From 0 to 115 high-value prospects a week.

Aberdeen Investments wanted to reach cash savers who had never invested. Mellow Studio designed a new Stocks and Shares ISA for first-time investors, a library of acquisition patterns, and an optimised robo advice journey that converted hesitant visitors into £250k-AUM clients, taking weekly bookings from zero to 115.

  • Client Aberdeen Investments
  • Duration 2 years
  • Credits Andy Dunbar
The client

Aberdeen Investments, one of the UK's largest investment managers.

Aberdeen Group plc, trading as aberdeen, is a UK-based investment company listed on the London Stock Exchange, managing assets for institutional and individual clients internationally. The group operates across three businesses: Investments, Adviser, and Interactive Investor.

Mellow Studio worked with the Innovation team, which was set up to find what the next generation of Aberdeen's customers would look like, and to build the products and acquisition models to reach them.

Introduction to Aberdeen Investments
The opportunity

A market gap no acquisition model in the industry knew how to reach.

57% of UK adults hold cash savings. 15% hold more than £5,000. Most are scared to invest, but over time, cash loses value to inflation.

Aberdeen had two products that could serve this audience: robo advice for higher-AUM customers and a planned Stocks and Shares ISA for first-time investors. The propositions were sound. The acquisition challenge was not.

The industry was full of products for people who already wanted to invest. Almost nothing existed for people who knew they should but would not. Risk questionnaires, industry jargon, comparison tables built for people fluent in the category. Every standard pattern asked the customer to behave like an investor before they had become one.

Inside a large regulated enterprise, the cost of getting this wrong compounds. To prove a new proposition and fix an existing journey at innovation pace, the work had to move differently.

The work

What we did.

Mellow Studio worked with the Aberdeen Investments Innovation team to design and validate a Stocks and Shares ISA proposition for a new audience — at a tempo a large regulated enterprise rarely runs at.

Six design sprints, real prototypes after each, and a validated proposition at the end.

01 · A new proposition

A Stocks and Shares ISA for first-time investors.

We designed a new Stocks and Shares ISA proposition for an audience the industry was not serving. First-time investors who hold cash savings, recognise the cost of inflation, and want to grow their money without becoming finance enthusiasts. The proposition shaped the product behind it. A guided risk assessment that worked as a conversation, not a financial questionnaire. A familiar checkout pattern at the end, so the unfamiliar product opened through a transactional flow customers already knew how to read. Six weeks from problem to validated proposition, inside a large regulated enterprise.

Stocks and Shares ISA proposition screen 1 Stocks and Shares ISA proposition screen 2 Stocks and Shares ISA proposition screen 3 Stocks and Shares ISA proposition screen 4
02 · Conversion patterns

Patterns that turned hesitant visitors into prospects.

We engineered a library of conversion patterns, each doing a specific job in the journey. A clear promise. A personalised conversation about the customer's money. A comparison they could read instantly: cash savings next to the same money growing with Aberdeen, without the word "invested." A guided risk assessment framed as a conversation. A familiar checkout. Each pattern was validated against behavioural science and documented to carry across propositions.

Aberdeen conversion patterns shown on a mobile device
03 · Robo advice rebuild

From 0 prospect calls a week to 115.

We applied the same pattern library to Aberdeen's existing robo advice journey, where each acquired client brings £250k of assets under management. The journey had been built for an investor audience it was no longer reaching. We rebuilt it for hesitant first-time investors using the patterns engineered for the new ISA proposition. The result was a journey that converted high-value prospects at a rate the old one never had, taking weekly prospect bookings from zero to 115.

Aberdeen robo advice journey screen 1 Aberdeen robo advice journey screen 2 Aberdeen robo advice journey screen 3 Aberdeen robo advice journey screen 4

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Andy Dunbar, Head of Product at ii (now part of Aberdeen Investments)