Money management shouldn’t be boring. Or muted. Or minimal. Because money isn’t any of those things. Then why do all fintechs look and sound the same? When my team at Varo was tasked with rebranding the money app, we ran in the opposite direction. Bright. Bold. Bombastic. With eye-catching visuals and personality-driven words that would be hard for anyone to forget.

I joined Varo to help lead the company’s rebrand alongside the CD of design. We worked closely with The New Company to create a provocative new design system that reclaims traditional symbols of banking, challenges the status quo, and captures the spirit of an audience looking for something different.

As copy lead, I owned the development and stewardship of Varo’s new tone of voice. I crafted new voice guidelines, worked with our strategist to refresh brand positioning, created a new product messaging framework, and built a new brand book.

I was also in charge of implementing the new voice and brand across all marketing channels. This included a complete web and email refresh. I led the team of copywriters and designers responsible for this refresh, and in six months, we completely reworked the Varo website (~33 pages) and every single email (200+). As all things creative do, this took a lot of upfront research and strategy work, from UX wireframing to content hierarchies and, of course, partnering with marketing leads to ensure business goals were addressed.

The impact of the redesign? The website saw a 68% growth in website-to-signup clickthrough rate in just one month and a 123% increase in approved accounts. Translation: We were winning more, higher-quality customers. We also had the best traffic week in the history of Varo.

What about email? The Welcome series refresh resulted in a 24% increase in click-through rate and a 21% increase in customer deposits. That means more people were using our product the way it’s supposed to be used. #win

Across channels, the Varo rebrand resulted in a refreshed website that drove a 30% increase in account opens, paid media that reduced acquisition costs by 65%, and nearly doubled the number of profit-generating customers.