The Community Factor

How RiseUp’s community has led to massive product adoption — and real social change

Like every buzzword, “community” has become overused, many times to describe something which is more fluff than substance. Today I’d like to share how at RiseUp we discovered it to be the exact opposite: how a community can create a significant network effect and why you should consider starting a community for your product. Similar to other community-driven companies like Notion and Airbnb, the RiseUp community is a multiplying force for our business, one that has deepened our product offering, increased customer loyalty and strongly driven product adoption. Before I dive into the details, let’s talk a bit about RiseUp and why community is central to our product and mission.

RiseUp is a startup with an ambitious goal: to build a highly successful company by creating significant social impact. We believe that empowering people to become financially independent can create a successful business which can be invested back into creating more financially independent people.

We’re on a mission to create a world in which anyone can enjoy financial well-being. It’s a rather daring mission, one that implies true disruption of the financial system in a way that is both profitable and ethical. And, of course, all of this is in the face of the increasingly complex financial reality with rising inflation that is facing families today.

The RiseUp approach

RiseUp isn’t just another financial app. In order to help people achieve financial well-being, we need more than smart technology. The RiseUp method is structured on psychologist Albert Bandura’s approach to behavioral change which focuses on three elements: creating small successes, receiving encouragement from a reliable authority and seeing people like you succeed. We address all three through a combination of our technology, human financial advisers and a strong community of people that support and motivate one another.

How the RiseUp Community was born

We launched our community during Covid. Since the founding days of the company, we have always pursued a close relationship with our customers: hosting financial health parties in living rooms across the country and dropping in on teachers’ staff rooms to discuss their financial dreams and concerns. Covid and its lockdowns hit just as our customer base was growing, and we had no choice but to think outside the box on how to build these personal relationships in a remote and scalable way. A Facebook group presented a solution for us to be in direct contact with our customers, and for our customers to also have a channel of communication and support with each other: one that is open at all times, without geographical limits.

In order to break down the taboos associated with money, however, we needed to create a safe and non-judgmental environment for people to discuss their personal financial issues openly. Building such an environment is no easy feat. One of the key enablers for us was creating a solid foundation for the culture and tone of the community together with a small group of founding members. The first members we invited to join were our “super customers” — those with the highest stickiness — and together with them we established an intimate, trusting and non-judgmental space. Only once that tone of voice was established did we begin to introduce new members. Today, at 45,000 members, our community stands out for its sincere and respectful discussion.

What can a community do for your startup?

1. Increase customer loyalty and retention

When trust in your product increases, so does loyalty to your product. We found that when a customer is involved in our community, it increases the likelihood they will continue using RiseUp in the future by 300%. Even on occasions when a customer leaves the service, they often stay and participate in the Facebook group. That means they maintain contact with RiseUp, gain value and are naturally exposed to both news about product developments and customer success stories, increasing the chances that they will return at a later time.

2. Encourage new product adoption

A community gives you a direct communication channel with your customer base and target audience. It is an exceptional way to test and think together about new ideas, as well as source signals and receive honest feedback that informs the development of the product.

It is also a natural place for the unveiling of a new product or feature, ensuring that you have no “cold starts.” RiseUp’s savings product was launched entirely within the community, and we enjoyed excellent, organic product adoption and growth. (Hundreds of automatic monthly deposits were opened in under 72 hours, amounting to over 100K ILS deposited per month.) Community members were driven to action together, and once a few started sharing their success, it simply caught on.

3. Create authentic, compelling marketing opportunities

The stories people share in the community are the most powerful marketing materials. We find that members are usually happy for us to share their stories across our marketing platforms and that one true story from a community member can draw more interest in RiseUp than our top performing campaigns.

Last May, we experienced a prime example of this when we called upon the community members to share a list of their full monthly expenses. Members shared their RiseUp “Expense Report” with the community, starting a conversation around their spending habits. People discussed their challenges, questions and concerns, as well as strategies that helped them improve their expenditure. The conversation was very unusual for the internet: real, open and conspicuously free of embarrassment or judgment — even though people were laying bare all their expenses in public!

One of the posts generated an unusually large number of responses. Recognizing its potential to draw the interest of the wider public, we reposted it on a well-known Facebook page. It received thousands of responses, likes and shares. Within the next 24 hours, the RiseUp Facebook group grew by 6,000 new members, and we acquired the same number of new customers as we did on the first day of our prime time TV campaign!

4. Be a significant lever for change

Are you familiar with the Dunkin’ Donuts slogan “America Runs on Dunkin’”? At RiseUp we like to say “Community Runs on GIVING.” When people give others advice or actively reach out to help, they feel empowered because they made a real impact on someone else’s life. That inspires them to do more for the mission, and it inspires other community members to join in and do the same.

Two years ago, at the start of summer, the community was flooded with conversations about the cost of August. Parents were concerned, not because they were indulging in expensive holidays, but simply because they were trying to entertain their children every day at another activity or amusement park, and it all adds up to a LOT of money.

These conversations inspired an amazing collaborative effort between 150 parents in the community and our team. Together we built a website listing thousands of activities across Israel that cost less than 25 ILS. The community shared the minisite until it went viral, spreading organically through WhatsApp groups and different parent forums. Ultimately, over 200,000 families used the site, and it increased RiseUp’s brand awareness significantly.

My tips for building a successful community

• Nurture your community culture. Actively encourage your community members to help other community members. We invest considerable time and resources in guiding the members of the community towards authentic, non-judgmental, respectful discussion and mutual support.
• Allow your team to be part of the community, sharing and responding freely. The point of a community is not customer service. Nor does it have an “official company spokesperson.” In a community discussion, everyone has equal ability to contribute. The entire team is involved and accessible. (Every so often, we receive responses such as: “Am I really talking to a developer? No company has ever allowed me to talk to the developers!”).

• Accept negativity. Not all comments about your company and product will be glowing, and the criticism will be distributed with ease to thousands of your community members. Every so often, someone asks why we permit this. Why should we make it possible to air our dirty laundry in public? I don’t see it that way. I deeply believe that every piece of feedback is one that we can learn from, and so we invite members to take an active part in improving the product.
• Establish a dedicated community team. Managing, nurturing and growing a community requires a significant amount of thought and investment. It is not a side project.
• Include the skeptics. Community is the best way to increase trust and remove barriers, because nothing beats a real, live, happy customer responding to others’ concerns about the service. Today we have over 600 new community members a week and we see that people who join the community before or during their onboarding are three times more likely to convert to happy paying customers.
• Find a unique, engaging content angle. Engagement is one of the key metrics that indicate a community’s success; it’s how you know that people are expressing interest in our content and finding it valuable. At RiseUp, we are grateful and proud that we have 80% monthly engagement within the community. In order to stand out from other financial groups, we focused from day one on conversations around our customers’ primary concerns — making real-life, everyday financial decisions — and avoided complex topics like capital markets, investments or digital currencies. We also created community challenges around specific financial goals: reducing take-out expenses, insurance fees, bank commissions, grocery bills, etc. We found these challenges to be extremely engaging and meaningful for members. (Not to mention the positive peer pressure created to change a financial habit!).

So what’s next?

The journey from small in-person gatherings to a forum of tens of thousands of people has taught us a lot, in particular that it is possible to create a real community online. Not fluff, but real substance and connection.

Our next challenge is how to scale that even further or, as better phrased by our advisor Douglas Atkins (formerly Airbnb’s Global Head of Community): “How do we create intimacy at scale?”

Watch this space. I hope to share more on this in my next blog post. :)

Thinking of starting a community? Have questions or thoughts? I’m always interested in learning more! tamar@riseup.co.il