Heron Finance
Lifecycle Marketing
Brand Strategy
From Signup to First Investment
Reducing Friction and Building Trust Through Lifecycle Automation
About the Project
At Heron Finance, I led product marketing and lifecycle automation to improve how users moved from signup to first investment. My goal was simple: shorten time-to-value while maintaining trust in a heavily regulated space.
This meant owning everything from lifecycle messaging to vendor integration — setting up Customer.io for all user communication, designing the full end-to-end email journey, and managing key infrastructure partners such as Dwolla, Persona, Plaid, and VerifyInvestor.
It was equal parts growth, compliance, and design — connecting automation with empathy.
The Challenge
In private credit, every step of onboarding carries weight: identity verification, accreditation, banking, and finally, investment.
Our biggest drop-off was during accreditation, which required manual paperwork, verification delays, and third-party friction. Over 60% of users stalled at this stage — even though 90% of those who were accredited went on to invest.
The question became:
How can we accelerate onboarding and instill trust — without compromising compliance?
My Approach
I started by mapping the complete user lifecycle from signup to investment, identifying friction points at each stage. The key insight was that delays weren’t just technical — they were emotional. Every hour waiting on accreditation was an hour users doubted whether the process would work.
To close that gap, I focused on two pillars:
Lifecycle Design: Build intelligent communication triggers that guided users forward.
Vendor Orchestration: Streamline our verification and payment infrastructure for speed and reliability.
Execution & Collaboration
Lifecycle Automation:
I built Heron’s entire email infrastructure from the ground up using Customer.io, designing over 30 automated and transactional messages — covering onboarding, verification, reminders, confirmations, and banking flows.
Each message was conversational but clear, designed to reduce cognitive load and communicate next steps with confidence. Over time, we evolved these into personalized, data-driven templates by integrating PostHog analytics and relational database variables directly into Customer.io.
We ran A/B tests on subject lines, tone, and timing, leading to a 10–15% increase in open rates and higher conversion from inactive to verified users.
Vendor Integration & Management:
As the final decision-maker for our external vendors, I selected and implemented:
Dwolla for on/off ramps and ACH transactions
Persona for ID verification and KYC
Plaid for banking data management and future automation
VerifyInvestor for accreditation checks
Each vendor came with trade-offs. I prioritized developer UX, pricing, and long-term scalability for a small but fast-moving startup.
Integration wasn’t plug-and-play — Persona and Dwolla, in particular, required dedicated engineering support and a custom data governance structure to ensure compliance across systems. I also introduced a Plaid-based accreditation automation workflow, allowing users with brokerage accounts over $1M to skip manual approval.
This reduced accreditation delays from days to hours for qualified users.
Outcome & Impact
By combining automation, lifecycle communication, and vendor orchestration, we:
Reduced time-to-investment by streamlining accreditation and KYC flows.
Improved user activation through personalized, data-triggered messaging.
Decreased friction in compliance-heavy steps while maintaining legal alignment.
Internally, these systems created a repeatable, data-driven framework for growth — uniting product, marketing, and engineering around a shared metric: speed to trust.
Reflection
Fintech onboarding isn’t just about moving users through a funnel — it’s about designing confidence.
At Heron, I learned that product marketing and infrastructure share the same goal: build trust through clarity. Whether it was an email confirming a bank link or an API powering identity verification, every interaction shaped how users perceived intelligence, reliability, and intent.
The result wasn’t just faster activation — it was a user experience that felt as trustworthy as the financial products behind it.
