I’m amazed that I couldn’t find a similar post in the forums! So here I go
How do people convince their friends, colleagues, neighbors, pets, etc. to sign up and Monzo?
Does Monzo sell itself? Or does it take a bit more convincing?
I’ll speak from my experience, of which I’ve had no success! My friend is going on holiday so I ask him how he’s going to pay for things there, cash / card / CC, etc. And he replies “cash” - Planning to land in the destination country and transfer £ into local currency…
At which point I chip in and suggest Monzo! (Why wouldn’t I? ) It gets questioned; “what is it?” “why bother?”
It’s got great rates! *Mastercard exchange rate
You can track each of your transactions live!
The ability to freeze your card instantly if it’s lost / stolen
I’m gaining traction, or so I thought. And then it goes back to this
“I’ll stick with Nationwide because I’ve got my CC on that, and my savings with them”
You can have more than 1 account you know?
“But then I get confused”
This is but one example of being unable to sway a new user to Monzo.
So I’d be super interested to see how other people are convinced to start using!
The great rates and the ability to freeze/ unfreeze the card was what convinced my friend to sign up. It took a lot of cajoling, and although I sent him a golden ticket he ended up signing up on campus I think. I think the “inconvenience”, “I already have a bank”, “I don’t travel so it doesn’t benefit me” are the common excuses for not taking up Monzo I get? A lot of them are intrigued, but not convinced enough to switch.
“Yeah that’s cool but I think I’ll stick with mine” dammit I am offering you this amazing thing why are you not getting it
It’s frustrating but like you said, it might be easier to convince them to switch when the CA rolls around. A lot of them don’t see the point in having a prepaid option on top of what they already have.
I absolutely love selling new people on Monzo My friends actually have a running joke where they bet how long it’ll take me to drop Monzo into conversation when I meet someone new. Their estimation is an average of 20 minutes
Usually, I’ll start by showing them the card, then talk about how frustrating it is with a legacy bank when you pay by contactless and don’t see it update your balance for five days, meanwhile you’ve spent the same money three times over and get hit with charges If I’m getting food with a few friends and one of them has never heard of Monzo, I usually offer to pay the bill with my Monzo card. I pay contactless, show them the instant notification (emoji is always a hit ) then fire off a Monzo.me and watch their faces light up as they see they can pay me their share with Apple Pay
Monzo absolutely sells itself, I just let them see me using it
My parents aren’t very technical. My dad more so (he has a degree in Electronic Engineering!) but he isn’t so good with all the smartphones, he prefers “solid state” - so, it isn’t really a product for them. In fact, my mum was convinced it was a scam and was really concerned that if she transferred money into my Monzo account it would be going into a black hole
Friends: I think the problem is the prepaid turn off. I know someone who is going to Starling because they think it works better for them and “it’s more unique” - apparently too many people have . I think people also have “trust” issues with Monzo - when the CA is mainstream it will be easier to say “regulated…blah blah…FSCS…current account” than explain that it is a prepaid at the moment…becoming a CA “soon”
I definitely adapt to an audience, to improve my conversion rates . My approach is about showing relatable Monzo experiences for a particular person.
One person I know is easily triggered by incompetence and laziness. That sounds like many high street banks, amiriiiight? Few anecdotes from the forum, about cards sent abroad, sped up refunds, express excellent support, no “I will put you through to my colleague in a 5th department to sort this out for you, please hold” sealed the deal.
Another person really doesn’t care about the product as long as it’s usable, but support is key. I was a bit surprised, but this person’s summary was “when it works, it works, but when it doesn’t, this is where I need to be certain that my problem will be dealt with”. My conversion was as simple as pointing out excellent support AND showing text messages about outages. Yeah, text updates about outages got Monzo a customer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Next person, terrible with money, to a point where they need limited pocket money to not spend the whole salary in one week. “Use Monzo as your pocket money and even get instant updates”. Bam
One was a developer who really likes new, shiny apps with a neat design. I think I got it sorted even before I finished saying ‘They also have an API’.
There’s a reason why sales people do a small chat first, before trying to sell anything. They learn about this person. We are in good position because we know our friends/colleagues. Finding one (two tops) convincing strong points that a target (ekhem ) can relate to seem to work best in my experience. I tried full-on spam, but “are you on commission or what” is quite of a show stopper.
Now working for the company, I can’t really push Monzo as hard as I used to.
I find with the people in my life that one or more of Monzo’s features (a bank from your phone with instant notifications, fee-free FX, etc.) sell it or they want to stay with their current bank. Very few sit on the fence here but I’d hope we can win over some of the challenger bank skeptics with a long term reputation of treating our customers fairly and being as transparent as we can.
Also I find there is still a lot of “switching banks is hard” thoughts out there.
If Monzo do use the “switch guarantee” system for CA then convincing will be easier.
For me it starts with the card, its a conversation starter. Talk about Instant notifications, demo the freeze function, and the good customer service and modern UI for the app. Monzo does sell itself.
I say as its currently a prepaid system its not harm in trying it. People try and end up liking it.
But also, some people do not want to switch and so fair enough.
Sometimes if you try selling it (because you want everyone to join you in having cool stuff and not being ripped off) you end up raving about it too much and sounding like some kind of paid for presentation, and your friends become suspect and turn away.
I used to rave about it too much, but now I just tell people yeah it’s the bank of the future and you can’t have it, only cool people can get it I think I have signed up at least 10 people by telling people they can’t have it.
It nicely focuses on Monzo as a product, not just 'benefits. If I had known that people will spend 10 mins reading, I’d recommend this article over my “blablablah Monzo is awesome” speech.
My conversion to Monzo was a case of my friend using it to pay whilst we were out for dinner and showing me the app. Now what I personally loved about it was the instant notifications and the categorisation because at the time I was planning on making an app where I could track my own spending and have a visual representation of what areas my money goes to. Safe to say that Monzo was miles ahead of what I was thinking and it was linked to a card. I signed up straight away and haven’t looked back since.
Family : My brother actually had heard of them and already signed up weeks before I heard about Monzo but hadn’t received the card yet due to that ridiculously long queue at the time . My sister had been studying in the States since mid-August ‘16 so told her to sign up so I could transfer money to her for free (She told me she always lost money when Dad would transfer funds over from HSBC) so that was an easy sign up/conversion. My mum loved the fact that there were instant notifications and that it was a prepaid card. She just liked that if there was no money on the card then transactions wouldn’t go through so that’s what made her sign up. Oh and the fact she’s always buying things from the States so fee-free transactions is another thing she liked (she’s also a crowdfunding investor too ). For my dad, that was just my mum nagging him to get it for the fee-free transactions abroad (and sending money to my sister in the States).
(It is pretty cool that my whole family have adopted Monzo ha )
Friends : I tell them about my most loved/useful features; instant notifications and categories.
Pre-Monzo (July ’16) I’d get a text from HSBC every other Monday saying I’m in an unauthorised overdraft because I had too heavy a weekend. Since using Monzo haven’t received that text again because of the real time updates of my balance. A few friends signed up on that fact of accurate balances alone. I’ve had a couple friends sign up because they like the idea that it’s a prepaid card so they use it as “weekly spending” card which allows them to keep track of their finances a lot better than their respective banks. There’s been one that’s signed up because of the free-fx transactions because she was going on holiday.
tl;dr a lot of my friends signed up because they saw the instant notifications when we’d be out and it was time to pay. I basically told them what I personally loved about Monzo and it resonated with them.
I must say though Monzo pretty much sells itself – once people see the hot coral card they instantly ask about it and how it works.
Monzo.me got a fair few of my friends hooked (@Dlucas85) as they were constantly paying me for our weekly 5-a-side through it, and when they say how quick it was to pay if they actually had a card they decided to give it a shot
I have gone through most of your situations as well. So I’ll just add one more which might be of interest to the company.
I keep trying to convince a friend to get onboard (he’s a space engineer working for Airbus) but after a quick search about Monzo he stumbled upon one of their social network videos with support employees acting a bit too “millennial”…
That was literally enough to give him cold feet. His quote: “I will never signup to a bank that makes stupid videos like that”. I just can’t shake that company image off him now.
Monzo should be careful not to alienate some segments of the market.
I personally don’t check any of the social stuff. I’m not bothered by it and don’t associate that with the quality of the product. I’m a product manager myself so I am sufficiently impressed by the UX and attention to detail to LOVE it. But it’s worth keeping in mind that we don’t all get onboard through the same door.
I’ve flashed my Monzo card a few times when going out for a meal with friends and colleagues and it always a good conversation topic. They are surprised when I said they can pay me back using my unique monzo.me link.
Since then I’ve convinced a few of them to get Monzo and now we are paying each other using Monzo to Monzo which is nice
In my case, it is telling my friends and colleagues that Monzo is great, no FX fees when paying, a great online community (I’ve have said Monzo is like the Giff Gaff of the banking world) and letting them loose using the app so they can see for themselves (whilst keeping a stern eye just in case they decide to send money to a unsuspecting friend/colleague as a joke)
Pretty much yeah. My dad’s moving to Cyprus and when I went out there with him I loaded up my Monzo card and was using it. I told him about the benifits I had enjoyed while using it out in Gran Canaria on a previous holiday and he couldn’t sign up fast enough.
(Even giving him my golden ticket to jump the queue, he still couldn’t wait to get his card.)
In fact, everyone I have mentioned it to in regards to using abroad has commented how great it sounds.
Or does it take a bit more convincing?
) It gets questioned; “what is it?” “why bother?”
dammit I am offering you this amazing thing why are you not getting it
My friends actually have a running joke where they bet how long it’ll take me to drop Monzo into conversation when I meet someone new. Their estimation is an average of 20 minutes 
If I’m getting food with a few friends and one of them has never heard of Monzo, I usually offer to pay the bill with my Monzo card. I pay contactless, show them the instant notification (emoji is always a hit 
) then fire off a 
. I think people also have “trust” issues with Monzo - when the CA is mainstream it will be easier to say “regulated…blah blah…FSCS…current account” than explain that it is a prepaid at the moment…becoming a CA “soon”
) can relate to seem to work best in my experience. I tried full-on spam, but “are you on commission or what” is quite of a show stopper.
I think I have signed up at least 10 people by telling people they can’t have it.
. My sister had been studying in the States since mid-August ‘16 so told her to sign up so I could transfer money to her for free (She told me she always lost money when Dad would transfer funds over from HSBC) so that was an easy sign up/conversion. My mum loved the fact that there were instant notifications and that it was a prepaid card. She just liked that if there was no money on the card then transactions wouldn’t go through so that’s what made her sign up. Oh and the fact she’s always buying things from the States so fee-free transactions is another thing she liked (she’s also a crowdfunding investor too 
)
