How Habito Cut Customer Acquisition Costs Nearly in Half with SaaSquatch

Habito joined forces with SaaSquatch to automatically reward customers who invite friends to use the online mortgage service. The result? Habito acquires customers at a 45% lower rate and generates 15% more new users. Keep reading to learn their story.

About Habito

Habito is an online mortgage company that helps people buy and finance their homes.

Rated as the Best Mortgage Broker of 2020 by the British Bank Awards, Habito helps UK residents find the best mortgage prices, and assists with the paperwork, all for free. They also have a home-buying service called Habito Plus that brings broking, solicitors, property surveys, and other legal work involved in buying a home under one roof.

Their mortgage broking service is 100% free to use, and they offer personal advice over live chat to take the stress out of buying a home.

The Habito dashboard lets users apply for and manage their mortgage from any computer, phone, or tablet. Users can chat with experts, upload supporting documents, and track the progress of their applications, all from one place.

The Challenge

Customer acquisition costs are extremely high for mortgage brokers.

It’s not often that someone takes out a mortgage, so every new client is very valuable to Habito. This is especially important given that mortgage deals typically last for multiple years, and most people renew with the same broker.

The more Habito could grow organically through word-of-mouth, the less money they would need to spend trying to beat competitors on expensive pay-per-click advertisements.

Romney Taylor, VP of Marketing at Habito shares that: “We found lots of our customers were already really enthusiastic about Habito, and were talking positively about their experience to others. We wanted a way to formalize this process and easily reward customers who were super keen, and encourage even more referrals from them.”

While most traditional mortgage brokers already rely on organic referrals to find new customers, Habito saw an opportunity to supercharge this channel. As a purely online business, they can engage with customers 24/7 through multiple digital channels and expand their reach into their customer’s networks.

The Solution

Habito turned to SaaSquatch as a growth partner that could be trusted with the technical implementation of a referral program, and came ready with every feature they needed.

“We always look at the trade off as to whether we should build or buy - this was one of the things we decided would be best bought. What we needed would have been complex to do ourselves, and came off the shelf and ready to use with SaaSquatch.”

By using SaaSquatch, Habito offers a double-sided referral program. It rewards both the promoter and their friend with a £50 gift card to John Lewis (a British homeware store) when the friend successfully completes a mortgage application. This lets Habito acquire customers at a 45% lower rate.

Habito knew SaaSquatch would be a reliable partner when it came to the implementation and ongoing support of this important acquisition channel:

“Every time we spoke to your team, you were progressing and adding features, and there seemed to be a consistent delivery against your product roadmap. In particular, our engineering team was confident that you would keep things up to date, and you had a well-documented API. When we looked at competitors, everything felt clunky, slow, and backwards, and the documentation wasn’t there to support it.”

By using the flexible rewards library in SaaSquatch, Habito plans to experiment with different reward types to better appeal to their user base.

They’re confident in continuing a partnership with SaaSquatch knowing that the team is “super responsive”, and that it “always feels like there is someone at the end of the line” to help collaborate on the best strategy for success.

Referral Program Results

• 45% cheaper acquisition: Habito acquires customers at a 45% lower rate through their referral program
• Reliable technical integration: Thorough API documentation and consistent platform updates make SaaSquatch the preferred vendor of Habito’s engineering team
• 15% more new customers: Referred customers make up 15% of Habito’s new customer base