Harnessing Emotion to Reach People with Debt

Background

When people see their total debt, they don’t just see a number. People in debt reported feeling overwhelmed, anxious, and even fearful about the amount of money they had to pay off. Pillar was initially positioned as the app to get you out of debt faster. But what we learned in our research was that faster didn’t seem possible—they already felt too discouraged by their minimal progress.

What’s better than faster?

Control

We needed to meet users where they were emotionally. We heard from student debt holders that they didn’t feel in control.

Taking a page from Queen, we repositioned Pillar as the way to break free from student debt.

“I feel like my life is on pause”

— Ashley, age 25

Results

In landing page tests, we saw higher conversion with messaging about taking control of your debt compared to paying your debt off faster.

  1. When soliciting user feedback, engagement was higher with emotionally charged headlines like “Student loans suck” than monetary incentives, such as “Share your feedback, get $25.”

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