Pay.com.au

Established in 2019 by founders Damien Waller and Edward Alder, pay.com.au set out to disrupt the industry by offering a one-stop solution that allows businesses to earn rewards (i.e. Qantas frequent flyer points) on a huge range of payments, including those that typically don’t qualify for uncapped rewards, like government payments.

This Spotlight dives into pay.com.au’s journey of success, highlighting how they were able to build a name for themselves, propel their growth in the ultra competitive B2B market, and issue over 1 billion flexible rewards, that customers redeem for business class flights, dream getaways or pretty much any item of their choosing.

Meet The Client: pay.com.au

pay.com.au provides businesses with an easy-to-use platform that simplifies payment processing, allows for the accumulation of rewards points, and offers a concierge service to redeem those points. 

Traditionally, reward collection is restricted by many things (eg. suppliers not accepting credit cards or points caps on certain expenses) — but with pay.com.au, business owners can earn points on ATO bills, payroll, superannuation, rent, contractors and plenty more.

Unlike some of its competitors, pay.com.au goes the extra mile by enabling clients to earn rewards multiple times on the same payment, making it an attractive option for businesses looking to maximise their benefits while optimising their cash flow.

Making A Dent In A Saturated Industry

At its inception, pay.com.au faced the challenges of customer acquisition and brand awareness — mainly because its niche was already dominated by established players. 

After seeing positive results at the outset, the founders sought to scale the business. They knew that, in order to reach their lofty goals, they needed to maintain a consistent Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) and transition to a self-service sign-up model – this would cut costs and minimise the reliance on leads that have a higher touchpoint requirement.

Recognising the need for expert digital marketing strategies – both guidance and execution – pay.com.au partnered with Megaphone. 

Together, the alliance aimed to take pay.com.au from a startup to a thriving business — fast forward to today, where the team has grown to over 40 employees, and it’s fair to say that journey has been a resounding success. Still, it’s only just the beginning.

Becoming A Household Name – The Strategy For Success

To set pay.com.au up for success, Megaphone implemented a series of clever marketing measures. But first, it all started with extensive competitor research, in the name of understanding and improving upon already-existent industry offers.

After getting the lay of the land and recognising where the needle-moving opportunities lay, the Megaphone team (comprising of data experts, creative strategists, and growth strategists) put the pedal to the metal—they implemented a vast creative testing approach, trying several different angles and creatives which helped the team at pay.com.au understand the best ways to discover and aquire new clients. 

The testing phase welcomed plenty of valuable data but it wasn’t all about learning — the focus remained two-fold: increasing conversion rates while decreasing cost per acquisition.

All the while, the Megaphone team, led by Andy, Mo and Dani, leveraged existing data to zero-in on the most profitable potential prospects – and, more importantly, figured out how to get them to sign up to the platform in the most budget-friendly manner.

Even though signs were excellent, the positive momentum was not a time to slow up; it was a time to double-down, and scale aggressively. The aim: create a snowball effect.

To keep the fire hot, the Megaphone team split-tested lead generation forms (where the business owners would add their details) to improve conversion rates, and simultaneously ran demographic tests in their ads (such as male versus female) to improve the Click-Through Rates (CTR%) and know exactly which type of person was most likely to become a customer.

And for the cherry on top, luxury-centric ads were released to attract larger clients — focusing on business class flights and luxury travel — which aligned perfectly with pay.com.au’s target persona.

3 Specific Steps; 1 Billion+ Flexible Rewards Points For Clients

As a multi-channel marketing approach, there were several key steps that contributed to pay.com.au’s remarkable achievements. But at the end of the day, three in particular made a huge difference:

Overcoming Challenges

Throughout the journey to success, pay.com.au faced some notable hurdles – nothing that the combined minds of pay.com.au and Megaphone couldn’t handle though. 

The main challenges including adhering to branding guidelines from partners like Qantas, random CPM spikes during sale periods (in other words, more expensive advertising costs), and competition from rival ads. 

But each challenge provided a learning opportunity which ultimately paved the way for more effective and more efficient workflows.

Branding guidelines challenges were overcome by establishing clear precedents with partners and opening the communication channels.

Higher CPMs were solved by running rapid Meta tests and then eventually pivoting to the most successful pathway (Lookalike Audiences)

And ad compeition was overcome by producing more diverse (and more creative) ads than all of the competitors, which targeted the high-quality leads — this way, even if prices remained high, by landing the right clients (rather than any clients), the lifetime customer value would skew heavily into the green.

The Power Of A Partnership

Before Megaphone came aboard, pay.com.au was relatively small with a limited client base. However, after joining forces with Megaphone, the company experienced significant growth, expanding to a team of over 40 employees, and processing substantially higher volumes of transactions. Leaning on each other’s strengths, the two companies have been able to develop a great customer experience while achieving impressive ROI on advertising campaigns.

pay.com.au has been able to harness the power of B2B outreach, LinkedIn, PPC ads (Google and Bing), Facebook, and TikTok (via TrendFM), to name a few. 

It tips the hat to the willingness of pay.com.au to innovate and explore diverse avenues for growth, and shows off Megaphone’s wide variety of expertise.

How are David Walsh (Head of Marketing) and Fabian Andreou (Marketing Specialist), feeling about it all? 

Overall, they’re over the moon. The partnership has, objectively, been a major success. They’re excited for what’s on the horizon, and can’t wait for Megaphone to continue delivering – which, in turn, means more rewards for Aussie business owners, more brand recognition, and more progress en route to becoming the leading player in the B2B payments platform industry.

In A Nutshell

With a growing team, strong partnerships with the likes of Qantas, KrisFlyer and Virgin, and a stamp of approval to let Megaphone work their digital marketing magic, pay.com.au is poised to continue its rise to stardom and make a lasting impact in the finance services landscape.

Want to reap the rewards of pay.com.au? Use code MEGA10 and receive 10,000 Bonus PayRewards Points, when you process $10,000 in business expenses within your first 30 days.