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Learn how Harmoney used LinkedIn to increase loan originations

  Article , Financial services , Tech and telecom , Success stories

Financial services innovator boosts results by 20%

harmoney logo

About Harmoney

Every good marketer knows that reaching the right customers is half the battle when it comes to having efficient, high-performing advertising. But finding that audience sometimes requires creativity you might not expect from a financial services company. That’s why Harmoney, a company focused on helping people achieve more through technology, big data, and responsible lending, may surprise you.

Harmoney is an innovative fintech company, so it makes sense that their approach to marketing is inventive too. Founded in 2014, Harmoney was the first company to receive a peer-to-peer lending license in New Zealand. Peer-to-peer lending allowed individuals to borrow and lend money without a bank, while Harmoney facilitated the connections.

For people whose only experience in personal finance was with banks and finance companies, Harmoney was different. They still are. They use intelligent technology to help them connect people with the right loan options. For example, when deciding who qualifies for a loan, they use technology, data and analytics to model loan options and therefore rely less on human subjectivity. This way, their decisions are more equitable, faster and more reliable. It has helped remove misinterpretation and unconscious bias from decision-making. That’s good for everyone.

“Our purpose is to help and inspire people to achieve their financial goals with friendly, fair, and simple products to use,” said Glen MacKellaig, Head of Marketing.

We need to be prominent and top of mind when a user with high intent has decided they’re going to borrow money. It just totally makes sense that we're all across the Microsoft Advertising network for that.

— Mark Lapsley, Performance Media Manager, Harmoney

Harmoney technology

Harmoney has been at the forefront of transforming the way people borrow money, and now they’re changing the way they reach and engage people through their digital advertising too.

Traditionally, when anyone needed a loan, they contacted a lender, set up a meeting and met in an office. That’s how lenders and borrowers expected it to be done. But Harmoney’s passion for transforming and automating the borrower experience means they’ve approached things differently with their 100% online loan application.

Product view of the Harmoney interface get started page.

While some users may have been late to adopt technology for loan services, the pandemic changed things. When many banks and lenders shut down during the pandemic, Harmoney didn’t miss a beat — their online products and processes were ready, and so were their customers.

“There was a key, pivotal change where people became more confident in using digital platforms,” MacKellaig said. “Because they had to, people finally started to embrace the technology.”

How they found the right customers

Harmoney has long used Microsoft Advertising because of the audience alignment offered on the platform for their core demographic within Australia and New Zealand.

Mark Lapsley, Performance Media Manager, said Harmoney’s customers have a high propensity for using Microsoft products such as Hotmail, the Edge browser and Internet Explorer. So, they knew partnering with Microsoft Advertising to try new targeting techniques had potential to help them grow.

Ad for Harmoney with the words, Credit when you need it, showing an image of the dashboard interface.

“It's a very short window when someone is in market to borrow, so we need to be prominent and top of mind when a user with high intent has decided they’re going to borrow money,” Lapsley said. “It just totally makes sense that we're all across the Microsoft Advertising network for that.”

Advanced LinkedIn Profile Targeting

Harmoney has been working with their data science team on various automation techniques for their advertising. One difficult problem was determining if a user is qualified for a loan. Harmoney wanted to know: Could they determine qualification before serving an ad? The answer, in many cases, is yes.

With the influx of traffic online and shifting economic factors, including job status, they wanted to know how they could use data streams to infer loan eligibility. That’s when they started using LinkedIn Profile Targeting from Microsoft Advertising.

With LinkedIn Profile Targeting, advertisers can target highly relevant audiences using their profile information. They can serve text ads and Dynamic Search Ads to customers based on their company, job function and industry. These signals often overlap with loan eligibility conditions. “No other search engine can do such a thing,” Lapsley said.

The LinkedIn overlay is just incredible to apply. It's a marketer's dream.

— Glen MacKellaig, Head of Marketing, Harmoney

Results

By adding the layer of LinkedIn Profile Targeting to their ad campaigns, they narrowed in on a more qualified audience before they even showed them an ad. Because of this, their overarching campaigns were more efficient and improved Cost Per Acquisition (CPA).

The added layer caused their impressions to decrease because it filtered out less qualified traffic, but those that saw the ads clicked more often and their ad click-through rate (CTR) increased 58%.

Product view of the Harmoney app interface dashboard view.

Because of the more efficient targeting traffic now going to their website, their conversion rate increased 36%, and their overall conversions increased by 17%. Overall, they were able to increase lending by 20%.

“The LinkedIn overlay is just incredible to apply. It's a marketer's dream,” MacKellaig said.

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