Nigeria’s newest fully-digital Ajo launched by Carbon in collaboration with StepLadder
In just six months since launching in Nigeria we are 330% ahead of target volumes
August ‘23
Matt and Lucy met Chijioke Dozie, Carbon Co-Founder at Money 20/20 in June and after successful talks throughout the Summer, The StepLadder team set to work in creating a branded Circles trial for Carbon to try the platform.
Carbon Trial
October ‘23
After a resounding Circles trial success - over 75% of Carbon employees signed up to the trial and 80% said they would recommend Circles to friends and family - Carbon decided to go full implementation. We had gained useful feedback from the trial results which informed subsequent platform configuration.
Post-trial follow up
Nov ‘23 - Feb ‘24
Over the course of 12 weeks over Xmas and New Years our product development team worked with their counterparts at Carbon to configure and set up a tenant to their market in Nigeria, finalise the UX flows for onboarding, dashboard and Draw Day and use APIs to connect the Circles engine to their CRM and payment systems.
Product integration
Jan - Feb ‘24
During the build and integration phase, the StepLadder and Carbon growth marketing teams were collaborating on go-to-market plans. Using tried and tested comms from StepLadder UK, a pre-launch campaign was built and sent to educate, excite and engage the Nigerian target audience.
Go-to-market strategy
Feb - March ‘24
Circles are launched to a small cohort via email and push notifications, Carbon customers also found their way in organically through the new tile entry point in the Carbon app. Watching the number of people joining our new Nigerian Circles increase quickly felt like a huge achievement. The first 9 days saw 300 people signing up to join our first 25 Circles. We were going to really be ready to scale.
First Circles begin
7 March ‘24
The first Nigerian Draw Day was a really exciting day at Carbon and StepLadder HQs! With many Circles now filled with Carbon customers saving for their goals, we got elated reactions from lucky customers to be drawn first in the first ever Nigerian Circles.
First Draw Day
March - April ‘24
Throughout the first month of Circles the StepLadder team supported the Carbon team to streamline the onboarding process and push higher percentages of people through each stage of the funnel to maximise conversion. We achieved an 8.9% penetration of Carbon’s active user base. We excitedly welcomed our 1,000th member into Carbon Circles.
Funnel conversion
April - May ‘24
Throughout the second month of Circles StepLadder worked with Carbon to configure new Circle sizes to increase the number of people finishing their sign up application. Following go-live with this update, we saw a 400% average uptake improvement on sign-up numbers overnight.
New Circle sizes
June ‘24
In June we added payment features to make it easier for customers to complete their applications and join Circles along with Reason for Saving email campaigns to convert users into specific Circles. We welcomed our 4000th Circles Member by the end of June.
Closing the loop
We added the opportunity for customers to refer new people into Circles. In July over a third of new sign ups came from referrals. We closed July with over 5,600 customers - an 73% month on month growth rate from launch of the new product.
Adding features
July ‘24
In August more new functionality meant that Carbon customers could join more than one Circle at a time. On many days throughout August, over HALF the Circle spots taken were from customers already in another Circle.
Additional spots
August ‘24
Ngozi's words about Circles in Nigeria speaks for itself...
"The [StepLadder] team have brought not just know how about Circles and technical expertise, but a lot of analytical and execution power. So that they're, in many ways, thinking more about it than we are. And that is fantastic! It's almost like we've hired a team who knows more about this than I ever will. That's in my pocket and very powerful."
