Pardot Client Case Study – Harmoney
Harmoney
Harmoney is New Zealand’s first licensed peer to peer lending platform.
They set out to liberate lending with a financial marketplace that matches Kiwis who want to borrow with those who want to invest, and change the way that Kiwis think about money, for good.
Whether you’re looking for a personal loan or an alternative investment to a term deposit, Harmoney can give you a fair deal.
The Challenge
Harmoney’s business model requires a personal connection facilitated almost entirely online. At the same time it recognises that it is disrupting the existing banking systems and people may take some time to be comfortable with this.
Their challenge is to coach people through their application process from start to finish so that people are able to achieve their dreams faster at a lower cost.
Lead Aquisition
Leveraging a mixture of Pardot forms, Pardot form handlers and custom redirects, visitors and prospects are invited from banner advertising, facebook and other media advertising and a relationship is started. The initial goal is simply to engage via email with those interested in borrowing or investing.
Application Process
The next step for a borrower to achieve their goal is to complete the application process. Harmoney have broken the mold and developed an end to end process that enables a loan application, bank statements and identification requirements all to be completed through one easy online process (nothing to print and download and sign and send in!).
However, it was acknowledged that not everyone will make it through this process in one step. Leveraging data captured through the application process in salesforce.com and mapped across into Pardot, a drip campaign was developed to encourage people back into the application process.
Leveraging dynamic content, an initial email is sent to the prospect letting them know how far through the process they are and how many minutes it would take them to complete the process.
If they complete the application after receiving this first email they automatically are removed from the dynamic list driving the drip program and no further correspondence is sent.
If they did not open the first email it will be resent after two days with a different subject line. If however they do open it but do not complete their application, a further email is sent after seven days with modified content.
Getting Your Funds
The last part of the process is the decision to take your approval and get your loan funded by the market. For various reasons borrowers may not be ready to settle their loan straight away. Using a drip program and Pardot form, borrowers are encouraged to settle their facilities, but also given the chance via the form to indicate why now might not be the right time to settle their facility.
Taking the form data, prospects are further segmented into more timely communication based on their loan purpose and timing, and a salesforce.com activity is scheduled in some cases for phone follow up.
Taking the time to stop and think about our overall strategy and how automation fits into it has been invaluable. It has given us the framework to then implement the kind of customer journey that matches our brand aspiration, leveraging Pardot to achieve this.
The Future
New Zealand’s finance market is dominated by some of the most profitable banks in the world. Largely unchallenged and unchanging, the banks have reaped massive profits while leaving New Zealander’s with little in the way of alternatives.
The major banks in New Zealand need to be concerned. Disruption is coming and Harmoney is ahead of the curve.
The Process
Harmoney engaged us to assist them with their implementation and to think through their automation strategy.
Harmoney have taken the time up front over a couple of days to plot their automation strategy. The example above is just one of the many different programs they identified that will be built to ensure that the customers experience of dealing with them is as smooth as possible and supports their overall business model, engagement strategy and objectives.
Peer to peer lending marketplaces have been disrupting the traditional finance market around the world by using technology to minimise the cost of financial intermediation, and passing the benefits to customers. Pardot is a great tool to assist in achieve this.
