The Challenge

Canadian investors loved robo-advisor WealthBar's boutique & approachable brand and personal touch. So, when the company was acquired by CI Financial, a large publicly traded company, we needed to reassure customers that the same great service they knew and loved was only getting better.

Meanwhile, tax season—the industry's biggest season for customer acquisition—approached, so continuing to grow our user base was just as important.

Here's how we launched the new CI Direct Investing brand to instill confidence with existing investors, while drawing in new customers.

The Approach

Customer Communications

We know our customers were our best asset, so they were the biggest targets of our rebrand campaign. We rolled out a multi-channel marketing campaign, leveraging email, in-app messages, social media, and our blog to get customers excited about the new CI Direct Investing brand. With tons of responses rolling in, the rebrand became an opportunity to deepen customer relationships, with our advisors responding to every single message

Earned Media

We focused on targeted media relationships to help tell the story of CI Financial’s complete acquisition of the robo-advisor and the rebrand, with coverage running across Canada in the Canadian Press, Globe and Mail, Wealth Professional, BetaKit & more.

Sponsored Content

In the personal investing market, it can be to stand out against incumbents multi-million dollar marketing budgets. We knew we couldn’t outspend them, so we moved into a new arena, partnering with some of the most influential Canadian podcasts, personal finance blogs, and social media influencers.

SEO

Where do Canadians turn if they want to find out when this year’s tax season is, or whether they should use an RRSP or TFSA? Google. And thanks to targeted keywords and timely reporting, Google directed them to us for many of the top searched tax season terms. With organic traffic up 150% year over year, we stretched our marketing budget further.

The Results

With proactive customer communications to highlight the benefits of the merge—and new direct investing capabilities, we minimized customer churn while growing our user base. Customers embraced the value proposition of a well-resourced parent company with access to a wider range of investment options and expertise.

Meanwhile, we ran one of the strongest tax season campaign's in the company's history, onboarding new investors to the newly established CI Direct Investing brand.