Keeping users engaged and active is key to any broker’s success – especially in the current economic environment. And while engaging users isn’t an easy feat, there is one straightforward solution.

The Challenge: Flagging User Growth

Engagement’s more important than it used to be. After all, 2020 was a stellar year for investing apps – with government cash support, Covid-induced investing enthusiasm, and a bull market all helping to drive user growth. But it’s been a few years since then, and the landscape looks very different these days.

Consider Robinhood: the firm saw its monthly active users (MAUs) peak at 21.3 million in the second quarter of 2021. In the meantime, though, rising interest rates and high inflation have cooled the stock market frenzy, and left consumers with tighter budgets. The upshot of that: Robinhood saw MAUs fall every quarter through to the end of 2022.

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Plenty of investment apps find themselves in similar situations. And the forward-thinking ones have responded by shifting their focus from rapid expansion to more sustainable growth – paying more attention to user engagement than to costly customer acquisition.

The Solution: Engaging Content

That’s where Finimize comes in: we’re the engagement experts, and investing apps everywhere can benefit from our winning formula. For instance, our audio content consistently captivates investors, boasting completion rates of between 70% and 80% – double the podcast industry average. And let’s not forget our written content, either: with completion rates cruising a third above the industry average, it’s clear that we’ve hit a sweet spot, delivering in-depth yet bite-sized pieces that members can’t put down. That approach – which drives a winning combination of education and appeal – is engagement in a nutshell.

And the best bit? Finimize content excels outside our own platform too. While dormant accounts can be a big problem for investing apps, our content licensing partners report that 65% of users who engage with one article in a week come back for more. That might be why our partnership with leading Irish broker Goodbody had 70% of customers reporting “high user satisfaction”. After all, we’ve fine-tuned our product to generate social-media-like levels of engagement – producing MAU rates that rival those of Facebook.

The Outcome: Active Users, Greater Revenue

Here’s the upshot for investing apps: an engaged user is more likely to be an active user – and active users generate higher ARPU (average revenue per user) than dormant accounts. That can make a big difference to a firm’s bottom line.

See, Finimize content isn’t just super-engaging: it’s actionable and practical too, sparking ideas and informing real-world investing decisions. After all, investing apps have democratized access to financial markets – and at Finimize, we’re democratizing financial know-how. Offer investors market access and insights together in one place, then, and you’ve got a seriously powerful tonic on your hands. In fact, 90% of Finimize members say they’ve learned something from us, and 40% have taken action on the back of our analysis.  That means our content can catalyze increased investment as well as higher engagement rates. The takeaway: a relatively small outlay on Finimize content can amount to a needle-moving measure for investing apps, and quickly drive returns on investment of over 100%.

If we sound confident, it’s because we’ve already done some back-of-the-envelope calculations, breaking down one way of approaching this. Let’s say you spend $50,000 on a Finimize content license. All else equal, you’ll expect to see an increase in user engagement – and along with that, more active, better-informed customers who are more likely to transact on your platform. Even if that pushes only 1,000 of your dormant customers to become active again and generate an ARPU of $50, you’ll have emerged with a 100% ROI. If you can reactivate more users than that – or drive a higher ARPU – then your ROI jumps pretty dramatically. And that’s not to mention the other benefits a strong content offering brings you – like improved SEO, brand loyalty, and an edge over content-deficient rivals.

In A Nutshell: Engaging Content Offers A High ROI

These days, nobody’s being handed super-fast growth on a plate, so savvy investment apps are focusing on what they can change: engagement – which drives higher activity and ARPU among existing customers. Content plays a key role in boosting those metrics – and when it comes to accessible, straight-talking, expert financial insights, Finimize is the most engaging game in town. Integration is a breeze, and there’s a sizeable potential ROI there for the taking. Let’s talk about how you can tap into it.

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