Acquiring and Activating European SMBs for Finom Across Three Markets and Five Channels
Finom is an Amsterdam-based fintech providing all-in-one business banking, invoicing, and AI credit lines to over 125,000 SMBs across Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands. Acquiring SMB owners across three languages while competing against Qonto, Revolut Business, and legacy banks requires localised precision. We built an end-to-end engine spanning LinkedIn ABM, Bloomreach lifecycle CRM, localised outbound, and hourly-refresh attribution.
Four Neobank Veterans Building Europe's Financial Home for 125,000 SMBs
Finom was founded in 2019 in Amsterdam by Andrey Petrov, Oleg Laguta, Konstantin Stiskin, and Yakov Novikov, serial entrepreneurs who previously built one of Europe's most profitable neobanks serving over 250,000 clients. The platform provides all-in-one business banking, SEPA and SWIFT payments, automated e-invoicing, expense tracking, and AI-powered credit lines from a single mobile-first dashboard. Operating under its own Electronic Money Institution licence acquired in 2021, Finom issues local IBANs in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands without reliance on third-party banks, a structural advantage that enables faster market entry and lower transaction costs than competitors.
Finom raised over 300 million euros by mid-2025, including a 115 million euro Series C led by AVP and Headline Growth with participation from General Catalyst, Northzone, and Cogito Capital. Revenue doubled in 2024. The company targets one million customers by end-2026, expanding into Poland, Austria, and Portugal. Competing against Qonto's French enterprise strength, Revolut Business's payment volume, Pleo's card-based expense tools, and incumbent SMB units at ING and BNP Paribas, Finom needed a multi-market growth partner who could run acquisition, lifecycle, and outbound in German, French, and Italian simultaneously.
LinkedIn Campaigns in German French and Italian Targeting 3.5 Million SMB Owners
We run Finom's LinkedIn campaigns across Germany, France, and Italy with separate account structures per market, each localised in the native language. German campaigns target 3.5 million SMB owners with working capital messaging. French campaigns lead with automated e-invoicing compliance. Italian campaigns emphasise local IBAN availability and SEPA speed versus incumbent banks like ING and BNP Paribas.
Each market runs tiered audiences: company size for micro-SMBs and freelancers, job function for finance directors, and lookalike expansion from Finom's highest-LTV accounts. Budget shifts weekly based on cost per activated account.
Native Language Outbound Sequences Routing Warm Replies Into Finom's Sales CRM
We built Finom's outbound engine targeting SMB owners and freelancers across Germany, France, and Italy using enriched lists from LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Apollo. Sequences run in the native language of each market with six to eight touches across email and LinkedIn InMail. German sequences lead with AI credit line access for working capital. French sequences open with invoicing automation. Reply handling routes positive responses into Finom's sales CRM within four hours.
Deliverability infrastructure runs dedicated sending domains per market warmed over 21-day ramps with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication. Monthly list refresh suppresses onboarded accounts to protect domain reputation.
Bloomreach Lifecycle Flows That Nudge Free Users Through IBAN Verification to Paid
We implemented Bloomreach as Finom's lifecycle CRM, building segmented flows that reduce onboarding drop-off and push free-tier users toward paid activation. The onboarding sequence triggers personalised nudges at each friction point: IBAN verification, first SEPA payment, and invoice creation. Users who stall at any step receive a targeted re-engagement email within 24 hours featuring a walkthrough specific to their market.
Post-activation, expansion flows promote AI credit lines to German and Dutch accounts with three months of transaction history, matching Finom's eligibility criteria. Winback sequences target dormant accounts at 30 and 60 days with localised product updates and feature announcements.
Three Languages Three Landing Pages and One Conversion Event That Feeds Every Algorithm
The central technical problem is running paid acquisition, lifecycle CRM, and outbound across three languages and five markets while optimising every channel toward the same downstream event: a funded business account. Signups mean nothing if the SMB owner abandons onboarding before IBAN verification and first SEPA payment. We built Finom's entire channel architecture around that activation event.
On LinkedIn, campaigns target SMB owners and freelancers with separate account structures per market. German campaigns address the 3.5 million SMB market with working capital and AI credit line messaging. French campaigns lead with automated e-invoicing compliance. Italian campaigns emphasise local IBAN availability and SEPA speed versus legacy banks. Each market runs localised landing page experiments testing headline framing, form length, and trust signals including the EMI licence badge and General Catalyst branding. Server-side conversion data passes funded account events into LinkedIn's conversion tracking daily, teaching bid algorithms which job title, company size, and market combinations produce activated accounts. The same event feeds Bloomreach and the outbound CRM, ensuring every channel optimises toward the metric that predicts LTV rather than the vanity signup that inflates reports.
Onboarding Drop-off Down 27% as PSD3 Opens the Data Layer Finom Was Built For
The engagement has produced a 27% reduction in onboarding drop-off, a 19% lift in activation to paid, and 14% more qualified SME leads entering the pipeline. The onboarding improvement matters most because Finom's unit economics depend on funded accounts generating transaction volume and trading spreads, not free-tier registrations. Every percentage point recovered in the IBAN verification to first payment sequence compounds directly into revenue.
We adapted the standard B2B fintech playbook for a product that sells to SMB owners who behave like consumers. Outbound sequences in German, French, and Italian reach business owners where they spend time, on LinkedIn and in email, with messaging tailored to each market's primary pain point. The European SMB fintech landscape is entering regulatory acceleration. PSD3 implementation expected by 2026 mandates stronger API access and data sharing obligations that benefit platforms with proprietary infrastructure. Finom's EMI licence and own ledger position it to leverage PSD3's open data layer for AI-driven lending and predictive analytics in ways that Qonto and Revolut Business, both dependent on banking partners, cannot easily replicate. We are building acquisition campaigns around these compliance-driven advantages as the regulatory framework crystallises.
