2023 Bronze Financial Services

Agency: DBS Datamarketing

Client: Tide

Entry Title: Data-Driven Strategy for Financial Acquisition

Executive Summary

Tide launched its Anniversary Campaign targeting businesses celebrating their first year. The fintech aimed to recruit new clients that reached this crucial milestone.

Strategy

The team created a joint customer acquisition strategy, starting with the basics. Why had existing Tide customers signed up, who were they and, most importantly, how could the brand get more of them?

Tide and DBS Datamarketing had already run customer acquisition campaigns, using assumptive selections and generic solutions targeting diverse businesses in the UK. In post-campaign analysis, the agency discovered a stand-out response rate from SMEs, in particular those that had just reached their first-year anniversary.

They were now ready to move from survival to thrive mode. Tide’s solutions were perfect to take their business from early positive results to long-term success - it was reaching them at a pivotal moment in their journey.

To support the campaign with solid data and insights, the agency provided a mailing list of 30,000 owners of businesses approaching this milestone who would have the highest propensity to respond.

Creativity

Data analytics also informed the media channel, call-to-action and messaging decisions.

Direct mail was chosen to target business owners. Considerations included cash flow and time would be important constraints; any incentive needed to offer financial benefits, and also be easy to activate. The targeted mail was printed with a QR code which offered £100 off when signing up.

Learnings from the initial analysis were used to shape the messaging and creative. The mailing had a congratulatory tone to celebrate the success at reaching one year and featured inspiring narratives of real entrepreneurs of small businesses that thrived with the help of Tide’s services.

Results

The Anniversary Campaign response rate was five times that of Tide’s expectations.

The cost per recruit was reduced by 78% vs. prior campaigns and 25% lower than the industry standard for cold financial mail (JICMAIL, 2022). This led to a 40% reduction in costs for Tide compared with past investment.

Many businesses signed up for Tide’s financial services. The impact extended beyond customer acquisition. Tide’s NPS increased by 6% vs. prior months when there was no direct mail campaign.

Quality of acquisitions was also key. Although it can take 12 months to fully assess the financial value of a customer, the new customers appear to be much more valuable than ones recruited in past campaigns.

The Team

Tide - James Russell-Rands, Senior Offline Performance Marketing Manager

DBS Datamarketing - Andrew Kelleher, Direct Marketing Consultant