Only a few spots left to join us for the Digiday Publishing Summit

Join us Sept. 14-16 in Miami to connect with top publishing leaders

SECURE YOUR SEAT

Why customer acquisition is so difficult for financial startups

When it comes to getting new customers, startups in financial technology are in a lose-lose situation.

It’s no surprise: The reigning banks have been around for decades so they have a large existing set of customers and streams of data on them from over the years. Their problem is they’re plagued with old infrastructure that slows them down and cuts into their ability to manage data well. Startups don’t have that problem, but they also don’t have the customer base — or the ability to scale.

Customer acquisition is expensive. For a large bank it could cost between $1,500 and $2,000 to acquire one customer, according to Ciaran Rogers, director of marketing at StratiFi, an early stage startup that helps advisors manage portfolio risk. At startups it could be between $5 to about $300 for one customer. Fintechs just have less money to spend on that — at Wealthfront, for example, marketing budgets have decreased every year.

Read the full story on tearsheet.co

More in Marketing

Three years after Kokai, The Trade Desk is betting on refinement with Zuma

The Trade Desk wants Zuma — the next version of its programmatic platform, Kokai — to be easier to use, and even harder to leave.

‘Inside, most of them are dumpster fires’: Confessions of a frustrated indie agency ad exec

From surprise corporate card cancellations to phantom return-to-office mandates, one former indie agency exec talks about the chaos behind the scenes.

The case for and against the ‘programmatic-ification’ of the creator economy

Creator marketing is racing toward AI ad-stack automation, but risks turning trust into inventory.