectively communicating and
demystifying the complexity and jargon of financial technology, majority of fintechs
have been struggling to get real traction.
Nonetheless, there are a few players who have managed to cut through the noise and
been leading the way by taking some rather unconventional, even daring approaches
to marketing. This paper studies 15 of them, providing you with some valuable real-life
insights and ideas that you can “steal” right away.
Ani Petrova
Marketing Consultant & Founder
AP Marketing Solutions Ltd.
“We have
always been
shameless
about stealing
great ideas.”
Steve Jobs

3. 3
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1. Atom Bank - be relevant and personal 4
2. Monzo - turn customers into brand advocates 6
3. Revolut - build the best product 9
4. Starling Bank - empower customers 13
5. 11:FS - become a media company and create your own channels 16
6. Currencycloud - be the content king 18
7. Coinbase - use affiliate/referral marketing 20
8. Ripple - find your biggest partner 23
9. N26 - dare to be bold and create a unique brand personality 26
10. WealthSimple - resonate with your target audience 29
11. iZettle - create a physical experience 32
12. Yoyo Wallet - run a pilot project 35
13. PensionBee - look for alternative channels and touchpoints 37
14. Finimize - build a community 41
15. Nutmeg - go offline 44
Contents

4.
4
Atom Bank - be
relevant and personal
Atom Bank is the UK’s first challenger bank
offering mobile-only banking. The company first
acquired its banking license in 2015 and then
officially launched in 2016. Founded by the former
founder and CEO of Metrobank Anthony Thomson,
Atom targets the youngster and millennials
customer segments between the ages of 18 and
35 and focuses on 3 key areas - Savings Accounts,
Mortgages and Small Business’s Loans.
So far, the bank has raised about £370m in total
funding comprising £85m investment from the
Spanish giant BBVA who now owns 39% of the
company. As of March 2018, Atom had £1.3b in
deposits and lent £1.2b in mortgages and small
business loans.
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5.
5
Find a way to be unexpected and get
people talking about it
The first step in Atom’s go-to-market strategy was to look
for ideas and innovation outside of the industry. Being on
a mission to provide a completely new, superior banking
experience to their target customer segment, the
company’s founding team searched for ways to create the
best screen experience, and they found that to be within
gaming. So, they ended up building the Atom’s
application using gaming models and 3D technology,
which enabled them to create an incredibly distinct
product with user experience at the heart of it.
Before the product was even released, the team also
came up with a pre-launch strategy inspired by the
consumer goods industry. Focusing again on the end
user, Atom launched their ‘Design your own logo’
campaign. When customers registered for an Atom
account, the logo on their app’s screen wasn’t Atom’s
logo, but a unique personalised logo including their
name, e.g Lucy’s Bank or Mark’s Bank.
Known as ‘in-product marketing’, whereby the product
provides constant subtle reminders to the consumer that
they are engaged with a brand, this tactic is commonly
used in the consumer goods industry (think of Coca-Cola
and Nutella’s name-branded packaging campaigns) and
is, therefore, found to be particularly effective in building
strong relationships with consumers.
The campaign generated 1.4m logos and helped Atom
build a massive, highly-engaged consumer audience
before it had even launched its product.
Besides creating a unique user experience and relying
heavily on word-of-mouth, referrals and social media,
Atom’s team also used some traditional media channels
to further increase the company’s brand awareness. To
quickly get national press and media coverage, for
example, they hired the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to
help create ‘The World’s Most Relaxing ATM’ and show
that using an ATM doesn’t have to just be functional. The
story was reported in The Mirror and The Metro
newspapers and brought them considerable awareness
just a few months into the product launch. In total, they
managed to attract a pre-registered customer base of
about 28,000 people solely through press and media
coverage.
Atom Bank created unique customer experience
with the ‘World’s Most Relaxing ATM.’
(Image source: Solent)

6.
6
Monzo - turn
customers into
brand advocates
2
Monzo is one of the UK’s top challenger banks,
which has acquired 750,000 customers in just three
years and raised $153m in equity funding.
Launched in 2015, it was originally introduced as a
pre-paid debit card (named Mondo). The company
received its full banking license in April 2017.
Similar to other neo-banks, Monzo provides a digital-
only, no-fee banking service, with customer-centric,
personal approach.

7.
7
Get the buzz going around your existing
network
With significant experience in the UK tech start-up economy
and a well-established network, Monzo’s founder Tom
Bloomfield and his partners were well-positioned to get the
buzz going around the community, even before their product
was actually finalised.
So, they started off with simply distributing pre-paid debit cards
to a number of influencers and tech enthusiasts, which
combined with the strength of their product secured them their
first word-of-mouth referrals.
Use referrals and word of mouth as a way to
build a community
To add extra fuel to their word-of-mouth launch strategy,
Monzo’s team also introduced a referral scheme a long with a
waiting list. When users downloaded the app they were added
to a waiting list, and the only way to move down the queue was
to refer a friend to the product.
Also known as gamification, this launch trick has been very
popular among start-ups, especially in the tech world. Waiting
lists are found to be particularly effective as they tap into
people’s competitive nature, thirst for exclusivity and curiosity.
Monzo introduced a referral scheme and
waiting list for their launch to create a
sense of urgency and exclusivity.
(Image source: Monzo)

8.
8
Involve customers to build trust and
loyal, long-lasting relationships
The key to Monzo’s success is undoubtedly their
customer-centric business model. According to Tristan
Thomas, Monzo’s head of marketing and community, the
company’s ultimate goal is “broadly to get to a stage
where customers are referring their friends because they
love the product and feel like they’re a part of the mission
— you need to take customers away from being ‘standard
customers’ to being advocates who are feeling like they’re
part of it”.
And to achieve this, Monzo are putting their customers at
the heart of every strategy they run. For example, when
they had to look for a new name after the trademark
“Mondo” was challenged by another company, they
contacted their 100,000 subscribers and put the word out
on social media and press. In 48 hours, their campaign
landing page hit 12,000 submissions.
They also often ask their customers to provide feedback
on new product launches and fees, allow them to invest
in the company through equity crowdfunding rounds and
regularly organise community events at their offices or
customer-suggested venues. The core idea behind their
customer-centric model is that customers would be more
loyal and willing to refer others if they have a personal
relationship with the company and some sort of stake in it.
In result, 80% of Monzo’s customer acquisitions are
generated through their referral programme, with the rest
20% being attributed to a limited amount of paid media on
Facebook and Twitter.
“You need to take customers
away from being ‘standard
customers’ to being
advocates who are feeling like
they’re part of it” -
Tristan Thomas

9.
9
Revolut – build the
best product
Revolut was founded in 2015 in London as a free
foreign exchange card. In just 3 years, the company
has become one of the few UK fintechs to earn a
unicorn status, with valuation of $1.7b. It has
acquired more than 2m customers and has
processed more than £15b-worth of transactions.
With Series C funding round now completed,
Revolut has expanded its services offering to
include cryptocurrency trading, property investment
and insurance, and is now looking to enter new
foreign markets and jurisdictions.
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10. 10
Customer is the KING
In comparison to other fintech startups, Revolut are
aiming to be very transparent and open about their
strategic moves and decisions. So, they are sharing a lot
of company insights on their blog. This is a great
marketing tactic, not only for boosting content and SEO,
but also for increasing the brand’s trustworthiness and
customer loyalty.
In one of their posts, Revolut are describing in much detail
how they managed to get 16,000 business accounts in
just 3 months with £0 marketing budget. And essentially,
the secret to this enormous success is their unique
product offering and customer-centric marketing
approach.
According to Revolut, you don’t need big marketing
budgets, but ‘a kick-ass app that has virality written all
over it’. So, how did they do it?
Build the best product and solve a real
user problem
For a start, Revolut organised a number of focus groups
with small and medium businesses from across the UK
and Europe (their targeted consumer segments) and
identified 5 key flawed business banking areas, where
they could potentially make a difference. One of the
biggest issues facing SMEs was the inefficiency and
slowness of the existing banking platforms in the market.
So, that’s when they realised that the best way to make
their product offering extremely attractive and marketable
was to focus on building a state-of-the-art platform from
the ground up with design, functionality and speed at its
core.
Revolut’s main principle is that if they build products
which are solving real customers’ problems while saving
them time and money, signing them up to their offering
would be simple.
Make the product attractive and
sharable, and create unique buying
experience
Revolut created unique buying experience for their
customers by providing very distinctive and innovative
product packaging. With its blue and pinkish colour and
original sliding pack, their flagship card was designed to
make a statement and get people sharing. Here is one of
the first unpackaging videos by a customer on Twitter.
Following the success of their initial card, Revolut have
taken the same approach to marketing their subsequent
products - Revolut Premium Card and the most recent
Revolut Metal Card. The Metal card, as you can probably
imagine, is made by steel and weighs 3 times as much as
a standard plastic card, creating exclusivity and targeting
their premium client base. But the real appeal of Revolut’s
new offering is again based on the unique functionality of
the product which provides cashback in flat and crypto
currencies.

11.
11
With its bright blue and hot pink
colours and original sliding pack,
Revolut’s card was designed to
make a statement and get people
sharing.
(Image source: Burgopak Ltd)

12.
12
Provide simple and hassle-free
onboarding process
What’s the most annoying aspect of signing up for a new
online service? Surely that would be all those data fields
you need to complete and the amount of information you
need to share. So, one of the best ways to attract and
secure new user sign ups is to offer a simple and hassle-
free onboarding process. To do this, Revolut focused on
eliminating all unnecessary touch points and creating a
quick sign-on with minimum data gathering. Thus, users
were encouraged to try the product without too much
engagement.
Turn clients into fans and let them be
your best salesmen
Similar to Monzo’s strategy, Revolut are openly asking
their customers to get involved in different aspects of the
company’s development; i.e customers are asked to
suggest and name future products, provide feedback on
existing offerings, join open BETA groups and Live Q&A
sessions and attend community meet-ups.
In this way they are aiming to build long-term relationship
with their clients and ultimately convert them into loyal
brand ambassadors and their best salesmen. A great
example of this is their direct email campaign which
involved sending emails to their customers and asking
them to help getting to 1m users by promoting and
sharing their favourite brand’s services to their friends on
social media.
Furthermore, Revolut are even planning to introduce a
merch line including branded t-shirts, hoodies and
stickers that will be available to purchase online. While
this might sound very unusual for a banking business, it’s
certainly a good way to turn your customers into fans and
vice versa.
Revolut launched a merch line of
branded products incl. t-shirts, hats,
hoodies, etc. to turn clients into fans.
(Image source: Revolut)

13.
13
Starling Bank –
empower customers
Starling Bank is a London-based digital, mobile-
only challenger bank founded by former Allied Irish
Banks COO, Anne Boden. It specialises in Personal
and Business Bank Accounts and Payment Services.
Since its launch in 2014, the company has raised
more than £50m funding and is now seeking to raise
further £80m in additional capital from new
investors.
In September 2018, they reached 250k accounts
and got listed on LinkedIn’s Top 25 Startups for 2018.
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14. 14
Be human
Like Monzo and Revolut, and majority of the other
challenger banks in the market, the mobile-only Starling
Bank is focusing its business strategy and model on the
consumer – ‘The Starling account is all about
empowering customers.’ But an interesting aspect of its
marketing strategy is that it’s taking a soft approach to
acquiring new customers. Instead of aggressively
shouting out loud an appeal to ‘Switch’, the company is
encouraging people to try its services first and make up
their own minds. This is a very smart strategy, bearing in
mind the fact that people are more likely to get divorced
than switch their bank account - about 40% of the UK
population, for example, have never switched their bank
accounts. Thus, Starling’s ultimate marketing goal is to
build trustworthy customer relationships and offer a
unique user experience.
To achieve this, they used a number of well-known
marketing tactics that have already been successfully
used by other players in the industry, such as gamification
and waiting lists, getting customers involved in the
development of their products and creating unique
buying experience. Below is one of their most
controversial and outstanding campaigns.
Think outside of the box
Similar to Revolut’s strategy to create an attractive and
distinctive packaging for their pre-paid travel card,
Starling’s team have gone a step farther and taken a more
radical approach designing their card. As crazy as it
sounds, they decided to flip the bank card design from
landscape to portrait.
Bank cards’ original horizontal design and imprinted
numbers are legacy from the use of carbon copy
machines in the past. But, nowadays, people use them
vertically – from inserting a card into an ATM or POS
terminal to filing them away in wallets. So, this is where
Starling’s team saw an opportunity to improve user
experience and set themselves apart from the
competition by breaking the norm.
Although it seemed like a simple task, it turned out that
there were a number of rules the company had to comply
with before changing the design, i.e the Mastercard logo
has to be in certain places, the chip can't move, the
magnetic strip can't move…But the team managed to
meet all of them and came up with a minimalist, vertical
design that included only the chip, the bank’s name and
the Mastercard logo. Personal identifiers and other details
were moved to the back, and are printed rather than
embossed. In terms of colours, they chose bright teal for
personal and navy blue for business customers (again
escaping from the norm and avoiding the usual black for
business).
While the new design received some mixed reviews from
customers and critics, it certainly caught the public and
media’s attention and achieved the team’s ultimate goal
to position the brand as a challenger and differentiate
from the competition.

15.
15
Starling Bank flipped
their card design from
landscape to portrait
to differentiate and
generate buzz.
(Image source: @tomwarren)

16.
16
11:FS – create your
own media channels
11:FS is a challenger consultancy based in London
which provides transformational advisory services
and solutions for fintech start-ups and traditional
banks.
The company was founded by a group of highly-
experienced and influential blockchain
professionals in 2016, with an initial funding of $5m
in seed money. In less than 2 years, 11:FS has
managed to secure a handful of project
partnerships in London, New York and Singapore
and take instrumental role in the development of
some of the world’s top fintech disruptors
including Monzo, Starling, Nutmeg and Tandem.
It has also built a next generation research
platform currently used by more than 50 banks
and a media business with a global podcast
network that’s downloaded in 108 companies a
week.
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17.
17
Start a movement and build a
community through your own media
channels
In the modern world of digital and social media where
customers are empowered and have the freedom to
choose what information to receive and when,
authenticity and transparency are businesses’ best
friends. Especially, if you are a small startup with zero or
limited budget and staff. Realising this, 11:FS’s team
decided to base their whole business model and brand
proposition on the idea of creating authenticity through
their actions, by selecting authentic projects to work on
and establishing an authentic media voice.
A great example of this is the company’s podcast shows,
FinTech Insider, Blockchain Insider, InsurTech Insider and
Connection Interrupted. By speaking to clients and
people in the community, 11:FS’s founders identified an
increasing need for more genuine and human
engagement in the industry. As most finance narrative
and discussions are usually very technical and dry, they
saw an opportunity to create their own media voice and
set themselves apart from the competition by providing
customers with more authentic, gritty and
unapologetically honest content. So, they designed a
branch of podcasts for everyone in the community,
including individuals as well as big institutions, regulators
and other market participants.
Their FinTech Insider podcast has become the #1
business podcast for fintech innovators and influencers,
listened in more than 150 countries.
Thus, by providing real value to users and sticking to their
integrity and core principles to avoid any direct sales and
PR pitches on their media, 11:FS has managed to build a
trustworthy brand, with real community and a powerful
engine for inbound marketing and lead generation, which
has been the main driver of the company’s growth so far.
11:FS created their own media channel by
launching a podcast that is now the #1 business
podcast for FinTech innovators and influencers,
listened in more than 150 countries.
(Image source: 11:FS)

18.
18
Currencycloud – be
the content KING
Currencycloud is a London-based payment
platform which helps businesses to handle
overseas payments using cloud technology.
Founded in 2012 by the industry veteran Nigel
Verdon, the company currently employs about 200
people worldwide and has more than 250
customers in 35 countries, including leading fellow
start-ups like Klarna and Revolut and big market
players such as Hyundai and Standard Bank.
So far, Currencycloud has raised more than $60m
in a series of funding rounds and is backed by
Accomplice, Anthemis, GV, Sapphire Ventures,
Notion, and XAnge.
6

19.
19
Generate demand with content
marketing
Probably, the biggest challenge startups usually face is
creating demand for their products or services, and
educating customers. Especially in the fintech industry,
where very often new entrants come up with brand new
technologies and provide solutions to problems
customers don’t even know exist. One of the most
effective ways to tackle this issue is to focus your strategy
on creating valuable and impactful customer-related
content beyond the product.
A great example of this strategy is Currencycloud’s
content marketing. The company is setting apart from the
stiff market competition by positioning its brand as the
world’s expert in all things payments. To do this,
Currencycloud’s team are focusing their marketing efforts
on producing highly-insightful and engaging content that
covers a vast range of topics across building payment
infrastructures, APIs and money transfers and concerns a
wide audience of CEOs, CFOs, developers and the
general public.
In terms of content type and communication channels,
the company creates blogs, ebooks, infographics and
whitepapers that are regularly published on their own
media. To further raise their expert profile and reach a
wider audience, it also broadcasts a ‘Payments Innovation
Podcast’. Each podcast episode features an interview with
a tech industry expert, discussing topics like: global
payments, money transfer services, financial innovation
and FinTech, eCommerce, APIs, business transformation
and more. The podcast is available on iTunes and the
Currencycloud website, where customers can also find
detailed summaries of all episodes. Publishing a short
blog or summary to accompany podcast episodes is a
very common practice and a good tactic from an SEO
perspective.
Currencycloud uses content marketing to reach
their target audience.
(Image source: Currencycloud)

20.
20
Coinbase – use
affiliate/referral
marketing
Coinbase is a US fintech start-up that was founded
in 2012 by former Airbnb engineer Brian Armstrong
and Goldman Sachs trader Fred Ehrsam. It
provides a digital currency wallet and platform
where users can transact with new digital
currencies like bitcoin, ethereum, and litecoin.
Currently, Coinbase operates in 32 countries and
serves about 20m customer accounts.
In just a year since launching, Coinbase became
the highest funded crypto startup and is now the
biggest exchange across the globe, partnering
with a number of centralised tech giants, payment
processors, and retail stores such as Dell, PayPal,
Stripe, Braintree Dish Network, and Overstock.
7

21. 21
Reach your target market and grow user
base through affiliate partnerships
As part of their launch strategy, Coinbase introduced an
affiliate or referral programme to encourage users to
promote their product to their networks. For each referral
that successfully converted to a client and initiated a buy
or sell of minimum $100 USD in the first 180 days of
opening an account, Coinbase was paying a $10 USD
bonus/commission to both the referee and referrer. The
hefty commission attracted many industry bloggers and
influencers who started spreading the word and
promoting Coinbase through their channels. At some
point, after raising $75m in a major funding round,
Coinbase even increased the referral commission from
$10 to $75 for a limited period, which attracted even
larger affiliate interest.
Affiliate marketing is nothing new and it’s been
successfully used in digital marketing ever since the
introduction of e-commerce in the late 1990s. But what
exactly is affiliate marketing? It’s simply the process of
creating partnerships with third party marketers (‘the
affiliates’) and incentivising them to promote your
products or services by offering them a commission for
each conversion they generate. Affiliates can be
professional marketers and media owners (i.e comparison
sites) or industry bloggers and influencers.
Nowadays, affiliate marketing is a common growth tactic
used by companies at different stages of their
development, but mainly at launch as part of their go-to-
market strategy. By selecting and partnering with affiliates
who have strong relationship with people from your target
customer segment, you will be able to reach your target
market in a quicker and direct way, as opposed to other
distribution channels such as search ads or content
marketing, where you would have to wait for your target
audience to find you and then gradually build your own
relationship with it. Besides providing direct access to
your target market, affiliate partnerships also offer a quick
way to earn consumers trust through the affiliates’
endorsements and a less risky acquisition tool as the risk
of failed conversions is covered by the affiliate.

22. Coinbase introduced an affiliate or referral programme to encourage users to
promote their product to their networks.
22
(Image source: Coinbase)

23.
23
Ripple – find your
biggest partner
Ripple is a blockchain technology company offering
global financial settlement solutions to banks and
payment providers through the use of their own
digital asset XRP (‘Ripple’). Originally named
Opencoin, the company was founded in 2012 by
Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb. It now has offices in
major global finance and tech hubs such as San
Francisco, New York, London, Sao Paulo, Mumbai
and Sidney, and more than 120 high-profile
customers around the world including Bank of
America, Credit Agricole, Mizuho Financial Group
and Santander.
Ripple has raised a total of $93.6m in funding over 9
rounds and secured partnerships with big industry
players like American Express, BBVA and
MoneyGram.
8

24.
24
Gain consumer trust through partnering
with established market players
Formed by finance, technology and fintech veterans,
Ripple’s team had a clear vision and understanding that
the best way to succeed as an emerging technology
provider in such a competitive market like finance would
be to focus their business on building strong partnerships
with existing and well-established industry players.
Reaching and acquiring customers through partnerships
is a great strategy, especially if you don’t want or have the
capabilities to build a large distribution channel. Very
often new products can be integrated into an existing
product or service and, therefore, marketed as an add-on.
For example, Ripple’s settlement and cryptocurrency
solutions provided a perfect complementary offering to
existing banking and payment services that helped them
attract and secure partnerships with some of the world’s
biggest financial and technology organisations.
Besides reaching their target market and acquiring
customers, Ripple have also used their strategic
partnerships to spread the word and increase brand
awareness, while gaining customers’ trust. For example,
the company’s partnership with the finance giant
American Express automatically positioned Ripple in front
of the general American public and loyal AMEX clientele
as a a reliable financial service, rather than a gimmick new
technology.
Ripple partnered with American Express to
reach their target market and increase brand
awareness.
(Image source: Bitcoinexchangeguide.com)

25.
25
You need to give in order to get
One of the most successful marketing campaigns of
Microsoft has been the donation of computers to low-
income school districts in the 1980s. The campaign
generated a massive buzz around local communities and
media, and helped Microsoft gain a significant customer
base.
Similarly, Ripple have recently completed a series of
donations with the aim to gain further traction and attract
new customers. In May 2018, the US leading crypto
startup donated the largest donation of cryptocurrency
that has ever been made to support public schools
nationwide. The amount of $29m dollars’ worth of XRP
were given to the school crowdfunding charity platform
DonorsChoose, which had already successfully funded
about 1.1m school projects and impacted nearly 27.7m
students. Ripple’s donation was used to equip more than
30,000 classrooms across all 50 US states.
Another great example of the company’s giving
marketing strategy is when the popular US actor and
Ripple investor Ashton Kutcher appeared on the Ellen
DeGeneres show to donate $4m to the Ellen DeGeneres
Wildlife Fund on behalf of the crypto startup. In addition
to announcing the generous donation, Kutcher also took
the opportunity to demonstrate Ripple’s technology on
the show and performed an impressive instant transfer of
the amount into Rwandan francs straight to Ellen’s
account.
Finally, Ripple donated $50m to top US universities for
research and development to encourage the adoption of
blockchain.
Although charity giving tactics are sometimes
controversial and might raise questions about a
company’s integrity and values, they’re definitely a great
marketing tool to generate buzz and increase brand
awareness.
Ashton Kutcher donated $4m to the Ellen
DeGeneres Wildlife Fund on behalf of Ripple
live on Ellen’s TV show.
(Image source: Warner Bros.)

26.
26
N26 Group – dare to
be bold and create a
unique brand
personality
N26 is a leading German mobile bank offering a
paid-for and free current accounts across Europe.
The company was founded in 2013 by the Austrian
duo Valentin Stalf and Maximilian Tayenthal. They
launched their pilot product in 2015 and received a
full banking license from the ECB and Bafin in
2016. Since then, N26 has acquired more than 1.5m
customers across 17 European markets.
So far, the company has raised a total of $215m
funding, with $160m raised in its latest Series C
funding round co-led by Allianz X and Tencent
Holdings Ltd, which is the largest equity financing
round (non-IPO) in the fintech industry in Germany
to date and one of the largest in Europe.
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27. 27
Build a unique personality for your brand
and stick to it
Dull, boring, tasteless, disconnected – these are words
usually associated with traditional finance marketing.
Facing lower consumer confidence and increasingly
stringent regulations, most financial companies still seem
to be stuck in their product marketing comfort zone and
speaking the same language. You can hardly differentiate
a finance brand, especially in the retail banking sector,
where everyone seems to be repeating the same
messages over and over again: free checking, good rates,
low fees, reward programmes, good service, etc. So, even
those customers who are most willing to change or
switch, eventually don’t.
Determined to challenge the status quo and make a real
impact, N26’s team decided to make a bold move, by
attempting to change the common narrative and create a
unique personality for their brand with their #nobullshit
campaign.
The campaign’s manifesto said:
‘There is a lot of bullshit flying around these days. It can be
hard to filter through what’s true and what’s, well - bullshit.
That’s where we come in. We here at N26 are frankly tired of
all the bullshit that comes with banking. It’s time to change
that. By cutting out extra fees and keeping costs low, we
want to create a bank that’s uniquely useable, wherever you
are. And one that acts and talks like a human.’
The key word here is ‘human’. As mentioned earlier, in the
current competitive and highly-advanced economic
landscape where everyone offers cutting-edge
technology and user experience, one possible way to
stand out from the crowd is to focus your strategy on
gaining customer trust and building strong relationships.
But to do this, you will have to be more than just
consumer-focused. You will have to become people-first
and show your human side.
This is exactly what N26’s aimed to achieve with their
#nobulshit bank campaign; to get closer to their customer
target segment of millennials and speak their language.
Some customers and critics, of course, might find it rather
blunt and controversial. However, one thing is for sure, the
campaign did attract the public and industry attention,
and positioned N26 as a true fintech disruptor.

28. N26 challenged the status quo with their bold #nobullshit campaign.
28
(Image source: N26)

29.
29
WealthSimple –
resonate with your
target audience
WealthSimple is a leading Canadian investment
management start-up founded in 2014 by Michael
Katchen. The company offers a hybrid investment
solution for millennials, combining an online robo-
adviser platform with access to live advisers.
WealthSimple is based in Toronto and currently
serves about 65k customers.
In 2015, the company received $165m in funding
from the Power Financial Group, a leading financial
holding company with $1.4t in AUM.
10

30. 30
Create a brand image and voice that
resonate with your target audience
Similar to N26’s strategy, WealthSimple have also shaped
their marketing and branding around the concept of
‘human’; ‘trying to build the most human financial services
company in the world’. Nevertheless, it has taken a softer
approach and opted for less forceful tone of voice and
techniques such as content marketing and organic
storytelling instead of aggressive outbound advertising
and promotion.
The first step in WealthSimple’s marketing strategy was to
form a content team of 10 full-time employees and
appoint former GQ editorial director Devin Friedman as
the team’s head. Besides experienced creative and
editorial staff, the team also included a couple of
professional ex-Wieden+Kennedy designers. By bringing
in professional creative and design talent in-house, the
company was seeking to add a human touch to their
customers’ experience with their brand and differentiate
among competitors. Its key objective was to create
engaging, people-oriented and highly narrative content
with powerful visuals, and essentially build a lifestyle
brand around financial services that is resonating with the
mass millennials market.
Nowadays, the industry is saturated by ‘tips and tricks’
and ‘five things you need to know about’ type of content,
so people are looking for more solid, in-depth pieces of
real-life examples and use cases of things that worked
and things that didn’t. Following this trend, WealthSimple
focused on producing targeted and edgy editorials that
have little to do with its technology, but more with its
targeted audience, and go way beyond just advice. Its
Money Diaries series, for example, feature interviews with
popular personalities such as Anthony Bourdain and
Kevin Bacon as well as ordinary people that aim to
identify how individuals from different backgrounds tackle
their personal financial problems in the broader context of
their life, career, or their personal goals and aspirations.
Another important aspect of WealthSimple’s content
marketing strategy was also its strong focus on design. As
visuals are proven to be much more powerful and catchy
than text, the company decided to create a unique,
coherent look for all its branded channels (incl. website,
app, blog, etc.) that is in unison with its human concept.
So, they opted for warmer tones and a more subtle colour
palette, as opposed to electric blues and gradients
traditionally used by most financial brands, along with
custom illustrations instead of stock imagery or photos.
Using illustration style graphics is a great and very cost
effective way to create consistency, especially when you
need to include a wide variety of people and objects in
your content.

31.
31
WealthSimple provides a
whole new perspective on
finance with their Money
Diaries series.
Featuring unique money
stories of well-known
celebrities as well as
ordinary individuals, the
series aim to build a deeper
emotional connection with
the audience.
(Image source: WealthSimple)

32.
32
iZettle – create a
physical experience
iZettle is a Swedish payments fintech that was
founded by Jacob de Geer and Magnus Nilsson in
2010. The company started off by introducing the
world’s first mobile chip-card reader and app
allowing people and small businesses to accept
credit and debit card payments on their mobile
devices.
In 2013, iZettle entered into agreement with the EU’s
largest bank by market capitalization Banco
Santander for a funding of more than €5mn and
access to international markets such as UK, Spain,
Mexico and Brazil.
In 2017, the company raised further $36m from the
European Investment Bank and earlier this year, it
announced its acquisition by the US mobile-
payments giant PayPal.
With more than 500 employees globally and
operations in 12 markets, iZettle is now offering a full-
service commerce platform for small businesses
covering a wide range of tools such as payments,
point of sales, funding and partners applications.
11

33. 33
Run a physical pop-up to engage with
customers and generate buzz
After gaining significant traction in its native Nordic
markets and Continental Europe, iZettle decided to enter
the UK market in 2012. To do so, the company appointed a
local PR team and agency to implement a launch strategy
with a limited budget of £25,000 and a set of 3 clear
goals: to reach the mass UK market specifically targeting
the small businesses and tradespeople segment, to drive
immediate product sales, and to generate buzz about the
brand.
A key aspect of the strategy was to host a press briefing
for local journalists and influencers that featured a
physical pop-up market aiming to replicate the type of
business environment where iZettle can be used. The
market brought together a number of small businesses
which were trading at the event, accepting card
payments through their smartphone or tablet and
providing instant feedback about iZettle’s product to the
media.
With a limited budget of £25,000, iZettle looked for
further support and sponsorship for their launch event
from their investor MasterCard and a retail partner EE.
The pop-up concept attracted 70 journalists and
stakeholders, ranging from the BBC to HM Treasury. At
the event, all guests were provided with pre-paid
MasterCards to purchase any goods at the market stalls,
while all card payments were handled via iZettle.
The launch proved to be a real success generating more
than 80 articles in local press and media including BBC
News Online, The Financial Times, The Sun and ShortList,
and increasing sales by 425%, with 17,000 products sold
following the event. In addition, iZettle’s website saw a
massive surge in traffic in the week of the launch event,
and its app was named as one of Apple’s App Store Best
apps of 2012.
Creating a physical pop-up experience is one of the most
effective and affordable tactics to engage with your target
audience and bring life to your brand story by physically
showcasing your product or service. Also known as
experiential marketing, pop-up marketing has lately
gained significant popularity among marketers as a
powerful tool to generate buzz and boost sales due to its
exclusive, temporary and enthusing nature.
However, the big challenge for brands running
experiential/pop-up campaigns is how to drive the
investment and impact beyond the life span of the pop-
up event or activity and the buzz generated at that time. A
possible way to do this is by extending the campaign into
digital and social media activities.

34.
34
iZettle created a unique pop-up market at a press event in London as part of
their UK launch strategy. Rather than just telling everyone about their
business, they decided to let the product speaks best for itself.
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35.
35
Yoyo Wallet – run a
pilot project
Yoyo Wallet is one of the fastest growing mobile
payments and loyalty platforms in Europe.
Launched as a pilot project at Imperial College in
2013 by former PayPal and Barclaycard employee
Michael Rolph, the company has now reached more
than 1m users nationwide and is available across
numerous universities, workplace food service
locations, and at high street retailers including Caffè
Nero, Planet Organic, Harris + Hoole, HOP
Vietnamese, and Wrap it Up.
Yoyo has already raised $30m in Series A and B
funding rounds from investors such as Metro Group,
Touchstone Innovations and Woodford. It has
recently announced another $30m partnership deal
with the US-based digital assets venture capital
Hard Yaka who has backed some of world’s leading
fintech start-ups including Ripple, Square, Twitter,
and Coinbase.
12

36.
36
Execute a pilot project to take your idea
from concept to market
After coming up with the idea of creating a new
generation mobile payments and loyalty solution that
provides value to both retailers and consumers, Yoyo’s
founder Michael Roplh faced the challenge of turning his
idea into a viable proposition. The first struggle was to find
customers who would validate his idea. Looking at
different consumer segments and potential partners,
Michael and his team identified students as the best
target group and a closed university campus as the most
suitable setting for their pilot project.
Thus, they pitched their idea to one of London’s top
universities, Imperial College. Imperial liked the idea and
agreed to trial Yoyo’s concept at their premises. Next step
for Michael and his team was to speak directly to the
project’s target group including Imperial’s retail outlets
and students, and try to detect key problem areas where
they could provide a solution. That’s how they discovered
that the biggest problem was physical cash, which is
usually the main cause of cost, loss and friction between
the customer and a retailer. In result, Imperial decided to
become the first university in the world to provide a
mobile wallet solution for its students and retail outlets
and, therefore, completely remove the need of using
physical cash at their premises.
Armed with a working idea and a customer, Michael and
Yoyo’s team then focused on building the best product
around both. Similar to Facebook’s launch model, Yoyo’s
go-to-market strategy was to first gain a steady foothold
at Imperial College on the back of which, later, they could
reach mass users across other London universities and
eventually attract outside retailers to adopt the new
technology.
Two years later, Yoyo was available at more than 70
university campuses and over 200 corporate canteens,
and processing hundreds of thousands of transactions.
That’s when high street retail giants Planet Organic, Wrap
it Up and Caffè Nero got also attracted to the new type of
retail experience Yoyo was offering.
Yoyo ran a pilot project with Imperial College to
test the business’s concept model and identify
consumer needs.

37.
37
PensionBee – find
alternative channels
and touchpoints
PensionBee is one of the top 3 digital wealth
managers in the UK based on Assets Under
Management (AUM). The London-based fintech
start-up was launched in 2014 by the ex-Goldman
Sachs analyst Romina Savova.
It provides an online pension management
platform that consolidates old pensions into a
single plan in a simple and efficient way, just like
managing a bank account.
Since its foundation, the company has signed up
more than 100,000 people, with more than 20,000
active users, and is currently managing over
£250m in AUM.
At the end of 2017, PensionBee received backing
from State Street, which is currently used to reach
new markets and increase AUM.
13

38.
38
Think outside the box and be S.M.A.R.T
Probably the biggest problem start-ups usually face is
the limit or lack of any spare budget for marketing and
promotional activities. Especially, in those early days
when they have just launched their product and are
entering the market. Although there is no such thing as
free or zero-budget marketing and advertising, there are
certainly some very cost-effective tactics and tools that
start-up marketers can adopt to get traction.
But before looking at any particular tools and strategies,
businesses need to have a clear understanding of where
their potential customers are and identify the exact
channels that would lead those customers to their
product or service. That’s exactly what Jasper Martens,
PensionBee’s first marketing executive and current CMO,
focused on when he joined the company. By analysing
consumer buying behaviour first, Jasper managed to
notice early on that nobody was actually interested and
actively looking for their products. You can only imagine
how many people are searching for pension
consolidation solutions on Google…
So, he then had to quickly find alternative channels that
could lead customers to their solution. That’s when
Jasper realised that Instagram and Facebook were the
main places where they could find their targeted
consumer demographic, and that 30-second videos
were key touchpoints in the consumer conversion path.
He, therefore, focused most of their marketing efforts on
creating genuine, high-value organic content and
promoting it via paid media ads on Instagram and
Facebook, which eventually delivered about 65% of the
company’s total customer conversions.
PensionBee identified Instagram as a key
channel for their targeted customer audience.
(Image source: Buildersarms.com)

39. 39
As part of his content strategy, Jasper also hired a
freelance copywriter to create content around the
company’s two focal points, namely to gain awareness
and provoke consideration. The first objective of the
strategy was to educate and inform people about their
pensions and any other financial issues related to their
lifestyles – to create brand awareness. Whereas, the
second goal was to create a sense of action and urgency
and encourage clients to take control of their pension
plans – to provoke purchase consideration.
In addition to written content and blogs, Jasper also
focused on producing a lot of videos which delivered
some really good traction on both PensionBee’s website
and YouTube channel. He realised that most people
wouldn’t necessarily want to download a huge, deep
guide about pensions, but they might want to watch a
two-minute explainer video.
Another interesting trend Jasper noticed was that basic
and amateurish videos performed much better than the
more professional-looking and polished ones. For
example, they created a video to showcase how
customers can easily make contributions to their pension,
with no music and sound, and zero production costs,
which outperformed most of their animated, high-budget
productions.
If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. As discussed
earlier in the paper, psychologically humans want to
connect with other humans. So, one of the best ways to
connect with your customers and gain their trust is to
humanise your brand by providing genuine, real-life
human content that people can relate to.
Once, he had established an effective social media
marketing strategy through Instagram and Facebook,
Jasper started exploring other distribution channels and
some traditional advertising methods such as billboards,
television and radio. Although outdoor and tv
advertisements and promotions are usually ignored by
start-ups as they tend to be very costly, he decided to run
a pilot geo-targeted campaign through those specific
channels in Brighton and Hove. Jasper’s plan was to use
the results of the campaign (if it was successful) to pitch
the strategy to their investors at the company’s next
funding round and attract further investment. And his plan
worked – the campaign not only boosted the company’s
SEO and brand awareness, but also dramatically
improved the click-through rate on its Facebook and
Instagram campaigns.
Thus, you should never be afraid of experimenting with
different methods and channels, even if you are on a tight
budget. You just need to be very well-targeted and set
and follow some clear SMART (specific, measurable,
achievable, relevant and time-based) goals.

40. 40
PensionBee implemented a pilot geo-targeted outdoor
campaign in Brighton and Hove aiming to increase brand
awareness, which additionally boosted the performance of
their social media campaigns.
(Image source: Buildersarms.com)

41.
41
Finimize – build a
community
Finimize is a London-based fintech start-up aiming
to make finance more accessible for millennials.
Founded by Max Rofagha and Scott Tindle in 2015,
the company started off as a daily email newsletter
providing a 3-minute, jargon-free digest of the
world’s top finance news stories of the day. In just a
year since its launch, the Finimize newsletter had
generated a subscription base of 80,000 users that
has now tripled and reached 250,000.
After building a strong community and loyal
audience base, Rofagha and Tindle moved on to
the next phase of their long-term plan to
revolutionise the wealth management industry,
and launched a free financial planning platform
called Finimize MyLife. The platform is now in beta
stage and has a waiting list of more than 24,000
people.
14

42. 42
Build a community and audience first,
then the product "together with the
community"
As mentioned above, instead of building the product first
and then acquiring a customer base, Finimize’s founding
team took a rather unusual approach to setup a fintech
start-up and focused on building their audience and
community first. As Finimize’s entire business model was
based on creating the ultimate finance product for its
customers, the team realised that the best way to do this
would be to work together with them. So that’s how the
idea of creating a jargon-free, user-friendly financial news
hub was born.
The newsletter was initially launched as a website, but the
team soon discovered that most readers were actually
reading and sharing it via email, so they focused
exclusively on the email distribution.
Once they had identified their key channel and consumer
behaviour, Finimize’s team started to look for tactics to
attract more readers. One way was to encourage their
readers’ engagement by inviting them to email back any
questions they might have about the stories covered in
the newsletter. In addition to replying to all questions, the
team was also selecting and publishing the most
interesting ones at the end of each newsletter. That’s a
great tactic to create a two-way communication with an
audience and gain its trust. From a psychological and ego
perspective, people who get their questions published
would also be more likely to share the content with their
peers and friends.
While we’re on the topic of sharing, referrals were another
powerful technique that Finimize’s team used to expand
their community and generate more users. They
introduced a Finimize referral scheme and offered
exclusive access to a wide range of perks and rewards
(e.g. events, branded merch, new products and jobs) to
their customers in exchange for referring their peers to
the newsletter. For each signed up friend, customers
were receiving 100 Fincoins which they could collect and
use later to unlock product upgrades and rewards.
To further strengthen its relationship with consumers,
Finimize also organised a number of community events
on trendy topics such as cryptocurrencies and
blockchain. While the events were limited to the
company’s London audience due to budget constraints,
some of its community ambassadors had organised
similar events independently in other locations. A meet-
up in Boston, for example, gathered Finimize readers to
discuss the future of millennials and banks, which also
shows the power and vitality of the community.
Finally, after attracting more than 250,000 users,
Finimize’s team had focused their efforts on working with
their community to build their next generation, consumer-
centric financial planning platform called Finimize MyLife.
The platform allows customers to create their individual
financial plan by simply answering a few questions about
their financial position, setting goals and then choosing
from a range of investment products such as opening an
ISA or creating a portfolio with a third-party provider like
Nutmeg or MoneyFarm.

43.
43
Currently, the platform is in beta stage and has a waiting
list of 24,000 people that’s mainly a result of its strong
relationship with its customers and loyal brand
community. It’s also free of charge, but the company is
planning to introduce a subscription fee in the future for
its premium features and users.
Finimize built their
brand community
first using content
and referral
marketing tactics
before developing
their financial
planning platform.

44.
44
Nutmeg – go offline
Nutmeg is the first and largest UK robo-adviser
with over 60,000 customers and £1b in AUM.
Founded in 2011, the company provides affordable
algorithmic investment portfolios based on users’
risk profiles for as little as £500.
To date, Nutmeg has raised almost £70m in total
funding across 4 seeding rounds from leading
investors such as Taipei Fubon Bank, Convoy
Investment Services, Schroders, Pentech and
Armada Investment AG.
15

45. 45
Offline marketing to promote a digital
investment product? Why not
The development of Nutmeg’s scaling marketing strategy
in its early days was in the hands of the experienced,
serial entrepreneur Iqbal Gandham who joined the
company in 2013. After helping to bring several start-ups
to the listing stage in the past, Iqbal decided to take up
the challenge to bring Nutmeg to mass market and
quickly grow its customer base.
Contrary to the general marketing rule to carefully identify
an ideal customer segment first and then build a tactical
distribution strategy for that specific segment, Iqbal
initially focused on figuring out the best channels as he
believed that the ideal customer profile would evolve
over time along with his understanding of the market.
So, the first step of his strategy was to look at the product
from the consumer perspective. That’s how he realised
that investment management was commonly considered
to be a traditional business and that traditional marketing
and advertising might still be the key to Nutmeg’s mass
market adoption. As mentioned earlier in the paper,
traditional advertising channels like print, radio and
outdoor are usually perceived as very expensive, and are
most often overlooked by early stage start-ups whose
marketing efforts are, therefore, almost exclusively
focused on digital and mobile.
But in reality, old-school traditional advertising is actually
not as expensive as people think. For example, a relatively
small budget by advertising standards, between £40-50k,
can get you a tube card panel in every carriage, on every
line of London’s underground, for 2 weeks. With no Wi-fi
available to distract commuters, they are free to notice
the ads, which makes the tube one of the most powerful
outdoor advertising channels.
That’s exactly what Iqbal opted for. In addition to tube car
panels, he also chose to run some rail ads. Since rail
advertising tends to be a bit trickier than the tube, Iqbal
selected most of the ad spots himself to ensure that ads
were displayed prominently at the right places and
secure a high ROI. The campaign ran 2 weeks on, 2 weeks
off.
The success of Iqbal’s rail campaign was evident shortly
after the launch, with the ‘Nutmeg’ premium on Google
AdWords shooting through the roof on the first day of the
start of each new 2-week campaign. This, on the other
hand, is a great example of the interrelated nature of
advertising.
Another great and unexpected success of Iqbal’s
‘traditional’ marketing strategy was a radio broadcast that
went live at 6am on BBC radio 4 resulting in thousands of
leads coming through the company’s door.
Finally, besides generating leads and customers,
traditional media advertising is also one of the most
effective ways to build trust. It’s human nature for people
to think that if a business has the money to spend on
outdoor ads that it is a genuine and well-established
company.

46.
46
Nutmeg used traditional outdoor tube
and rail advertising to reach their
target audience and build brand
trust.
(Image source: jcdnurture.co.uk)
(Image source: Chris Steel)

47. 47
5 Key takeaways
1) Take a lean approach to your marketing plan and strategy
by focusing on 4 key principles: iterating, testing,
measuring and optimising - Lean is all about being agile
and perceiving each marketing activity and campaign as
one step in the ever-improving progress towards client
acquisition and satisfaction.
2) Be human - use content and storytelling marketing tactics
to humanise your brand and create emotional connection
with your audience. Establish a strong human-centric
brand experience.
3) Understand consumer behaviour and motivations, and
adopt the sharing economy principle to build trust and
transparency - In the shared economy, people’s behaviour
is driven by peer-to-peer influence and word-of-mouth. So,
you can use this principle to expand your customer base
and build long-term customer relationships by using
referral or affiliate marketing programmes and tactics.
4) Look for alternative/create your own marketing
channels, and DO NOT ignore proven traditional media
marketing mediums such as radio, TV and outdoor
advertising.
5) Dare to be bold and different! - Think outside of the box
and find ways to make your brand stand out from the
crowd. Create a unique personality for your brand through
distinct design, tone of voice, product and customer
experience.

48. 48
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49. 49
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