Do you have any plans to reintroduce a referral scheme or something similar? The golden tickets were a great little trick and it seems a shame not to bring back something similar to supercharge viral customer acquisition
Monzo are struggling as is, there’s no point in trying to boost customer numbers even more until profitability and customer support are sorted. The former is on track, the latter… not so much
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You don’t need to jump a queue and Monzo don’t need to pay for users now.
There’s no need for it to come back.
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- refer a friend and get a free month of Monzo X
- refer a friend and get a free x
- refer a friend and unlock retail cashback
you get the idea
I get the idea. Refer a friend to get stuff, then the friend uses CASS to get a switching bonus elsewhere. Everyone is happy, except Monzo.
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Monzo need profitable customers and not to give money away. Monzo need to sort out the customer service, not to get more people contacting them about why they didn’t get the referral bonus
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It is possible to design a referral scheme that does not cost monzo anything (unlocking features as opposed to giving away cash for example). Furthermore viral marketing is a low COA channel and perfectly suited for Monzo. IMO it is a channel that should be leaned on a lot more.
Monzo is ranked amongst the highest out of all banks in the UK for customer support. There are always going to be teething issues but that should not be a show stopper
The thing that you fail to understand is that Monzo don’t want explosive growth anymore. At least not at this stage. They need profitable customers not just more customers.
And the best way to do that is to figure out how to convert existing customers to profitable and to attract customers who will use Monzo as their main account.
Customer support is not great at the moment. Sure it may be if you get through to them and don’t get cut off after 20 minutes on hold. Or after the Monzo Community tell you the magic song and dance you need to perform to get in touch with chat. Most customers don’t have easy access to customer support because Monzo currently don’t want them to. Once Monzo are profitable we will hopefully see the return of easy to access, 24/7 support. And once that’s sustainable, they can look to grow exponentially again.
Or have you perhaps in the past paid for Instagram/Facebook adverts with your referral link and this is why you just want Monzo to give something, whether it benefits them or not?
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As an investor why are you so convinced that Monzo should pay for new users when they are getting them without paying?
(Ignoring normal advertising spend etc)
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We’ve been adding ~100,000 customers a month during the pandemic without any advertising spend. It’s organic growth and so, although this is completely out of my realm of expertise, I can’t see any scenario where we might bring a paid referral scheme back.
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I wasn’t aware that Monzo are prioritising profitability over growth. That seems strange to me given the competitive landscape but you guys seem more in the know than me.
I think you guys are slightly missing my point on a referral scheme. A cleverly designed scheme (eg ‘gate keeper’ type schemes that unlocks app features or something similar) does not have to cost Monzo anything. I would be very much against paying users to join.
Monzo is getting a good number of customers per day, but there is always room for improvement and a referral scheme seems like a high-impact low-cost way of doing so.
But when are you adding 100,000 customers a month (many of which lose you money as it is), you don’t need any form of referral scheme, paid or otherwise.
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I don’t want this to come back. Ever. I despise referral schemes. They devalue recommendations to the point where I personally don’t trust them.
I recommend things because I like them, not because I get a kickback.
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I can see where you are coming from but most high growth tech companies operate at huge losses - explosive growth is more important in the early days as grabbing market share is the goal and those customers can become profitable further down the road.
Monzo has the potential to attract more customers without increasing spend. 100,000 customer per month is good of course, but there is potential for more without increasing spending.
Referral schemes are contentious but they can be valuable tools if designed properly. Revolut and Starling both have schemes.
I don’t disagree, but Monzo has already had its explosive growth phase. Now it has to generate more revenue to service that growth.
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Because they are millions and millions of users behind.
They are still in the key growth part, Monzo are not.
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That’s who’s joining. Probably only 2% of them used a referral
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I am curious as to why you think Revolut is millions of users behind?
I see Monzo as still being in an explosive growth phase until it is a top UK bank. So just another 10m customers to go
Blitzscale
Early stage tech companies who are grabbing market share. Profitability is the end goal or course, but the priority is growth (within reason)
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This is a model driven by the desire for VC funding, and it’s pretty demonstrably broken.
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