If the fight is to make the duller parts of financial services something people talk, and ultimately care, about, PensionBee is on the frontline.
Launched in 2014 by CEO Romi Savova, PensionBee began as a way to consolidate savers’ often scattered retirement pots into one easy-to-manage place, saving on admin and fees. The ongoing question for its marketing team is, how to put pensions on people’s radar and force action?
“One of our more unconventional marketing approaches has been featuring our real customers in all our campaigns, “ says Brooke Day, head of brand and communication at PensionBee. From the start, customers have been the faces of PensionBee’s Out of Home (OOH) ads, TV campaigns, and digital channels.
“This isn’t just a creative choice, it’s a reflection of our commitment to showcasing the real people who are combining, contributing to, and withdrawing from their pensions with PensionBee,” says Day.
The approach – what Day calls “staying true to our belief in authenticity” – has set PensionBee apart in the retirement savings industry. The company believes in the power of direct engagement, so it organised four roadshows across the UK last year, allowing customers to meet – and grill – CEO Savova and other members of PensionBee staff face-to-face.
“These events were designed to provide personalised support and answer pressing retirement questions, reinforcing our commitment to being more than just another faceless pension provider,” says Day. PensionBee also increases its visibility by collaborating with brand-partners to create targeted content and educational webinars and podcasts, as well as hosting its own podcast.
One of the company’s most significant partnerships is with Premier League football club Brentford. “What some may have seen as an unlikely pairing has proven to be a strong and successful partnership,” says Day, “this collaboration has allowed us to engage with millions of UK savers in an innovative way”.
The creative marketing strategies at PensionBee are paying off.
As of 30 June 2024, brand awareness has hit 54%, according to the company, which is especially proud of its customer retention rate, at over 95%. PensionBee has also seen 42% of its customers in 2024 are women, which it points out is above the industry average.
“This shows that our approach to personalised support and targeted content is really resonating with our customers, keeping them happy and engaged,” Day says, “and our efforts to meet the needs of women, especially through tailored partnerships and content, are hitting the mark and making a difference”.
Key to the success of quirkier outreach attempts is meeting your audience where they are. Trading platform eToro’s ambition has always been to become the world’s leading social trading platform. As a result, compared to other investment brokers, it has a greater presence on marketing channels that are less traditional for finance but typically have more highly engaged audiences.
For example, it became the first crypto trading platform in the sports sponsorship space in 2018, paying for the deals partly in bitcoin, as well as the first to adopt a multi-club strategy for sport sponsorship. The company also frequently posts videos of its market analysts across its social media, guiding people to its courses on the eToro Academy and Digest & Invest podcast series to further their investing knowledge – educating its way to creating future customers.
eToro is also innovating on more traditional channels. In summer 2024, it launched a TV advertising campaign almost entirely produced by artificial intelligence (AI), which debuted on Eurosport during the Olympics coverage, reaching more than 66 million unique viewers across Europe. This led to a 70%+ jump in new users and nearly 20% rise in first-time deposits compared to the previous period, according to the company.
Stephanie Wilks-Wiffen, director of marketing at eToro for the UK, says: “We will continue to invest more in AI to explore more of its use cases within marketing, whether for creative idea generation or impact measurement.” It is, she admits, getting harder to stand out.
“Most fintechs are focusing on similar messages”, like ease of use and increased access, she says, and “just jump on the bandwagon and talk about the ‘democratisation of finance’, but I would argue this message is kind of done”.
Wilks-Wiffen feels the challenge now is on the education front. With shortened attention spans, companies need more high-quality, bite-sized content that gets across lots of important information in a digestible way.
“That’s why we’ll see more fintech firms tapping into platforms like TikTok, even though right now they may still be reluctant to modernise and engage with these channels for fear of not seeming ‘serious’ enough,” she says.
Far from being an old-fashioned route, people buying from other people has never been more important. “Influencers are going to be bigger than ever,” believes Wilks-Wiffen, though she adds this is a tough space for finance: “It’s difficult to strike a fine balance between creative messaging and ensuring the correct information is communicated in an objective way and to the right audience,” she says.
The future of fintech marketing looks hyper-personalised, educational and social. Is this the death knell for quirky marketing stunts? Probably not – but they will need to be backed by reliable financial information, delivered in an engaging way, to keep on the right side of increasingly discerning customers, as well as financial watchdogs.