The Free Toaster
Insights and interviews at the intersection of marketing, lending, and fintech. The Bank Marketer’s Podcast.
Episodes
Marketers sometimes like to enter new channels gradually, conservatively even. This works in many channels like paid search, social, and direct mail.
But for fintechs, entering new affiliate channels like this can have catastrophic consequences.
In today's Podcast, I share why entering into new affiliate marketplaces "cautiously" can be dangerous for new entrants. As an alternative, I'll walk you through how to play the game in r...
We chat with Colin about how AI is changing marketplaces.
His thesis: “The rise of agentic AI will transform marketplaces from passive aggregators to active facilitators of transactions.”
To learn more, check out Colin’s take on how AI will revolutionize marketplaces: https://www.gardinercolin.com/p/ai-and-marketplaces-agent-led
About Colin Gardiner
Former econo...
We sit with credit card expert Jason Steele about what's happening behind the scenes in the industry. Jason shares how he went from tech work to becoming a respected credit card authority who writes for major publications and runs CardCon, the credit card industry conference.
We discuss:
- The "Coupon Book Problem" - Premium cards are becoming more complex w...
LendAPI lets you create application flows, credit decision engines, and complete lending products through simple drag-and-drop tools—all without hiring engineers or spending millions.
You can build and launch lending products quickly and efficiently, then use a working product to raise venture capital. Even non-financial businesses like boat dealerships are using it to replace clunky Excel-based applicat...
In this episode, I catch up with my old Columbia PhD classmate Guru Sethupathy, founder of FairNow, an AI governance platform for financial services.
About AI Governance:
- Involves three key components:
- Monitoring AI performance, explainability, and bias
- Ensuring compliance with financial regulations
- Establish...
In this episode, we speak with Greg Cox, CEO of Monevo, to discuss their recent acquisition by TransUnion and how they're transforming credit offer distribution.
Greg explains how Monevo serves as a technology layer connecting lenders and publishers, allowing lenders to distribute highly qualified credit offers to third-party websites and aggregators. The platform helps lenders target the right customers across multiple digital ch...
Rich Walker is a 35-year industry vet who’s been responsible for over 10 billion pieces of Direct Mail.
Rich has led direct marketing teams at Capital One, the Winterberry Group, Deluxe Corporation, 2nd Order Solutions, and more recently, Aven.
He also ran his own consulting shop - Pilot Performance Marketing - focused on helping lenders solve Direct Mail.
So we jumped at the opportunity to get his take on how lenders can leverage ...
What is Congruence? Aligning messaging from your ad, to your landing page, to your final conversion steps creates lift in your marketing funnel, reducing your CACs and increasing your customer acquisition volumes. It sounds elementary. Yet many organizations forget to do it.
Today we dig into examples of marketing from Wells Fargo and Discover to illustrate what it means to be Congruent across your marketing funnel.
We chat with Kevin Bennett, a successful entrepreneur who helped grow Caribou to a billion-dollar company. Now, he's back with Further, a platform focused on helping people afford their first homes. Kevin shares important lessons for early-stage founders and gives practical advice for growing a business.
We Discuss:
Product vs. Distribution: Kevin explains why both product development and...
We sit with Tomas Campos, CEO at Spinwheel. Spinwheel’s product caught my attention because affiliate marketers could use their product to reduce the friction in their application processes.
Timestamps:
(00:00) Meet Tomas Campos, CEO of Spinwheel (02:30) Ideal customers and use cases (06:30) Success metrics (12:35) Challenges building the business (15:37) Partnering with lenders (22:41) Uplift from pre-filling application forms...We sit with David Nohe, CEO of FinGoal, to discuss the CFPB’s Rule 1033 on Open Banking and the implications it has for bank marketers.
Timestamps:
(00:00) David Nohe, CEO of Fingoal
(01:59) The 101 on CFPB Rule 1033
(09:32) Consumer consent
(18:04) Future of subscription models
(22:52) Funnel dynamics / friction
(24:09) Credit bureau vs. open banking data
(26:43) Why be concerned or optimistic
(32:10) Banks' strategic opportunit...
Personal finance platforms (like Credit Karma) are now at scale, with the ability to recommend products at the 1:1 user level. Further, they’re incentivized to recommend niche products that are highly customized to each user. Lending products, however, are designed for mass audiences. This disconnect presents a huge opportunity for lenders.
Timestamps:
(00:00) Why personalization matters (04:06) Hyper-niche lending products (05:3...
Today we chat with Tim Hong, the Chief Product Officer at MoneyLion. He walks us through a partnership they’ve built with Plaid and other data providers to offer cash flow data at the marketing stage to lenders in the Engine marketplace.
Timestamps:
(00:00) Tim Hong, CPO at MoneyLion (04:06) The Engine marketplace (12:02) Open banking and UX (22:48) User permissioned data (25:15) Sharing bank credentials (27:25) Cashflow data in ...I’m starting to worry that we don’t have an economically viable way to distribute cash flow underwriting (CFU) products to consumers. In today’s episode, we discuss the opportunity and challenges CFU lenders will have in distributing their products through direct mail, paid search, and of course affiliates.
Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction to Fintech and Cashflow Underwriting
(01:21) The Article and Its Insights
(02:38) AI-Genera...
Today, we discuss the backstory behind my marketing agency, New Market Growth. I’ll share my background working in affiliate marketing at a connected home startup, my experience working on credit cards at Capital One, my 4 years at Credit Karma, and how my experiences came together to form a services business for lenders.
Timestamps:
(00:00) What is New Market Growth (01:30) Early years in affiliate marketing (03:53) Credit Karma...
Today, we discuss high-level principles for your affiliate measurement (analytics) strategy. We’ll cover the 2 big questions your dashboards should be answering, we dig into 9 metrics you might not be watching, and we hit on the importance of connecting marketing stage and performance stage data.
Timestamps:
(00:00) True North (01:34) Driving questions (01:53) Delivering for your partners (04:26) Partners delivering for you (06:3...Today, we discuss the most common reasons that lenders don’t hit their volume, account quality, and growth goals in the affiliate channel. Based on Carlos’ experience talking to lenders in his affiliate marketing agency, New Market Growth.
Common struggles:
- Cross-functional dysfunction
- Model misalignment
- (Non)compliance
- Application friction
- Mispricing
- Access to big affiliates
- Concentration
- Cold starts
- Lack of diffe...
Today, we continue to discuss the 4 levels of Operational Maturity in affiliate marketing for lenders. We’ll go deep on 301 and 401 levels and wrap up with some tactical things you can do to land at the 401 level.
Summary of the 4 levels:
𝟭𝟬𝟭 - 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹
We're focused on the volume of leads and the cost of acquisition. The rest of the operation looks a lot like affiliate programs in other industries. There'...
Today, we introduce the 4 levels of Operational Maturity in affiliate marketing for lenders. We’ll go deep on 101 and 201 levels. The 301 and 401 levels will be covered in our next episode.
Summary of the 4 levels:
𝟭𝟬𝟭 - 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹
We're focused on the volume of leads and the cost of acquisition. The rest of the operation looks a lot like affiliate programs in other industries. There's not much attention pla...
Episode 005: Today, we discuss the marketing levers lenders have at their disposal to improve the performance of their affiliate marketing campaigns.
We’ll discuss levers in the following categories:
- Eligibility
- Impressions/placements
- Click-through rate
- Application rate
- Approval rat...
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