Have you ever wondered what makes a successful fintech marketing strategy? In our "How they did it" series, we look at how some of the most successful and exciting fintechs in the world have approached marketing in their early days. This post features the story of Atom Bank - UK’s first challenger bank offering mobile-only banking.
As part of their go-to-market strategy, Atom launched the ‘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.
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.’
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.
Comments