Plazo App: +63% in Cards Activation [UA Case Study]

Today, we present you a new user acquisition case study of one of our clients Plazo App regarding cards activation.

Plazo App increases its card activation by 63% thanks to its alliance with PICKASO

Starting point

The financial app Plazo was created in Spain in 2021, by the fintech ID Finance, with a clear goal: building a financial app that is 100% digital and that offers a real answer to the daily needs of its users: an app for financial wellness.

That’s how Plazo was born: from a top technology mix to offer debit, saving and credit solutions, without envying any traditional bank.

In April 2021, one month before the app was launched, Plazo got in touch with PICKASO to collaborate with their App Store Optimization (ASO) and User Acquisition (UA) project.

At that time, Plazo was a totally new and unknown product that was entering a very competitive market in which other renowned brands had been there for a long time.

Plazo, the product:

App Store and Google Play

Agility and immediacy

From the beginning, a key aspect of the product to facilitate new clients membership was the quickness of the onboarding process. The clients could create their account in less than 5 minutes and get a Mastercard debit card in a totally free way. In fact, once registered, they could start operating with their virtual card and, in a maximum period of 3 days, receive their physical card at home.

When registering directly in the app, the clients get a Mastercard debit card for free, available in virtual and physical format, with which they can pay in more than 200 countries.

To this should be added the ease that Plazo offers to the client when needing to recharge their account instantly, associating it with another entity’s card or through Bizum. The recharging options are other benefits that sums to the agility and the immediacy of operating with the app.

No commissions, conditions nor connection

Apart from being totally free, the Plazo account and associated Mastercard debit card do not include any maintenance costs and does not imply any type of connection.

Improving the financial wellness of the clients

There is no doubt that the most attractive thing about Plazo is its cashback program, which reimburses from 5% of the supermarket purchases, and up to 40% in a big variety of renowned brands.

The bet to reward its clients for use of their prepaid card is part of Plazo’s mission to add value for its clients, helping them to save in the everyday life and to strengthen loyalty.

Always investigating new ideas, Plazo also launched a differential functionality that helps its clients to find new business opportunities, to increase their purchasing power and to improve their financial stability.

PICKASO’s contribution to Plazo’s growth

PICKASO’s help in this whole development process and in the financial app growth was decisive. Actually, Plazo accumulates more than 110.000 clients today, mainly thanks to the work of PICKASO.

When Plazo got in touch with PICKASO, its main objective was to get the maximum number of card activations with a defined CPA and budget.

User Acquisition Strategy Definition

From PICKASO, we worked on a User Acquisition strategy and we defined the channels, the communications, the audiences and the creative lines that we would use. Our team chose to work with the following channels: Google Ads Universal Apps Campaign, Apple Search Ads and Facebook Ads. Afterwards, we started working with Twitter Ads, LinkedIn Ads and Google Ads Search.

As for the creative lines, we created different visuals adapted to each of the benefits that the card offers, as well as different focus for the ads, such as illustrations, photos, videos, etc.

First results

After a first month testing, we activated a campaign and we got to substantially surpass the campaign objectives. Consequently, Plazo decided to increase the investment considerably by more than 130%.

As a result, the card activations increased by 62% in the second month, while the CPA only grew 22%. It is actually the best increase that was achieved by PICKASO during the initial card activation campaign.

After this learning period and thanks to the different tests we did, the campaigns were already optimized and were working well. This way, during the fourth month, we got to reduce the CPA by 14% thanks to an increase of 48% of the investment from Plazo.

From that moment, we achieved Plazo to increase its investment monthly by 44%, while the monthly CPA variation was going down 7%.

To reach a better scalability without impacting the CPA, new channels were opened, such as LinkedIn & Twitter Ads, and Plazo started investing in the brand with awareness and recognition campaigns.

After 8 months, Plazo multiplied by 10 its original investment only dedicated to Performance campaigns. PICKASO achieved a card activation number more than 7 times higher than the first month with an objective average CPA, and the organic channel increased its conversion rate to activation by 66%.

Main results

• Monthly average growth in card activations: +63%
• Average variation of the CPA: +7%

UA Case Study with Plazo: Conclusions

Collaborating with Plazo from its start was a challenge for our UA team, as it was a new project with no brand awareness and the activation relied fully on its paid channels. In little time, PICKASO was able to increase the activations gradually and to maintain a stable CPA. That’s the main UA challenge, increase the volume while maintaining the acquisition costs.