Post Office Money: Creating better savers, not just savings
With an ageing customer base and the market focused on chasing interest rates, Post Office Money faced a burning challenge to create a sustainable, future-ready savings business. Finding that to customers, becoming better savers was much more important than just the act of saving, we helped build and launch a differentiating proposition to help customers build good savings habits - and help Post Office Money’s brand stand out.
4x more effective than any previous savings marketing campaign
Oversubscribed within 24 hours
The Challenge
With an ageing customer base, historically low interest rates driving customer inertia and the rise of new fintech banks, Post Office Money was facing a critical challenge.
The team recognised the urgent need to appeal to new, younger audiences as well as build longer lasting relationships by differentiating on something other than interest rates.
The Insight
Through in-depth interviews and video diaries, we immersed into the customer’s world for an entire month to understand how people used and thought about their money from pay check to pay check.
This helped us uncover what they really did and why (not just what they said they’d do). It emerged that:
People didn’t just want to save money – they wanted to become better savers; getting better at saving was seen as much more valuable than just keeping their money safe
Although nearly everyone believes saving more is the right thing to do, they don’t believe they can do it
However, by observing their behaviour, the truth emerged that people simply lacked – or lost – motivation to save over the course of the month
The Solution
We heard from rower Steve Williams, whose story of how his team won the Olympics inspired the possibility that, with the right support and by breaking big goals into manageable chunks, people can become the savers they want to be.
We used his story and our customer insights to generate dozens of new proposition ideas during immersive workshops
We brought customers into the room to speak to senior executives, allowing them to hear inconvenient truths that emerged - such as that if you want to appeal to a younger audience, you have to be committed to a longer term relationship (and commercial case)
While growing the team’s confidence, we built a roadmap consisting of three new savings propositions
The Result
The roadmap was approved by the Board, and we then worked with Post Office Money to design, test and pilot the first new proposition. The pilot was launched in September 2019, was over-subscribed within 24 hours, and was four times more effective than any previous Post Office Money savings marketing activity.