Insights from Rachel: Lessons in Growing a B2C Fintech Startup as Head of Growth

Welcome back to the Maven Club interview series, where we bring you invaluable insights from top founders and GTM leaders to help you excel in your roles. Today, we had the privilege of sitting down with Rachel, a founding team member and head of growth at Citro. Rachel shared her journey of overcoming initial challenges, her innovative strategies for understanding and empathizing with the target audience, and her secret sauces for achieving remarkable growth through empathy and authenticity. Here are the highlights:

Who is Rachel?

Rachel is the Head of Growth and a founding team member at Citro. With eight years of growth marketing experience, she specializes in B2C marketing for startups and small to medium-sized businesses. Rachel is also the founder of The Marketing Leap, a marketing agency that helps small businesses across diverse industries through the critical zero-to-one phase, offering a full suite of marketing services.

What Does Citro Do? 

Citro is a fintech company tailored for Australians aged 50 and above. It enhances the lives of pre-retirees and retirees through a unique membership experience, offering a free newsletter, exclusive deals, and a Visa rewards debit card that provides cashback on purchases. Citro strives to keep its members engaged, youthful, and curious, by offering inspiring content, lifestyle tips, and reward benefits to help them make the most of this exciting new chapter in their lives.

The Importance of Content for Citro's Growth

"Effective content strategy at Citro helped with driving the adoption of our financial product, building trust and fostering genuine connections with customers."

Content is vital for Citro's growth, driving engagement, building loyalty, and seamlessly integrating marketing efforts. Here's how:

• Engagement: 

  • High-Quality Articles and Ebooks: Provide valuable insights, keeping members informed and interested.

  • Interactive Content: Games, trivia, and a talk-back community foster a sense of community and ongoing interaction.

• Value Addition:

  • Practical Tools: Resources like retirement calculators help members manage their finances, making Citro an essential part of their lives.

• Seamless Integration of Offers:

  • Enhanced User Experience: Embedding deals within articles creates a natural flow, improving user experience and increasing conversions. For example, an article about a trip to Japan can feature Designer Journey for bespoke itineraries and Virgin Australia for travel deals, making promotions effective and less intrusive.

• Trust and Loyalty:

  • Consistent Delivery: Weekly e-newsletters provide fresh, relevant content, building trust and positioning Citro as a reliable source for lifestyle, travel, and financial tips.

How Content Personalization is Addressing Churn at Citro

“Content personalization is starting to play a key role in our strategy to lower churn rates, as we begin to implement it and work towards making each customer feel uniquely valued.”

Content personalization is significantly improving Citro's churn rate by delivering more relevant content to its customers. Here’s an overview of the approach and its early impact.

• Initial Phase - Preference Center:

  • User Input: Initially, Citro used a preference center where customers specified their content interests, such as health, finance, or wellness.

  • Manual Content Delivery: Content was then served based on these manually collected preferences.

  • Challenges:  Static preferences do not adapt to changes in user behavior and might lead to customers receiving content that no longer aligns with their current interests, resulting in lower engagement.

• Shift to Content Personalization:

  • Behavioral Analysis:Citro is transitioning to a content personalization approach, analyzing user behavior to deliver content. For example, if a customer frequently reads articles about travel, the algorithm would serve more travel-related content.

  • Detailed Tagging: Articles are tagged with specific categories and subcategories, such as travel, lifestyle, exercise, or recipes. User interactions, such as link clicks, are tracked to better understand preferences.

  • Algorithm Implementation: Using the Braze platform, Citro is setting up personalized algorithms to tailor content delivery. For instance, if a customer clicked on multiple articles about cosmetic surgery, they would receive more content related to that topic.

• Impact on Growth:

  • Relevant Content Delivery:  The personalized approach is starting to ensure users receive content aligned with their interests, reducing the chance of irrelevant articles.

  • Decreased Churn: This shift is leading to a significant reduction in churn rates as customers find the content more relevant and engaging.

  • Improved User Experience:  By tailoring content based on user behavior, Citro better adapts to changing interests and trends, increasing the likelihood that users find relevant and engaging content, which enhances satisfaction and retention.

Initial Challenges She Faced When She Joined Citro

“Finding effective ways to reach, educate, and gain the trust of a seemingly non-tech-savvy and skeptical audience was a significant challenge when I first joined Citro.”

When Rachel joined Citro as a founding team member and head of growth, she faced several key challenges. Here’s an overview of the main issues and how she addressed them:

• Understanding the Audience:

  • Demographic Gap: The Citro team did not fall within the 50+ age group, which created challenges in fully empathizing with and understanding the needs and preferences of this target demographic.

  • Previous Experience: Rachel’s prior role focused on millennials, a group she related to easily. This contrasts with her current role, which involves understanding a different demographic.

• Product Complexity:

  • Financial Product:  Citro offers a Visa debit card, a financial product that is inherently more complex than simpler products or services.

  • Sign-Up Process: The card required sign-up through an app, adding an extra challenge for the older demographic.

  • Tech Savviness: The target audience was seemingly non-tech-savvy, which made adoption more difficult. Additionally, their skepticism presented an extra challenge in accepting a financial product.

• Building Trust:

  • New Brand: As a new brand, Citro needed to build trust with an unfamiliar audience.

  • Experimentation: Rachel experimented with various acquisition channels, including shopping mall ads, TV commercials, radio advertising, letterbox drops, Facebook and Instagram ads, eBooks, content marketing, and influencer marketing.

• Channel Optimization:

  • Successful Channels: Through experimentation, she identified the most reliable channels, which were a combination of Facebook ads and influencer marketing.

  • Growth Insights: These insights guided product decisions, including creating a seamless and coherent user experience from Meta ad creatives to the Citro app. They also helped improve card activation rates by developing onboarding workflows that encouraged efficient digital activation rather than relying on traditional physical methods.

Rachel's Secret Sauce in GTM

"A GTM strategy rooted in empathy and authenticity can transform customer relationships and drive growth."

Rachel attributes her success in go-to-market (GTM) strategies to two key principles: empathy and authenticity.

• Empathy:

  • Understanding Customer Struggles: Rachel emphasizes the importance of empathizing with the audience. Instead of merely highlighting the benefits of Citro's Visa debit card, she focused on understanding the challenges customers faced, such as the seemingly intimidating sign-up process.

  • Practical Example: She guided influencers to create content that walked customers through the sign-up process, making it relatable and reassuring. This approach led to a 15x growth in the company.

• Authenticity:

  • Avoid Exaggerated Claims: Overpromising and underdelivering can result in a misalignment between marketing messages and the actual customer experience. This undermines user trust and damages your brand’s credibility.

  • Genuine Messaging: Unique and genuine messaging differentiates your brand by focusing on real, relatable experiences. By sharing real experiences, you align marketing messages with actual customer experiences. This helps in setting accurate expectations and can lead to more positive word-of-mouth and user referrals. It also shows confidence in your product and respects users' intelligence.

  • Practical Example: Rachel avoided making exaggerated claims, like promising a two-minute sign-up process. Instead, she showcased genuine experiences, such as a customer completing the sign-up in nine minutes and challenging others to beat that time. 

We hope Rachel’s insights and the story of Citro inspire you as much as they did us. By emphasizing empathy, authenticity, and innovative problem-solving, Rachel showcases the transformative potential of dedicated leadership and customer-centric strategies. Subscribe HERE for more exclusive interviews and insights, where we continue to spotlight industry leaders driving change and making a significant impact in their fields.