Catch the "Signs"! Aiful's Digital Marketing

Aiful, a nonbank financial institution that has been a pioneer in advancing DX and achieving significant business growth.

Guided by the principles of "increasing customers' life choices" and "eliminating negative emotions from society," the company continuously evolves its efforts to appropriately meet consumers' "funding needs."

Through its "Aiful Growth Marketing" initiative, conducted with the Dentsu Group since 2023, the company built a system that dynamically captures customers using large-scale IDs.

How did Aiful Growth Marketing address Aiful's challenges? Shunpei Okada from Aiful's Group Marketing Department and Shinji Ogata from Dentsu Inc.'s Marketing Division 6 share their insights.

*This article is a recompilation of the session held at the Marketing For Growth Practical Seminar 2025.

Shift from physical stores to smartphone-based digital solutions. Closed deals increased 2.9 times!

──Please tell us about your respective roles in the "Aiful Growth Marketing" initiative.

Okada: I served as the point of contact with Dentsu Inc. Since "Aiful Growth Marketing" involved many complex digital marketing topics, not everyone within the company could grasp it immediately. In that sense, I acted as a communicator internally and also as a translator conveying internal requests to Dentsu Inc.

Ogata: I was responsible for overseeing and managing the entire project. I still serve as the project driver, stationed at Aiful once a week, and I lead the data domain within the project. Based on Dentsu Inc.'s analysis and planning, SEPTENI CO.,LTD, a subsidiary of the Dentsu Group in Japan, handles the actual implementation.

──Could you tell us about Aiful's direction for DX advancement?

Okada: Aiful provides financial services centered on personal card loans. In recent years, we've been pursuing a "completely smartphone-based" customer experience and advancing our digital shift.

For example, procedures are simplified through online identity verification and cardless contracts (*). The official app incorporates biometric authentication and "smartphone ATM" functionality, enabling easy service access anywhere. Furthermore, the company is working to reduce its approximately 580 unmanned branches to zero by 2027.

The shift from unmanned branches to smartphone-based services represents a major strategic pivot and was a pioneering initiative in the financial industry. To achieve this digital transformation, we are actively recruiting IT talent, expanding our SES business through M&A, and increasing in-house system development.

*All processes from application to contract and usage are completed via the smartphone app. Physical card issuance is unnecessary.

Ogata: While stationed at Aiful, I sense the speed of their transformation into an IT company. To secure IT talent, they've partnered with overseas universities, and I get the impression they employ many international engineers.

Okada: While the transformation is still ongoing, our thorough digital shift has increased new contract numbers by approximately 2.9 times over the past decade.

──Aiful has achieved significant business growth, but what challenges did it face previously?

Okada: There were primarily two challenges.

One was "streamlining new customer acquisition." This is a challenge for the entire card loan business, where a high percentage of contracts come from affiliates. However, affiliates have high costs per acquisition (CPA), so developing new acquisition methods was essential to reduce this CPA.

The second challenge was "approaching high-quality customers." Compared to competitors, Aiful saw its conversion rate decline as the number of new applications increased. The challenge was how to maintain a consistent conversion rate while increasing applications—essentially, how to effectively approach high-quality customers.

Ogata: The project launched in 2023 to solve these challenges is "Aiful Growth Marketing." It was a collaborative effort between Aiful, Dentsu Inc., and SEPTENI CO.,LTD.

How can we approach each customer at the right time?

──Please explain the overview of "Aiful Growth Marketing."

Okada: It's a project that tracks customers at the individual ID level, consistently visualizing insights from ad exposure to behavioral changes. Ultimately, the goal is to link marketing directly to business growth.

Traditional marketing focused on mass media, prioritizing maximum reach and awareness. ID-based marketing, however, leverages actual behavioral logs tied to large-scale IDs. This allows us to approach each individual customer at the right time and in the right way.

Ogata: To transition to ID-based marketing, we leveraged data held by three companies: Aiful, platform providers, and Dentsu Inc.

This included Aiful's first-party data (such as contract data and high-value customer data), Dentsu Inc.'s proprietary TV viewing logs and large-scale survey data, and the platform provider's advertising viewing logs, search data, and interest/preference data.

By integrating this data, we validated the effectiveness of each marketing action and identified "customer characteristics that drive business growth." Of course, analysis is conducted in an anonymized and statistical environment that does not identify individuals.

──Specifically, how does this project solve two challenges?

Ogata: First, regarding the challenge of "streamlining new customer acquisition." We focused on identifying "signs of emerging funding needs" within the customer journey leading to contract closure.

For example, signs appear right before someone needs money immediately, such as when they "consider moving" or "want to go to their favorite artist's live show." These signs manifest in related search behavior and website browsing activity. By capturing and not missing the clusters exhibiting these signs, we can proactively approach them just before their funding need arises.

Okada: Establishing contact with customers early means they'll think of us before comparing options on competitive affiliate sites. When the actual need for funds arises, we can expect direct visits to the Aiful site.

──How do you capture these signs?

Ogata: First, we analyzed the behavior of users who had "manifested a need for a card loan and were in the comparison/evaluation stage." Examples include users who visited the Aiful site or applied for a service, or users searching for keywords like "card loan." We analyzed the behavior of these users showing confirmed needs, looking back over the previous 30 days to identify what "signs" were present.

Clustering the pre-signal behaviors revealed by our analysis allowed us to categorize them into 35 distinct clusters of pre-funding-need behavior. Examples include "moving-related," "fandom-related," and "education-related" activities, as mentioned earlier.

We set targets for each cluster and visualized their attributes and behavioral characteristics. Then, by serving ads on YouTube and Yahoo! to users searching specific keywords, we can reach them before they start comparing options.

Okada: Starting this fiscal year, we further narrowed the clusters, extracting eight "key clusters" with high expected conversion rates. For these key clusters, we've also begun optimizing creative assets.

Ogata: When you think of Aiful, you think of the landlady (okami) played by Mao Daichi in the famous "Is there love there?" campaign, right? Dentsu Inc. has been involved in producing these commercials since 2019, and they consistently rank high in commercial favorability. Of course, the landlady series will continue to evolve, but for this initiative, we decided to prepare dedicated creative assets for each of the eight key clusters.

Okada: That's right. Rather than creating all ad materials using the landlady series as before, we expect preparing creative tailored to each cluster's needs will lead to growth in the number of contracts secured.

──How are you creating these new ad creatives?

Ogata: For diverse needs, we're leveraging Gemini's AI to drastically speed up the production workflow. A key feature of this effort is using Deep Research to input detailed conditions for key clusters and Aiful's corporate information into Gemini. AI is essential for compressing production time and costs when developing personalized messages tailored to customers.

For example, one key cluster is "idol fandom activities." For this cluster, we discuss target personas with insights on card loan usage and diverse insights, then organize the value Aiful can provide. We then create messages that resonate with the target persona. Working with SEPTENI CO.,LTD's creative team, we used Gemini to develop text concepts and create animations.

Okada: Utilizing AI in production often yielded unexpected insights and provided significant assistance. The ability to rapidly cycle through the PDCA process was also appealing. While we produced animated ads for the "Idol Support Activities" cluster, we plan to analyze future results to determine the most effective format, including potentially switching to live-action.

Accurate measurement to reach high-quality customers

──Now, please tell us about the measures for the second challenge: "Reaching high-quality customers."

Ogata: We linked Aiful's first-party data with Google and Yahoo!'s data clean rooms. This allowed us to verify the connection between ad exposure and actual conversions for this campaign, enabling us to accurately gauge customer quality.

We also added a "conversion flag" for each campaign channel. By labeling our own data, we can distinguish which users converted directly from search or organic traffic, enabling analysis that excludes conversions from affiliates.

These efforts enabled us to safely and thoroughly analyze the behavior of "users who became high-value customers." Based on these findings, we could then approach "users likely to become high-value customers" using an ID-based approach.

Okada: At this stage, from a personal information protection perspective, we established a system to securely upload customer data to Google and Yahoo!'s data clean rooms and enable integration. It took time due to cross-departmental tasks like confirming privacy policies, but we persevered because we felt it was essential to enhance marketing precision while protecting personal information. It took a full year to finally realize this system.

Proactive site visits doubled. Awareness initiatives are driving business growth

──Please share the results of "Aiful Growth Marketing" to date.

Ogata: First, regarding the efficiency of new customer acquisition, our primary challenge. The number of users actively visiting our site via branded searches for "Aiful" has doubled compared to last year. Furthermore, linking first-party data has enabled us to precisely track acquisition costs, revealing we can now approach customers more affordably and efficiently. Looking at both branded search and organic traffic figures, acquisition costs are trending downward.

Furthermore, regarding the second challenge—customer quality—it has also improved. Among converted customers, the proportion of high-value customers has exceeded 50%. Considering the typical rate is around 30%, this is an excellent result.

Okada: We've successfully transitioned from an affiliate-centric customer acquisition model to a new approach yielding a high proportion of high-value customers. This represents significant progress for Aiful, and I believe the project still holds considerable growth potential.

Going forward, we expect to further improve conversion quality by not only visualizing campaign effectiveness but also clarifying "which funding need clusters saw which ads and ultimately became what kind of customers."

──Please share your thoughts on co-creating this project thus far and your outlook for future collaboration.

Ogata: The Promotion Section within the Group Marketing Department, where Mr. Okada works, specializes in awareness-building initiatives. Naturally, Aiful's structure has traditionally prioritized acquiring new contracts first, using any remaining budget for awareness campaigns. This means that if contract acquisitions decline and business performance suffers, the budget for awareness initiatives is the first to be cut.

However, awareness initiatives inevitably yield benefits over the medium to long term. We needed to visualize how approaches targeting awareness and interest stages ultimately lead to conversions and, consequently, business growth. That was also a key mission of this project.

Okada: Throughout the project, we tackled many complex topics, ranging from digital technology specifics to fundamental marketing concepts. Whenever someone seemed lost during discussions, Mr. Ogata would immediately sense the tension and step in to clarify.Additionally, since our company has frequent department transfers, we often needed opportunities to re-educate newly joined members. Mr. Ogata also took on the role of teacher in those situations. Only someone like Mr. Ogata, who had been involved from the initial stages, could explain the project's progress up to that point.

Furthermore, he was deeply knowledgeable about the business structure itself. At times, I even felt he understood the business better than the business owners themselves (laughs). Moving forward, I hope we can have even more candid discussions about business improvement proposals. With frequent staff turnover, opportunities for employees to deeply discuss the business among themselves are limited.

Ogata: It would be great if we could positively influence each other's businesses, not just within the Promotion Department.