Boost in Number of Transactions
Incubated at Harvard University’s Innovation Lab, Anthem is an educational neobank (online-only bank) whose mission is to help educational institutions make finance simple, accessible and affordable. Their goal is, in short, to enable institutions in this sector to manage all of their banking and finance from within a single app.
Their core product, Radius, is a revenue management system helping educational institutions digitize manual recordkeeping, send fee reminders, and keep track of payments. They currently have a user base of over 5,000 educational institutions ranging from K-12 schools, higher education institutions, and coaching centers.
When Radius was launched, the Anthem team had to reimagine its marketing strategy to suit the needs of a mobile app. They created a toolkit to reach new audiences, increase downloads, and boost transactions. But they were still missing a complete mobile marketing solution.
As a growing fintech startup, it was of paramount importance to reduce the complexity of integrating with multiple tools and then drawing insights from them. They needed a solution that could perform segmentation and help them engage with users both in and out of the app. Additionally, they needed a solution that could segment users in a sophisticated manner, while at the same time reducing the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
The team’s north star metric is the number of transactions completed, indicating how widely and effectively the platform is being used. The increase in transactions is also an indicator of the health of their customer base and customer lifetime value.
The Anthem team evaluated a number of marketing automation platforms and ultimately chose CleverTap based on the range of features and the ability to eliminate multiple tools and overhead costs.
Every step in the customer lifecycle has a conversion event that is closely tracked to ensure the ultimate goal is achieved: customers completing a transaction. They have a targeted marketing approach for customers at every stage of the lifecycle.
For example, for customers who sign up on the website but don’t perform any activity in a certain amount of time, the conversion step would be to download and register on the app. If a customer adds a student, it means that they’re interested in the app. If the customer adds the fee amount, then they’re just one step away from transacting, which is the end goal.
Before CleverTap, the team used emails and SMS to communicate with customers. Currently, they use a combination of push notifications, in-app notifications, and retargeting to move the customers to the next step in the lifecycle.
Ongoing and day-to-day campaigns are created using push notifications. A nudge campaign is sent to users who haven’t transacted that day. Also, they have a dedicated campaign for users not transacting on the app and who haven’t uninstalled.
CleverTap’s sophisticated segmentation engine enabled Anthem to identify key user groups and engage them instantaneously. Users who haven’t interacted with the platform in a week or a month are segmented based on this inaction.
Based on user actions or inactions, the team sends personalized messages depending on the stage of the customer lifecycle to move them through the funnel. The various stages in Anthem’s funnel are: installing the app, adding a class, adding the academic year, adding the student, and adding the fee amount. For a customer who’s added the class, the next push notification sent will ask them to add the academic year.
Live segmentation with a first-time filter is used where the team wants to send a campaign to people who have recently signed up. An onboarding campaign is automatically sent to help new users get value from the app and encourage them into the next stage of the funnel.
Automating their marketing has resulted in a 17% boost in the number of transactions, and the increased efficiency enables them to scale their engagement as their user base grows.
Shiv Vadivelalagan Founder & CEO The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated their product adoption due to an increase in digital payments and restrictions in movement. In response, Anthem is adding newer modules like expenses, payroll, and an attendance-tracker to their app. They also iterate and build their product based on customer feedback. The team looks forward to acquiring 100,000 users in 2021.
