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Writer's pictureAni Petrova

Finimize: Start with a community

Updated: Apr 14, 2021


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. Today's article tells the story of Finimize, a London-based investment education startup that started off as a finance newsletter.


Finimize Newsletter
Image source: Finimize.
Finimize built their brand community first using content and referral marketing tactics before developing their financial planning platform.

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 meetup 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 education platform. The platform allows customers to learn about investments, stay up to date via jargon-free financial news and pick the right investment provider.


Currently, Finimize's community includes more than 800,000 members globally, and their subscription-based app is available via the Apple App and Google Play stores.


 

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 reached more than 800,000.


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