PointCard is a fintech company on a mission to become the de facto standard payments platform for everyday spending. With a strong internal design team, PointCard used Superside to create nearly 30 creative ad concepts, turning them into 441 static and motion social media ads resulting in a 240% increase in CTR and a click-to-install conversion rate growth of 275%.
A Fintech Gets An Elite Design Team
As a Y Combinator top company in 2021 and 2022, PointCard is determined to allow debit card users to earn rewards without high APRs, late fees, or annual fees from credit cards.
To do this, they offer perks typically reserved for credit card holders, like travel rewards, cell phone insurance and liability protection to attract their target audience of High Earners, Not Rich Yet (HENRYs).
Behind this big idea is a dream team of meticulous design professionals, including a creative director, a narrative architect, a brand designer, a typographer and a motion designer.
Working alongside Superside and PointCard was Dan Birdwhistell, a growth marketing consultant who uses social ad budgets to build, optimize and scale paid user acquisition programs.
PointCard design by Superside
Design Dreams of Data-Backed Decisions
Many startup brands use subtle, neutral tones and are a masterclass on minimalism. To elevate the brand past another piece of plastic, PointCard’s design team had shifted into bold, more dynamic neon colors, pushing the design envelope as vibrant and “hyper-real”, which had brought them some early success.
With PointCard’s initial design work sparking interest, it was time to launch the product to the masses, build awareness and create customers in a highly competitive financial ecosystem.
They needed to change the spending paradigm away from banks—how people think about banking and spend their money. Their goal was to become the de facto standard payment platform for everyday spending.
The bold design, the orange and yellow, [we knew] people were engaging with the ad. But we needed help packaging and pairing the design with the benefits of the card and preparing the user for the steps they to go through to sign up.
When Strategy Meets Execution: A Tale of True Collaboration
PointCard came to Superside looking for an extension of their design team capable of speaking the same language contained within PointCard’s definitive brand guidelines. Its brand book included:
- A meticulously crafted visual identity
- A curated design system
- A bespoke approach to typography
- A sophisticated approach to motion design
Superside’s adherence to the guide was essential, and so was open communication with the entire PointCard design team. Their team provided feedback and suggestions in a “studio-like” environment for rapid ideation and testing to find templates and approaches that work.
Once we had some interesting results, we got more granular and started driving conversions. As a group, we discussed each request, framed the next one based on data and kept a fast pace of new ads or concepts every 3-4 days.
To attract its audience, PointCard needed high-quality designs, fast, with talent who quickly immersed themselves in the brand to deliver results and, based on data, were able to iterate on successes and develop fresh ideas for new ad campaigns and concepts. PointCard used Superside for collaboration and open dialogue among professionals to make smart bets at high-speed.
ResultsHow Rapid High-Quality Creative Testing Skyrocketed Growth
Birdwhistell uses his tried and true “test & learn” method to help his clients learn fast, decide quickly and test new hypotheses at scale.
Here’s the cycle the teams repeated:
- Construct a hypothesis of fresh ideas
- Put the blinders on and set up a control to test one minor change, ensuring no other factors muddy the results
- Set up clear timelines for the asset creation and how long they would run the test
- Book a call, review and understand the results, discuss their learning, and brainstorm the next ads
PointCard design by Superside
Project #1/2/3 - Increase the CTR from static ads (142 static assets)
PointCard wanted to improve its CTR from social media ads under the Facebook umbrella from 0.54% to 1%.
After four weeks, the CTR beat expectations hitting 1.84%—a 240% increase in clicks from color testing, positioning and messaging tweaks.
CTR PointCard
After the first projects, some common traits appeared:
- Showing PointCard’s App outperformed displaying the debit card
- Messaging around earning points and tying it to value piqued interest
- Displaying a transparent square overlaid on the app in a mobile device was a small win (leading to more testing)
- Combining the orange and white colors outperformed the orange and black
- Showcasing a more “lifestyle” approach wasn’t working
PointCard CTR
Basic ad iteration is one thing: changes to copy, backgrounds and colors are simple for anyone (even AI robots). Concept development is uniquely human, based on hypotheses, data and design capabilities.
PointCard CTR
Project #4/5 - User Testimonials, Motion Design and a Shift to Conversion (25 motion assets)
After extremely positive static image CTR results, they wanted to test the motion graphics variable. In the face of their early learnings, they reintroduced the yellow color and the points and perks narrative in true scientific experimentation style.
They showcased travel by testing the idea of “PointCard goes on vacation with you” to appeal to their HENRYs. The bigger win came by clarifying what amount of points it would take to fly to a dream destination like Bali. And the idea of becoming a customer could pay for a vacation with your earned points.
With a touch of motion design work, the UGC ad generated the lowest CPC and an impressive CPL (1.41%), so they added more testimonial videos to the mix.
These user testimonials showed high engagement rates and a low cost per subscriber but ultimately lower conversion rates to product subscriptions.
Knowing they had built great brand awareness, their focus shifted to conversion rate (CVR) for app installs and card purchases.
The video with motion design “unboxing” ads above had CTRs of 1.20% and 1.16%, respectively. The conversion rate to app install for both was 24%. They also did well for conversion to the card itself, with the orange owning a slight advantage over the yellow at 14.3% to 13%.
The travel and points narrative revealed great app install conversions (21%) and card conversions (11.5%), but the CTR was below the desired target coming in at 0.60%.
The key takeaways from these ads are:
- Top performers almost always use the arrow
- Orange continued to show better CTR
- Despite a lower CTR, the travel theme, with its high conversion rate, meant they were targeting the right audience
Project #6/7/8/9 - Back to static and new motion explorations (238 assets)
Knowing what was working from CTR to CVR, PointCard aimed to refine its concepts further, focusing more on the details, hoping to engage with its target audience.
They tried pricing, with messaging around value and style. Notice the return of the semi-transparent overlay on the far left
PointCard design by Superside
To appeal to the HENRY aesthetic, they referred to one of the hottest lines by Mad Men’s Don Draper.
PointCard design by Superside
And attempted to speak to those who paid attention to the finer things in life—the details that make the mundane and trivial feel akin to beautiful design and artwork.
Using a double entendre, they alluded to career potential and earning ride-share points.
PointCard design by Superside
Using PointCard is rewarding thanks to its valuable points and ease of use.
They positioned the card and its pricing as a cost of access to the elite. Free? Nope. Worth it? Yes.
PointCard further pushed into their design-first mentality, further aligning with its target audience. Yet, still reminding them of the frictionless experience.
The more they learned, the more concepts and ideas they could bring to life—together, the teams started combining what works.
They paired testimonials with travel (the repetitive arrows pointing to the sign-up buttons were repeatedly the top performers). In other examples, they played with repetition—value and price, then unboxing and points.
Design, Rapid Iteration and Testing at Scale Surpasses Expectations
Using Superside, PointCard unlocked high-quality performance marketing assets that keep the product-centricity of their design-driven, future-forward brand achieving better performance and top-of-funnel growth.
Their goal was to improve their click-to-install conversion rate from 8% to 16%. Together, their collaboration meant the CVR often floated around 28-30%—hitting 88% above the target or a growth of 275%.
In 6 months, with rapid iteration, creative collaboration and rigorous allegiance to brand guidelines, Superside served as the creative engine, delivering 441 creative assets and nearly 30 new concepts surpassing growth expectations.
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