MARKETING CASE STUDIES We’ve had to make
the numbers work.

Lower acquisition costs. Customers in new markets. AI that turns scattered information into useful work. Here’s how our founders have tackled those problems, and what changed.

Experience from MPOWER Financing and Sun King / Solar Solutions PNG before Rarecraft, and from OpenNous, which Aakash co-founded.

A young plant growing from a tree-ring cog, linking growth with the systems beneath it.

CASE STUDIES: LOWER ACQUISITION COST Grow the business.
Improve the economics.

~90%

Lower acquisition cost
per dollar lent.

Acquisition cost / funded loan volume

Earlier

~10%

Later

~1%

CLAIRE · MPOWER · 2023–2025

Know when paid has done its job.

Paid media built demand early. Keeping the same spending pattern as the business matured would miss the value of branded search, referrals, and international ambassadors.

Claire led a multi-year effort to change that mix. As those channels carried more demand, she turned paid spend down. Global, all-in customer acquisition cost fell from about 10% to 1% of funded loan volume, excluding repeat customers.

Follow demand over time.

Track organic demand for 12 months after heavy investment. Keep resources in markets where demand persists; pull back where returns are thin.

Optimize for better leads.

Use application responses to improve ad-platform optimization, and incrementality tests to check what paid advertising actually adds.

Make referrals worth it.

Reward both sides and pay more for effective referrals. Tie rewards to a later milestone without making customers wait 6 to 18 months for a final payout.

MPOWER Financing lends to international students. All-in includes salaries, travel, and other acquisition costs. Repeat customers are excluded. Work began in 2023; the reported reduction followed in 2024 and 2025.

How we’d approach this for you: acquisition campaigns

CLAIRE · MPOWER · 2022–2023

1.8×

Funded loan volume.
Same annual budget.

Qualified submitted applications grew 2.3×. Moving referral rewards to a later milestone also saved $500,000.

CLAIRE · MPOWER · 2018–2025

22×+

Growth in qualified leads,
funded loans, and revenue.

Claire built and led digital marketing through the expansion, managing channel strategy, budgets, and team development.

The numbers behind it, 2018–2025

Qualified leads (loan application starts)

2018: 1,755
2025: 40,180
Growth: 22.9×

Funded loan volume

2018: $6.1M
2025: $138.2M
Growth: 22.7×

April to December in both years, across four tracked acquisition segments. At MPOWER, a loan application start counts as a qualified lead. Funded loan volume is the dollar amount of loans disbursed and tracks closely with revenue.

CASE STUDY: RELAUNCHING MARKETING AFTER COVID One person. Six months.
Three times the leads.

CLAIRE · MPOWER

3×

After a year-long COVID pause, Claire relaunched digital marketing on her own. Within six months, qualified leads reached three times the 2019 level.

Qualified leads compared with pre-COVID performance.

Looking straight up through tall trees into a dense, star-filled night sky.

CASE STUDIES: INTERNATIONAL MARKET ENTRY Reach new markets.
Earn local trust.

Marketing in 50+ countries across six continents. We’ve opened and grown markets across North America, Latin America, EMEA, and APAC, worked through financial-services advertising restrictions, and hired local agencies, contractors, and influencers. When you enter a new market, we start with how people there buy and who they already trust.

$76,000

In B2B sales.
In three months.

Sun King / Solar Solutions PNG
Papua New Guinea

SAGAR · MARKET ENTRY & SALES

Build around how people actually buy.

To reach retailers in Papua New Guinea, Sagar kept lead capture inside Meta, where local mobile-data offers made access easier. Local creative made the offer relevant.

He connected campaigns to a CRM, recruited and trained two local sales contractors, and set a 48-hour follow-up standard. A $400 first-week media pilot brought in 138 qualified leads. The wider program delivered $76,000 in sales over three months.

Read Sagar’s market-entry case study

The $400 covers first-week media only. Creative production and sales support were additional investments.

Local insightRelevant campaignsCRM & lead routingHuman follow-up

SAGAR · MPOWER · 2023–2025

Local voices.
More reasons to trust.

From 40 ambassadors to 500+ across 39 countries. Sagar grew a peer-guidance network that helped prospective borrowers learn from people with similar experiences. Community feedback informed messaging, and creator partnerships extended reach where ambassador coverage was thin.

Read Sagar’s ambassador case study How we’d approach this for you: international market entry

CLAIRE · MPOWER · LAUNCHED IN 2021

“Is this a scam?”
is a marketing problem.

Prospective borrowers questioned whether MPOWER was legitimate. Claire launched its Trustpilot program and live Q&A sessions, so students could check borrower experiences and ask questions directly.

21% of eligible leads who attended applied, compared with 14% of non-attendees.

An observed difference, not a controlled estimate of the sessions’ effect. Trustpilot: 4.8/5 from 4,000+ reviews, as of September 2026.

Read customer reviews How we’d approach this for you: brand positioning

CASE STUDIES: AI AND MARKETING SYSTEMS Connect the information.
Put it to work.

Most teams already have the customer information they need, spread across their tools. We connect it, then build AI and automation around the work that repeats.

AAKASH · CO-FOUNDER, OPENNOUS

AI with the customer’s context.

Customer information gets scattered across calls, email, Slack, product analytics, and a CRM. Someone has to piece it together before the team can act.

Aakash co-founded OpenNous to bring those signals into a shared customer record. Its AI uses that context to prepare account briefs, draft follow-ups, and surface risks, with sources and dates behind the information.

From finding the context to using it: a clearer account handoff, a prepared meeting, or a follow-up ready to review.

Explore the OpenNous platform

Calls & emailSlackCRM & product signals

Shared customer contextSources · Dates · Account history

Account briefsFollow-up draftsRisk flags

SAGAR · MPOWER · REFERRAL OPERATIONS

A referral program
that can run at scale.

Growth creates work behind the scenes. Sagar connected referral registration, unique codes, application tracking, and automated status updates in Salesforce, using APIs and Python.

Referrers could share a trackable link and receive updates as an application progressed. The team no longer had to handle every inquiry one by one.

See how Sagar built the referral system

RegisterCapture the referrer in Salesforce.
ShareCreate a unique code and link.
TrackConnect the referred application.
UpdateSend messages as its status changes.

How we’d approach this for you: marketing systems and AI

CONTACT RARECRAFT What needs to change
in your business?

The economics, the market, or the systems behind the work. Tell us where you’re stuck, and we’ll suggest a useful place to start.

Talk to Rarecraft

MARKETING CASE STUDIES We’ve had to makethe numbers work.

CASE STUDIES: LOWER ACQUISITION COST Grow the business.Improve the economics.

Lower acquisition costper dollar lent.

Know when paid has done its job.

Follow demand over time.

Optimize for better leads.

Make referrals worth it.

Funded loan volume.Same annual budget.

Growth in qualified leads,funded loans, and revenue.

Qualified leads (loan application starts)

Funded loan volume

CASE STUDY: RELAUNCHING MARKETING AFTER COVID One person. Six months.Three times the leads.

CASE STUDIES: INTERNATIONAL MARKET ENTRY Reach new markets.Earn local trust.

In B2B sales.In three months.