I’ve been in sunny California the last week and missed some good stories. Trying to catch up with a hat trick to my man Dane at strike10media.com who notes this piece on the Intuit acquisition of web 2.0 darling Mint.com. I’ve already lamented the acquisition, since I think Intuit is at best confused right now.
Mint.com’s chief marketing officer, stunned a room full of digital marketing pros by noting that she really didn’t have much of a marketing budget. Mint.com has gone from zero to 1.5 million users in two years with no ad campaign, save a mid-five-figures sum spent on search engine terms. Rather than purchase traffic, it has pursued the same type of strategy that food trucks and online magazines do: Using free social media and piggybacking on popular new communications technology. Mint.com has more than 36,000 Facebook fans and 19,000 Twitter followers, a well-traffickedblog, and a popular iPhone application.
Great article. Worth checking out in more detail.
This from Aaron Patzer today:
As outlined in today’s press release and my blog post, after the acquisition closes, the Mint.com team will contribute to improving the financial lives of tens of millions of consumers and small businesses. I’ll personally be taking on the role of GM of Intuit’s Personal Finance group responsible for online, desktop and mobile consumer personal finance offerings. Joining Intuit enables us to bring our vision of helping consumers understand and do more with their money to millions of Intuit customers. This is a compelling combination of our innovative product, technology, and industry leading user interface design with one of the most trusted brands in software.
This is good news for Intuit — not sure they can get any more disorganized than they are now. It’s probably good news for Mint, though they’re hitching their wagon to a brand that needs desperate help, putting themselves in the position of floating quality for both brands.
I left Quicken this year after being a user for over a decade. The software is less stable than it was when I joined the Intuit bandwagon and there is little evidence of evolution or rigorous development over time. In fact, several of the features I used regularly in those early versions have been taken out of the software today. I’ve moved to MoneyWell and have been able to make a remarkably easy transition to the package.
