Blog 46: The work behind Mint’s user base growth
- Idea2Product2Business Team
- May 30, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 18
Background:
Mint was a personal finance software. Launched in September 2007. In November 2009, Intuit bought Mint for $170 million. The firm had over 1 million users and four years later, Mint had over 10 million users. Mint officially shut down on March 23, 2024. Users are suggested to migrate to Credit Karma (also owned by Intuit).
This blog focuses on marketing initiatives that led to user base growth from 0 to 1 million in 2009.
Learnings from Mint’s growth marketing & growth hacking initiatives:
Read blog 45 to learn more about growth marketing and growth hacking.
Firstly, the product, Mint, itself was good. It solved a pain point and served a specific audience (hyper focus on a single persona; read blog 14, 16 on personas and customer journey). The product was easy to use and filled gaps left by competitors. In addition, the app’s launch and growth was around the worst US recession. Hence, people were looking for a solution such as this to manage their finances.
Secondly, Mint’s founder Aaron Patzer spent significant time in validating the idea. He created several messaging concepts and validated them with real users. Understood what struck a chord and what didn’t. For example, reading the words “Bank Level Data Security” in the messaging made a lot more people say they would use Mint. Refer blog 97 for more on good writing within product management.
Thirdly, building an audience and buzz even before launching the app. Created a blog that educated potential users on personal finance. By which, the firm was able to create a marketing funnel (read blog 42 on this topic) and a pipeline of customers awaiting the beta launch. Users who put a badge that said ‘I want Mint’ on their social media page were given special access to alpha version. Mint received free advertising on 600 different blogs and an SEO boost due to links pointing to Mint's website. The firm received 20,000+ requests to use the product even prior to launch.
This combination of quality blogs, positive PR, SEO, social media buzz etc. boosted the number of prospects in the awareness stage (of marketing funnel). 60% traffic was generated through direct organic sources followed by 27% through referral. Hence, 87% traffic was free earned media.
Fourthly, a well flushed out marketing plan. Noah Kagan (Mint’s Marketing Director), in his blog eloquently shared the ‘quant-based reverse engineering’ marketing strategy. Two elements of this strategy, i.e., working backwards towards a goal and being as data driven as possible.
Steps of this strategy were:
4a) Set up a SMART goal, for example, 100 new customers in 1 month paying $10 each per month.
4b) Set up a spreadsheet with eight columns.
· Source: Where are these users coming from? Google Ads, a specific blog, etc.
· Traffic: How much traffic will this channel receive?
· CTR (Click-through rate): How much of that traffic will click through to your website?
· Conversion %: Of those who click-through, what % of those will convert to sign-ups?
· Users: How many users will this channel bring you (an estimate)?
· Status: Where are you with this source? Is it all ready to go? Keep track of the status.
· Confirmed: Is this happening? Yes or No
· Actual number of users: How many users did this source bring? Tweak and re-prioritize.
A sample template is as below:
Source for this template: https://noahkagan.com/quant-based-marketing-for-pre-launch-start-ups/
4c) Research sources. The best channel would be where your ideal customers are on. They include PR initiatives, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, social media ads, creating and publishing content (blogs, podcasts, video), direct sales, sponsor content on popular blogs, influencer marketing. Also look at each channel’s ease of implementation and potential impact.
4d) Set targets for each source.
4e) Create a timeline by breaking down the targets into smaller, time focussed goals. For example, breakdown a goal of 100 new users from Google ads into smaller targets (week 1: 5 users, week 2: 20 users, week 3: 25 users and week 4: 50 users).
4f) Track your progress by measuring and iterating as you move along.
By 2009, Mint had become more than just a product. It became a place for all things relating to personal finance.
Jump to blog 100 to refer to the overall product management mind map.
Source:
All the best! 😊