AFTERPAY / COPY LEADERSHIP, MESSAGING STRATEGY, COPY EXECUTION
CASE STUDY: PAY MONTHLY RE-LAUNCH
Afterpay’s buy now, pay later platform began with “pay it in 4” and has since expanded to include monthly payment plans. The Pay Monthly product had a very soft launch—instead of an official campaign, marketing briefed in piecemeal assets highlighting merchants with the Pay Monthly product, rather than the product itself. Unsurprisingly, product adoption was slow.
THE ASK (AND THE LAST-MINUTE ASK)
A more official launch was planned. This time, we would spotlight the product across our owned channels, using an old messaging framework and bringing it to life across web, email, and push. All assets were ready to go—when stakeholders asked for an entirely new messaging strategy in the eleventh hour.
As the creative lead, I worked on a tight two-day turnaround to overhaul our messaging strategy and re-execute it across launch assets. As I hustled (i.e. worked so hard I skipped my snack breaks), I was the go-between creative producers, product marketing, growth marketing, and my design partner.
Before
The original messaging framework riffed off our standard “Shop now, pay later.”
Functional? Definitely.
Benefits-forward? Not as much.
After
The updated messaging framework centers the customer benefit and describes clear use cases to help provide context for the product.
THE RESULTS
We re-pitched our new creative and successfully launched within our original timeline—and with great numbers to boot.
The campaign resulted in a 13% adoption rate (out of the company total) at re-launch. Our push notifications performed strong with an average 3% open rate—compared to a previous average of 1%. Echo sends for our emails continued to see high adoption rates at an average of 10%.
Epilogue: I rewarded myself with a snack.
A complete look at the updated landing page.
Email Before
The original strategy was to embed Pay Monthly into merchant-focused emails. Without proper education about the product and its benefits, customers still opted for the “pay in 4” product.
Email After
Our new approach properly flipped the hierarchy to lead with the product. The emails introduce the product, benefits, and use cases across our top performing categories, such as travel.
Push notifications featuring Pay Monthly for our top performing categories.
