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When fintech met Thanksgiving

Although it might not have been what the pilgrims or Native Americans initially had in mind, the most obvious intersection between Thanksgiving weekend and fintech is payments and ecommerce. This year, nearly 75% of Americans — who can at least agree that they love shopping — plan on hitting the stores on Black Friday. If last year is any indication, online sales will be huge. In 2015, consumers spent a whopping $4.45 billion on Black Friday and Thanksgiving.

That means that, in addition to the increasing number of unfortunate humans scheduled to work on those days, payment technologies like Walmart Pay or Visa Checkout will be working overtime to respectively process all of these in-store and online payments.

While Black Friday and its payment technology accomplices may have managed to invert the holiday’s symbol of the Cornucopia, Thanksgiving weekend isn’t just about consumerism. Here are three ways that Thanksgiving weekend and fintech come together to promote giving.

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding platforms enable consumers to give on the go. So even if they can’t get to a food bank to donate or serve on the holiday, consumers can to use crowdfunding platforms like Indiegogo to finance the holiday meal of someone in need.

Financial Advice

Some fintechs use the holidays to help bring their customers up to speed about best practices. For instance, SMB lender Kabbage advises small businesses to offer Thanksgiving cards and to use the holiday to do employee team building. Kabbage suggests the Turkey Trot. Another online lender for SMBs, BFS Capital, took the holiday as an opportunity to publish these 8 Thanksgiving promotions.

Social Media

Black Friday is followed by Cyber Monday, which is in turn replaced by #GivingTuesday, a global day of giving. And while brands can get a lot out of promoting giving, the fact is that #GivingTuesday campaigns in the U.S. raised nearly $117 million in online donations in 2015. Among the banks and fintechs that have been involved with #GivingTuesday are Bank of America, JPM Chase, TD Bank Group, PayPal, Stripe, and Prosper.

So even though payments and ecommerce might be standing in Thanksgiving’s fintech spotlight, behind the scenes fintech really is spreading some holiday spirit.

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A Day in the Life: How Behalf’s head of marketing keeps a cross-border team innovating

 

Although Crystal Eastman has over a decade of experience working at American Express, her recent switch to head of marketing at SMB financing firm Behalf has her pumped: “For a marketer,” she said, “the opportunity to build a brand from scratch is an incredible gift.”

It’s also a challenging gift. Working with a startup, Eastman has to do a lot with a little, and her four-person team, which covers the gamut from brand to acquisition to lifecycle marketing, is spread across the company’s NYC and Israel offices.

One of Eastman’s main goals is spreading awareness of Behalf’s SMB financing solution. With oh so many fintech and even bank SMB financing products on the market, standing out from the crowd is no easy task. As far as Eastman’s concerned, Behalf’s marketing win is in its value proposition, which leverages supply chain financing to help SMBs optimize their cash flow, so they can buy more, which then increases merchant sales.

Here’s what an average workday in Eastman’s life looks like.

6 a.m.: As soon as I get up around 6 a.m. (!), I make my first cup of coffee and spend an hour on quick touch-base calls and respond to all of my emails. When you work on a global team, it’s super important to be there for your colleagues . Otherwise, you end up as a bottleneck to progress. I then proofread the day’s customer emails and give my team the green light to drop.

7 a.m.: After this I go offline for an hour to get my kids ready and take them to school. This is either the best part of my day or the most challenging part of my day, depending on the day. 

8 a.m.: My day in the office typically kicks off in high gear with video conference collaboration sessions with our Israeli office colleagues until noon. At Behalf, we establish “Squads” of cross-functional teams to tackle our strategic priorities. As head of marketing, it’s my job to bring the customer focus to the squads and ensure we are building for consistent, cross-channel delivery of engaging experiences. Today, for instance, we are reimagining the way our customers pay another business for the first time via our platform. We have a lot of fun kicking around new ideas (though I am certain some of my best jokes are getting lost in English to Hebrew translation).

Noonish: A bunch of us have signed up for a new lunch subscription service from a start-up called Meal Pal, so we all have to run to our lunch pick-up appointments. We make a concerted effort to be early adopters of new products and services, then discuss our likes/dislikes with a lens on potential applications to our customer experience.
2 p.m.: I sit down for a face to face with one of our newly-signed strategic merchant partners to plan the launch of our service to their SMB customers. Together we develop a hook for a cobranded announcement, and my team will then focus on creating banners, emails, and a landing page to support the launch over the coming week.

4 p.m.: Time to review some web analytics. We recently relaunched behalf.com, and are in process of A/B testing our conversion experience, as well as optimizing our content for search — exciting times for a marketing geek! Once I’ve got what I need from the world wide web, I touch base with my team to share insights and make a game plan for the week.

5 p.m.: I sync with our CEO, Benjy Feinberg. Since we’re a startup, we always have way more work to do than people to do it. Having a daily conversation with Benjy helps me prioritize projects and keep my sights set on the biggest opportunities

6 p.m.: We unwind as a team with drinks in our common area. We call this “Behalf O’Clock” and it is a great way to stay connected and recharge after a long, hard day!