Why Credit Karma should/should not become Credit Shanthi?

Published in

ProductManagerJoe

4 min readMay 26, 2018

Summary:

“Your credit scores should be free. And now they are. Check your scores anytime, anywhere, and never pay for it.” This is Credit Karma’s (CK) core positioning message. This positioning has helped CK acquire 75 million customers. My primary research by surveying 500 customers suggests CK should/should not change its positioning to Credit Shanthi (peace of mind about credit) because ….

Background:

CK has evolved from a free credit score checking service to a portfolio of free services that help customers obtain peace of mind about credit. At no cost to customers, except sharing their data, customers can claim unclaimed money, get offers on best credit cards and loans, get advice to improve credit score and restructure debt, file taxes, track spending pattern, simulate credit score and much much more.

But CK is yet to change its core positioning i.e. it is still you can check your credit score for free. Perhaps CK is happy with the rate of customers who check product recommendations on its website before purchasing a new credit product. CK would be able to check this metric by reviewing the percentage of customers who visit relevant sections of CK’s website before X days (say 30 days) of getting a new credit product (data that CK tracks). But, will changing the brand name and core positioning help CK improve this metric, and make more money? Answering this question is the objective of this study.

But before answering that question, why hasn’t CK changed its core positioning yet? Changing a brand name and core messaging is a difficult task, and CK may choose to stay away from it because Credit Karma is already a popular brand name. My primary hypothesis is that checking the credit score for free is the first and primary benefit a CK customer gets, and hence CK is using this benefit as its hook to communicate to customers in a clear and precise manner. I felt more confident about my hypothesis after reading CK’s website: “The first thing we do is give you free access to your credit scores, reports and monitoring. Once you know where you stand, we help you figure out your next move.”

However, reading CK’s mission, I felt that CK supports my primary hypothesis of changing its core message to Credit Shanthi: “Everyone deserves to feel confident about their finances. Our job is to give you the tools, the education and the opportunities you need to make real, meaningful progress. Thinking about your finances can be frustrating, but we’re working to make the process simpler and easier to understand for over 75 million Credit Karma members.” Curious that I am, I surveyed a representative sample of the US population to get insights to understand whether CK will benefit by changing its core messaging and positioning.

Research Methodology:

The goal of the research is to identify whether CK’s customers and non-customers are aware of the bundle of services CK provides, apart from checking ones credit scores for free.

CK has 75 million customers in the US and Canada. TechCrunch reports that about one half of all millennials in the US are CK’s customers. If there are 71 million millennials in the US and if half of them are CK’s customers, millennials in the US constitute CK’s core customer persona (~30 of 75 million customers, or 40%). Accordingly, the participants in this research comprise 40% millennials in the US, and 60% of other diverse Americans.

Through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service, 500 individuals were surveyed. This data is statistically significant: at a 95% confidence interval, for a sample size of 500 and population size of 75 million, the margin of error is an acceptable 4%. Curious to know the survey questions, participate in the survey and view the questions here.

Survey insights:

Survey Questionnaire:

(This section will not be posted in the blog since the website would quote a higher amount of estimated time to read this blog — the link to the survey will be provided in the text highlighted in yellow above)

1. Age

a. Below 18

b. 18–35

c. 36–50

d. 51–60

e. 61–75

f. Above 75

2. Gender

a. Male

b. Female

c. Other

d. Prefer not to say