N26 is building the first online bank the world loves to use. Valentin Stalf and Maximilian Tayenthal founded N26 in 2013 and launched the initial product in early 2015. Today N26 has more than 7 million customers in 25 markets. Our team of 1500 employees work across 8 global office locations in Berlin, Barcelona, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Vienna and São Paulo.
Unlike a traditional bank with a brick-and-mortar presence, the N26 team must serve and scale engaging ads to the right audience at the right time. Additionally, N26 must also ensure that its campaigns closely follow the consumer across every stage in the journey, eventually converting to a customer. Finally, being a digital bank and a disruptor brand means constantly reassuring its audience that the bank offers a trusted product that exceeds what is currently available in the market.
Since many advertising nuances exist for the financial service industry, such as identification requirements, ad creative is even more relevant to motivate users with unique selling points to go through the signup process. It was important for the team to breathe fresh life into its ads to minimize ad fatigue, successfully scale this program in order to capture new customers, and incorporate a full-funnel campaign strategy approach without allocating too much bandwidth to run these ads.
Through its partnership with Smartly.io, N26 created hundreds of video ad variations that are all a part of a new robust full-funnel advertising strategy. The campaign ran across multiple markets and leveraged our automation tools to swap out ads based on language, market messaging, and funnel stage of the lead. Prior to leveraging Smartly.io, the team would have to individually and manually create ads based on languages and local markets, which could be a daunting and time consuming process for a team of four.
In addition to N26’s new process in creating ads, the team revisited its strategy, and diversified their video content, using Smartly.io’s automated ads and creative feeds, to serve different video and static ads to consumers based on their stage in the advertising funnel. This full funnel approach has allowed N26 to communicate its message of trust with their target audiences from the first interaction they have with its brand all the way through the actual conversion.
Saínza Rego Otero
Paid Social Specialist
These changes to the N26 strategy proved to pay off for the team with the ability to launch 100s of personalized ads within minutes and a 60% increase in click through rates. With this new process in place, the team is excited for its future partnership with Smartly.io and continuing to increase its presence across the globe.