How Fintech Brands Drive Retention and Earn Trust

Brand success is driven by user trust, and no industry knows that more inherently than the world of finance. When it comes to protecting their customers, financial services and financial technology (fintech) providers face not only compliance and data security risks, but also broader implications of activating their data in a transparent and meaningful way.

Fintech innovators that make the biggest impact win by understanding their customers’ financial wellness goals early, ensuring secure and seamless onboarding that drives early adoption and engagement.

Earning user trust is easier said than done, of course. In this post, we address the unique challenges that fintech faces, and how three industry leaders—The Zebra, CoinStats, and Policygenius—tackle them with their distinct personalization strategies.

Top Fintech Challenges to Enhance the Customer Experience

Marketers at fintech businesses typically have lofty goals: expanding customer relationships and impacting the bottom line by increasing assets under management (AUM), transaction volume, or driving paid subscriptions for access to premium features.

Reaching these goals requires earning customer trust and demonstrating recognized value, which are often thwarted by:

• Significant onboarding friction. A user’s likelihood of abandoning a signup flow is dramatically higher when they are required to provide their social security number and banking information.
• PII pain points. Increased regulation and oversight on the storage, retention, and activation of personally identifiable information means taking extra precautions to ensure customer data security and privacy.
• A fractured customer experience. This high level of data complexity and technical resource requirements can result in data silos, which make it difficult to scale personalization across all communication channels and create a seamless customer experience.

These common challenges do not mean that all hope is lost for fintech companies. They can still leverage key customer insights and signals throughout the lifecycle while maintaining trust to deepen relationships and value.

To exemplify this, let’s dive into how fintech leaders, like The Zebra, CoinStats, and Policygenius, are proving that personalization, experimentation, and transparency can drive both engagement and loyalty.

1. The Zebra Recovers Abandoned Insurance Quotes in Real Time
   

   
   As the leading insurance marketplace in the U.S., The Zebra aims to be a true one-stop shop for insurance. To achieve this, the team must connect with their customers throughout their journey and deliver timely, relevant offers at each interaction.

   Previously, these efforts were slowed by limited data access, manual processes, and siloed tools. One high-friction point is when prospective auto insurance buyers are prompted to enter their driver’s license or VIN number—information many don’t have readily available. 

   By partnering with Iterable, Snowflake, and Hightouch, The Zebra can now pinpoint exactly where in the funnel a user abandoned, then trigger a targeted, deep-linked email to where they left off.

   

   The Zebra’s abandonment campaign, powered by Iterable, reminds users to finalize their insurance rates.

   With an upgraded martech stack, The Zebra now has a unified data and engagement ecosystem that enables them to drive more policy purchases and keep customers coming back. Thanks to this modern suite of fintech-friendly tools, The Zebra has been able to achieve:

   • Increased policy purchase conversions by 25%
   • A reduction in campaign creation time from 3+ months to a couple of days
   • 15% higher open rates from AI-assisted subject line generation

   “With Iterable, we’ve taken full command of every communication channel—from email to SMS notifications. It’s not just about sending messages but crafting tailored user journeys.” 

   ~ Ian Shogren, Lead Lifecycle Manager at The Zebra
   

    

2. CoinStats Reduces Drop-Off With A/B Testing and Experimentation

   
   With over 1 million monthly active users and $100 billion in assets, CoinStats is one of the most popular cryptocurrency portfolio management platforms. Similar to The Zebra, CoinStats experienced high abandonment rates due to users dropping off before they could connect their portfolios.

   After implementing Iterable, the CoinStats team was able to deploy a re-engagement journey across mobile push, email, and in-app that triggered personalized alerts only a few minutes after abandonment occurred.

   

   Iterable enables the cross-channel orchestration of CoinStats’ re-engagement journey, which uses snippets to personalize by first name.

   Data-driven testing is essential to CoinStats’ re-engagement strategy, so the team combines the unique power of Iterable Experiments and Amplitude to A/B test different value propositions and determine which one converts users more successfully.

   The results from these advancements have been dramatic:

   • 35% decrease in abandonment rates with a tailored re-engagement journey
   • 20% increase in user activity thanks to enhanced personalization
   • A 50% boost in push open rates by shifting the tone of their communications from promotional to transactional
     
     

3. Policygenius Boosts Retention with Smarter SMS Strategy

Policygenius helps millions of people compare and buy insurance online across life, home, auto, and disability products. Once a customer enters the funnel, the CRM team uses Iterable to manage every outreach moment—email, SMS, and phone follow-ups—to keep shoppers engaged and moving toward a purchase. They focused on four key engagement levers that drive retention and build trust:

• Timely relevance. Policygenius uses SMS to reach customers in high-attention moments (weekends, holidays, and after hours), sending short reminders that bring them back to complete key actions like finishing an application or booking a call.
  
• Experimentation and testing. With Iterable Experiments, the team continuously tests message timing and sequencing. When they shifted SMS delivery from immediately after an email to 24 hours later, conversions jumped. They applied the same logic to follow-ups after phone calls.
  
• Brand recognition. SMS gives Policygenius a chance to speak with personality—short, direct, and conversational. Even small technical details, like matching phone numbers across SMS and call outreach, improve response rates and reinforce customer trust.
  
• Cross-channel coordination. The team combined SMS and email for more cohesive communication. Texts handled urgent reminders, while email provided education and detail. Together, the two channels boosted conversions and gave Policygenius more actionable data for ongoing optimization.

The results were significant:

• +40% increase in immediate conversions
• +66% lift in downstream engagement
• 1.5× higher conversions from coordinated SMS + email
• Steady rise in week-over-week connected user rates

“I love using Iterable because it’s flexible and evolves with your brand. The intuitive user interface makes it so easy to create and manage A/B tests for campaigns and workflows, and the personalization capabilities (e.g., using custom events and handlebars) have opened new doors for our marketing campaigns.”

~ Sara Erickson, Associate Director of CRM at Policygenius

By orchestrating timely, consistent, and cross-channel messaging through Iterable, Policygenius turned SMS into a high-impact retention tool—proving that small adjustments in timing and tone can make a big difference in customer loyalty.

Why Modern Martech Makes Better Sense (and Cents)

Just because you’re a marketer in fintech doesn’t mean you can’t have fun and build context-aware journeys that build customer trust. You can power communications that are personalized, completely automated, and—most importantly—empathetic to your audiences’ needs. 

And when it comes to a cross-channel communications platform to power your strategy, you can put your money on Iterable. With enterprise-grade security, robust consent management, and the support of innovators like The Zebra, CoinStats, and Policygenius, Iterable is the fintech-preferred platform that can elevate your customer experience to deliver mo’ money without mo’ problems.