'It all comes down to understanding User Experience' says Senior Marketing Manager at Blockchain.com

Host: Ioana Lungu (Growth Marketing Manager at DOT)

Jun 05, 2024

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Blockchain.com got its start as an early pioneer of key infrastructure for the Bitcoin community. First, with a Blockchain Explorer that enabled anyone to not only examine transactions and study the blockchain, but an API that enabled companies to build on Bitcoin. They also have provided the most popular and widely used crypto wallet that enables anyone anywhere to control their own money.

UX is The Key to Crypto

We were joined by Tom Phipps, Senior Marketing Manager at Blockchain.com.

Key Takeaways

UX: Figuring out why people aren’t into crypto yet and making it easier for them to start.
Crypto's New Status: Crypto has gone from being "magic internet money" to a legit financial asset.
Getting New Users: Making crypto feel like a natural next step from modern fintech. Scaling in a way that makes crypto the next evolution in finance.
Adapting to the Market: Adjusting plans weekly based on what users think and market changes. Introducing a polling feature for feedback, creating content, and keeping users engaged.
Marketing Tips: Spend wisely and track what works. Keep checking if your marketing strategies are effective and be ready to switch things up.

📖 Read the Interview

Tom Phipps: It all comes down to just understanding user experience. What are people looking for and particularly, why aren't people in crypto yet?

It's all about those sort of feedback loop cycles rather than spending a load of money hoping for some result.

Crypto has now been institutionalized, so to speak, so it's gone from being this magic internet money which no one ever took seriously to something which is being seen as a new financial asset tool.

That's all money down the drain. If you're not really tracking it's effectiveness and what it's actually doing for the bottom line as well.

Ioana Lungu: Many brands I think are using which is that our goal is to onboard the next 1 billion in the crypto space. So is this something Blockchain.com, or you as a team, if you have in mind this goal of onboarding as many new users on your platform as possible.

Tom Phipps: So across the space you'll hear everyone say that, but they'll never tell you how they're going to do it, and so I think, again, starting from going back to basics, really it's like we recognize the majority of people still don't use crypto. And we recognize that fintech apps are becoming more popular, so it's really looking at how do we cross that chasm from just making crypto something that used to be this magic internet money, which was a bit sort of siloed and isolated into this thing, which is just like the next logical sort of evolution of like modern fintech, so obviously you had the rise of challenger banks and everything they were doing.

I think we'd probably see blockchain and what we do is the follow on from that and being that sort of gateway into the crypto world, so It all comes down to just understanding user experience, what are people looking for and particularly, why aren't people in crypto yet?

If they've not touched it, why not and how can we better tailor our solution to help people make that first step moving forwards and then become that trusted partner companion throughout their crypto life cycle. So I think one thing that really helps us is obviously we've been around in the space now since 2011. We really pride ourselves on building that trust reliability, which you'd come to expect from any other sort of FinTech platform.

Right. But as you've seen in the crypto space, it's still new, right? It's nascent and other platforms have potentially struggled with the amount of users using them or all that sort of thing. So it's about looking to scale in an effective way, which isn't necessarily saying "Oh, yeah, we're doing something totally different to modern finance".

This is just the next step of the evolution of the financial world.

And I liked what you said earlier that you're sort of strategizing almost like week to week because the market is fluctuating so much that maybe it wouldn't make that much sense to do like a quarter plan and then to follow that blindly. You're sort of listening to the sentiments of the users on a week-to-week basis of really constantly listening to them.

It's all about those sort of feedback loop cycles rather than spending a load of money hoping for some result that's, you know, far in the future and just praying it's gonna lead to something. We really want to, yeah, make some sort of plan and iterate week on week just to really test and see how things are going rather than, yeah, making any big aims and miss them wildly just because state of the market changes and we've not really accounted for anything like that.

Ioana Lungu: So what's on the plan for maybe this week and the next week? What are you currently working on?

Tom Phipps: Yeah, so, our polling feature is going, we tested it last week, it's going live this week and it's becoming a standard feature within our product now. So, if you're using our platform, you should see these fun little questions, which will pop up on a weekly basis. And again, it's fantastic.

We can get this feedback from our users, but also it could lead to content that we can then use. People love hearing how users are exploring the world of crypto. And yeah, depending on the questions we use, I'm sure we can create loads of great content from that as well, which is also informative, entertaining.

And so it's, yeah, using this one thing for many different use cases. This is really quite exciting. We've seen some great traction last week if we roll this out and make it a sort of a standard feature. I think it will also be a great sort of retention tool as well in terms of people will come back to the app want to engage, and I'm sure we can sort out some pro apps and NFT rewards at some point in the future to build that community around the platform, too.

Ioana Lungu: So speaking about the future now, how do you see the crypto industry evolving in the next, let's say, a couple of years?

Tom Phipps: Yeah, great question. So, I mean, it's been an interesting year in terms of regulatory development. I think that's probably been the main narrative recently. And I say regulatory development, it's things such as Bitcoin ETFs.

You look at Europe and their legislation as well. It's clear that crypto has now been institutionalized, so to speak, so it's gone from being this magic internet money which no one ever took seriously to something which is being seen as a new financial asset tool, whatever you want to call it, and I think that's going to continue in terms of, yeah, regulators are gonna look to incorporate crypto into these more traditional markets, leverage the tech, whatever it may be.

And yeah, obviously there's gonna be challenges along the way given it's pseudonymous tech, etcetera, I think you've probably seen Elizabeth Warren out in the US go and go on her campaign against crypto, but she's convinced it's majorly used by bad actors.

And of course there's going to be, like any technology, there's gonna be bad actors along the way but, you know, regulation is probably a good thing as long as it's proactive regulation that is formed alongside industry input, so having the people on the ground actually build this technology advising these regulators is key here, not regulators, you know, blindly going at it, just trying to lock down this technology, whatever it may be. So cautiously optimistic on that side.

I think the UK has made a good start in saying they're going to be listening to Linda, listening to the industry leaders, whether, you know, they do or not, proof will be in the pudding, but what we've seen so far has been seemingly positive in terms of the state of the market. Yeah, I mean bitcoin's hovering around its previous all time high from a few years ago, which is encouraging in terms of the market pretty much follows Bitcoin. And yeah, I mean, you look at these novel applications that just keep coming out, you know, week, week by week, month by month, the innovation isn't slowing down here, right?

So, as an industry, as a whole, I'm quite excited for what the future brings and to be working at a company that's going to be a part of that, even better.

Ioana Lungu: And, from a marketing standpoint, what would be one, again, key strategy that you think it's super important for people who are in this space right now to really focus on?

Tom Phipps: So I think the trap a lot of people fall into is they'll just spend, spend, spend and not actually like, work out how effective that spend is, right? They'll spend because they're like, "Oh, we need to market. We need to push our brand out there. We need to do this. We need to do that".

That's all money down the drain. If you're not really tracking it's effectiveness and what it's actually doing for the bottom line as well. So I think, again, it's being very intentional with how you use these different marketing tools and channels and working out what's most effective for you. It's all about the data and checking. Is this something we should be doing or should we be considering a different channel, a different approach?

It all goes back to that sort of iterative learning process where you need to just regularly be assessing "Is this effective?" Because I think so many teams just blow stupid amounts of money just because they think "We just got to spend" well, yeah, you can but it doesn't mean it's gonna be effective.