How Olivia Doubled their Onboarding Activation Rate

Olivia helps people spend smart and save more. Powered by AI, this financial advisor app analyzes their customers’ spending habits and delivers personalized recommendations on how to live well for less.

The Challenge Operating on a marketing messaging platform with less-than-ideal testing capabilities, workspace configurations, reporting, and customer service.

The Fix A platform and partner with cohort testing capabilities, flexible segmentation, accurate real-time reporting, and a Customer Success team who proactively collaborates to drive results.

The Result 2x increase in customer onboarding activation, 2 full days won back per month due to efficiency, and a treasure trove of features and analytics that drive optimization.

Outgrowing A Limiting Email Provider

With a rapidly growing customer base, Olivia needed a more feature-rich messaging provider who would also partner with them. Their existing provider, Mailchimp, just couldn’t keep up with their evolving needs.

That’s when Marketing Manager, Heloisa Assis, went on the hunt for a solution that would enable Olivia’s small-but-mighty team to consolidate their separate systems and work more efficiently together. She had used Braze at a previous company, but ultimately decided to go with Customer.io for our ability to not only scale with their growth, but for how cost-effective our solution was for a growing business.

Backing up Theories with Cohort Testing

Getting customers to connect their bank account after signing up is Olivia’s primary activation step. While on their previous messaging provider, they had a hunch that they could increase their activation rate by sending reminders to connect their bank accounts one day after signing up, instead of 3 days after. Without having the ability to test timing differences in Mailchimp, their hands were tied. 

Once Olivia implemented Customer.io, they got to testing their time-based theory right away. It turns out they were on to something – asking customers to connect their bank account one day after signing up yielded a 5.4% conversion rate, compared to their previous 2.2% conversion – a 2x increase in conversion!

With the solid evidence Customer.io is able to equip Olivia with, they can test and back up their hypothesis on best strategies to drive the highest results. Now, Olivia is taking a deeper dive into testing content including experimenting with subject lines, content, and more. Their latest experiment includes testing whether channel, push notifications, or email return the highest activation conversion. 

Multiple Workspaces are Safe Spaces

With audiences around the globe, Olivia requires a high degree of complexity in segmentation across multiple languages and differentiating between their B2C and B2B products. 

On their previous provider, they weren’t able to keep their Irish and Portuguese audiences separate. With no clear delineation between the two customer bases, they once accidentally blasted their Irish audience with an email in Portuguese. 

“Human error is a part of life but if we can avoid it, that’s ideal. With separate workspaces, I can keep our users’ information separate to avoid errors, and avoid having to send apology emails.”

–Heloisa Assis, Marketing Manager

While there is never fully escaping human error, Customer.io’s multiple workspaces greatly reduce the likelihood of a mixup. Olivia keeps their Irish, Portuguese, and B2B audiences separated into different workspaces with their corresponding data and associated API calls in Customer.io. Now, Olivia can confidently send emails without fear of mishaps.

Not only do they separate out their workspaces by countries and products, but they also created a ‘Dev Workspace’. They dedicate this workspace to sending transactional messages that transcend their whole user base, regardless of country or product.

Data Access: The Fuel to Segmentation 

The Olivia marketing team was limited by the time it took them to request and manually create segments. This process previously took up to 2 weeks due to the multiple teams involved and security compliance in pulling users’ email addresses. 

Thanks to Customer.io’s ability to create manual segments through a user’s unique ID instead of by email, segmenting only takes a click of a button and a few seconds to generate. Olivia’s marketing team no longer has to rely on a member of their data team and be tied down with these long security protocols. 

Now with accessible segmentation, they’re able to easily compile lists of customers who have asked for a specific feature to be developed and message them when it launches – helping to drive personalization and the 1:1 feeling the brand aspires to have with their customers. 

“Recently, I created a segment for people who had asked for a feature we were launching. Those emails perform really well because people know that we’re paying attention to what they’ve asked for. With Customer.io, it’s really easy and saves me a lot of time.”
—Heloisa Assis, Marketing Manager

A True Partner

When things go wrong, you need to know your vendor has your back. Reaching a real person when things were going sideways with MailChimp was nearly impossible. As a team that needs to move fast, waiting days for an issue to be resolved was bottlenecking their marketing efforts. That’s why Olivia has loved their dedicated Customer Success Manager (CSM) at Customer.io, who not only responds quickly, but proactively surfaces and resolves issues before they even have the chance to become apparent. 

In one instance, their CSM spotted an individual sender who was bringing down their deliverability rate in their shared IP. Before Olivia had the chance to notice the effects of this, their CSM had already moved them to a better-performing IP. 

Additionally, while Olivia knew that warming up their IP during implementation was going to be a process, it was a big reassurance when their CSM validated that they should send a consistent flow of emails so the IP could warm up to them (though it seemed counterintuitive). While this is a tactic they originally hesitantly had in mind, it was nice to have confirmation that it was the right move. 

Final Thoughts

As Olivia’s marketing team evolves to move faster and more accurately, Customer.io is there with them to help them along the way. With the power to test their theories for optimal results, separate their workspaces, make segmentation accessible, and benefit from the guidance of their CSM, their team is able to more than double their onboarding activation rate, create a more personal relationship with the customers, and get valuable time back.