5 Strategies for Attracting and Onboarding Users to Finserv Platforms

The financial services (finserv) space remains competitive, and it’s hard to capture user attention. Changing market conditions mean that finserv companies are working harder than ever to keep their customers—and keep them happy enough to come back.

Large traditional banks have an added challenge: any changes they make impact the public and shareholders. That means the risk of failure is higher, and it's difficult for them to innovate as quickly as newer, smaller fintech companies.

The culmination of a competitive market, changing consumer expectations, and regulations raises the stakes for finserv companies who want to acquire new customers and grow their current customer base. To stand out, it's essential that they develop digital platforms, apps, portals, and programs that attract users and capture their attention quickly.

In this post, we'll share five strategies to help fintech companies acquire and onboard new customers.

1. Leverage data and analytics for customer acquisition

When you don't run your business from brick-and-mortar locations, digital finserv analytics helps you understand your current and prospective customers. Visibility into customer behavior enables you to optimize your acquisition strategies based on your audience's actions and preferences.

Run experiments

Experimentation enables businesses to use customer preferences to inform their marketing and product decisions. To find the most effective design, flow, and copy for acquisition, run A/B tests to compare different versions of, for instance, your landing pages or ad copy. Deploy the most effective versions in your campaigns.

With experimentation, companies can make decisions based on data rather than guesswork. It helps you find what actually drives value.

By using Amplitude, NerdWallet, a personal finance company, noticed that mobile users were two times less likely to click through than web users. The team used this insight to experiment with different design variations to display their content on a smaller screen. Changing the user interface increased mobile click-through rates by 200%.

Personalize marketing

Most Gen X, millennial, and Gen Z buyers like personalized advertising. In fact, among Gen Z (an age group with significant buying power), 80% prefer personalized ads. Use data from your app or website to identify audience segments and send personalized messages.

With Amplitude Audiences, you can identify segments based on user preferences and behavior rather than just demographic information. You can then tailor your marketing and acquisition efforts to those segments and deliver a personalized message that brings people to your platform.

Optimize acquisition channels

You can also use digital analytics to uncover which marketing channels are the most effective. Combining user behavior and marketing analytics into one platform enables you to determine which marketing channels result in higher conversion rates or produce power users. From there, you can deprioritize the channels that aren't working and focus on the most fruitful ones.

2. Build a seamless user experience

The financial landscape has changed significantly in recent years, but trust is still a valuable commodity. And the quality of your digital product plays a big part in building trust.

According to John David Penner at the IBM Payments Centre, fintech often outpaces traditional financial institutions because fintech products provide more user-friendly interfaces and experiences. A smooth user experience reduces frustration and gives customers a positive association with your business.

A seamless user experience looks slightly different for each platform, but there are a few key elements:

• An intuitive user interface. The platform should have an easy-to-understand and logical interface with clear navigation.
• Efficient onboarding. Onboarding should guide users through the necessary setup steps quickly and easily. Use your analytics tool to identify where users get stuck in your onboarding process.
• Responsive customer support. Your customer support system should help customers get solutions and answers whenever they need help.
• Fast load times. Ensure quick load times and a responsive interface across all product areas.

3. Understand the user journey

When you understand the user journey, you can easily spot common patterns, identify pain points, and predict user actions at different stages. With that knowledge, you can reduce friction and optimize your product to support users.

Start by creating a funnel analysis in your analytics tool. Map out the different stages of your product funnel by listing the actions users typically take, such as creating an account, editing their profile, linking their bank account, and so on.

Once you set up your funnel, you can find your highest drop-off points between each funnel step. These are the places where you need to work on your product and experiment with different versions to improve it.

One area to look out for during onboarding is the "know your customer" checks. While these regulatory checks are necessary, they can be frustrating for users. Use funnel analysis to determine which parts of the checks have the most friction and streamline these stages.

Using analytics to understand the user journey helps you build digital experiences that increase retention. QuickBooks, for example, used Amplitude to identify their power users. The team dug into their power user audience to identify the actions top performers take when they first join the product. They then added prompts to guide new users to take those actions, ultimately leading to a 10% increase in activation.

4. Create an efficient onboarding flow

First impressions matter. Just because somebody has opened an account, downloaded the app, or logged in once doesn't necessarily mean they will stick with your platform. Onboarding helps customers learn about your product, discover value, and reach their aha moment.

Here are our best practices for efficient onboarding.

Make it benefit-focused

Benefit-focused onboarding involves more than just a tour of your product. The goal is to ensure two to three of your product’s core benefits are clear to the user—and they know how to get those benefits.

Keep things clear and simple

You don't want onboarding to be work-intensive for users. Keep the instructions clear and simple and include interactive elements like tooltips and animations to keep them engaged. Include a progress bar to help people see how much time is left in onboarding, encouraging them to complete it.

Data helps you decide what to keep and what to cut from onboarding. For example, QuickBooks realized many users fail to complete onboarding and unlock the app's functionality, including enabling push notifications. With exploratory analysis in Amplitude, they identified three unnecessary steps to cut from their flow. The result was a 25% increase in users who signed up for notifications.

Tailor the experience

Not everyone will want to use your product the same way. Use a combination of questionnaire responses, customer interviews, and behavioral data about your customer to offer personalized recommendations and relevant content during onboarding.

For example, you'll want to show off different features to someone interested in saving and investing compared with someone who wants to use your product to exchange currency for travel.

Build for retention

Onboarding is your first opportunity to take new users and encourage them to become longtime, loyal customers. The WeMoney team noticed that users who set money goals during onboarding had a higher retention rate across 12 months than those who didn't. They built goal setting into their onboarding process, which led to a 20% increase in retention.

5. Integrate user feedback and iterate

When you continuously listen to customer needs, you can adapt your product as their needs and circumstances change. Listening and iterating helps you improve market fit and enhance customer satisfaction.

You can learn what your customers like and dislike about your finserv product in several ways:

• Gather feedback through in-app pop-ups.
• See what customers write about your product on social media and review sites.
• Look through customer support interactions to see what challenges users are experiencing.
• Analyze behavioral data to find friction points and discover new use cases.

Involve customers in your development process by running usability tests for new or changed features. Based on their qualitative and quantitative feedback, iterate on your product to create a new and improved version.

Acquire and onboard more users faster

Amplitude helps finserv companies quickly access the data they need to optimize onboarding and increase acquisition. Check out our finserv hub or watch our onboarding and acquisition video to learn how to:

• Uncover why users experience friction and drop off—no SQL required.
• Run experiments to improve user experiences.
• Share insights with your team.