Last month, 80% of people who used TransferWise discovered the service from a friend.
“People recommend our product for two broad sets of reasons; rational reasons where they talk about the product and softer emotional ones where they talk about our cores and what we stand for,” says VP of Growth Nilan Peiris on stage at Expand London.
Such a level of advocacy is coveted by every startup and is something that Peiris believes is responsible for TransferWise’s phenomenal growth. But how does a young company build an army of evangelist users, especially in a saturated marketplace?
“What we see is in order to get advocacy, we need to be 8-10 times better than the alternative,” reveals Nilan. Gaining the advantage on an alternative however, doesn’t necessarily come down to price and service reveals Nilan.
What I've learned about marketing @TransferWise. Our slides from @jobbio #expandldn cc @karina_seskena https://t.co/u6EFzKV2mo
— Nilan ???????? නිලාන් (@nilanp) March 10, 2017
“We sent this email to our customer base two years ago, and it’s got no discount codes in it, no pictures in it, it just talks about the kind of world we’re trying to build. It was something that was very personal to us, it shared the reasons we came to work every day. But what was crazy was our customers cared about this too. They didn’t just want a cheap transfer, they were passionate about what we stood for. They forwarded this email to their friends and it was a big driver of our growth,” Nilan explains.
Loyalty, he believes is as much about values as it is about the product.
Language is another element of marketing that TransferWise considers in depth.
"Our marketing speaks in a language which people understand and that’s really important" @karina_seskena @TransferWise#ExpandLDN
— Jobbio UK (@JobbioUK) March 9, 2017
“We need to use our marketing to clean up the jargon and use language that people will actually understand,” says Marketeer Karina Seskena. Similarly, the marketing team adopt the tone of different social media platforms and create content suitable to each channel. Their Facebook is a fun place, full of fish-in-the-face pranks and nude flash mobs which highlight the stupidity of transfer fees. Their latest: a Lego Run, is a visual representation of the pain of losing money. In effect, their Facebook page is a content-rich hub which educates and entertains the user in equal measures.
To hear exactly how TransferWise has captured the hearts of their users, listen below.