* The Product. Maybe they didn't have a high viral coefficient but they had a great net promoter score. People loved Mint, it solved a real problem for people, which is unlike most products with a high viral coefficient. The delight after a quick setup, and having all those graphs and balances was palpable and emotional.
* Blog / Original Content. Noah talks about the pre-launch days here (http://okdork.com/2008/06/03/sta...) but quite simply we focused on building out a unique personal finance blog, very content-rich, that spoke to a young professional crowd that we felt was being neglected. Eventually the blog became #1 in personal finance, and drove traffic to the app. Their app didn't have a high viral coefficient but they had content that was. Our info graphics and popular articles became regular hits on Digg, Reddit, etc.
* PR. Some entrepreneurs lately seem to be piling on against PR or saying that doing it in house is enough. Mint is an example where they (http://atomicpr.com) did extensive PR-backed positioning research, and went to town. PR was extremely high quality traffic for them, and the optics for the brand were undeniably good. They trounced all of their online competitors, including Quicken– who sent them legal threats (http://techcrunch.com/2009/02/19...). Patzer talked to every outlet from Entrepreneur to Essence.
* SEO. They had an extensive SEO strategy, and it scaled pretty well. They had a lot of landing pages, content on the blog and marketing sites, and had a very metrics driven approach to all of it. For every popular finance query on Google, they had a page and content for it, and iterated landing pages to optimize conversion.
* Content Partnerships. They were able to get their content syndicated out and did some co-brand deals with brands like Motley Fool. This wasn't huge, but it was something.
* Distribution Deals. The iPhone app store drove a lot of signups when they released our app. It quickly became #1 in finance and continued to hang around the top of the charts as they iterated. Less successful was a Yahoo! app, and a Motley Fool co-brand.
* Email. People loved the consumer advocacy of the email notifications (they told people when interest rates went up, etc.). Because they provided a lot of value with email, our opt-out rates were low, which enabled them to use it as a marketing channel.
* Facebook / Twitter. They leveraged viral social networks to create a conversation with our customers. The Facebook fan page especially has a lot going on from Mint haiku contests to customer tips, and incentives to suggest to friends. There's friction between that and signing up, but positive brand engagement obviously helps.
Answered by
Natalia V
at
Jun 29, 2010 11:24 AM
