Mint.com, an award-winning personal finance site, just released a free app for the iPhone. I’ve been a fan of the company since they were in private beta. The site’s 650,000 users, who use the company’s site to track bank account balances, credit card charges, spending trends and ways to wave, have already made Mint’s mobile version the number one finance application on iTunes — within 24 hours of its debut.
The site and iPhone app point users towards the best deals in finance rates, such as credit card offers and CD rates. Since users grant Mint access to their personal bank account information, Mint algorithmically knows they’re promoting a good deal for the user. Thus, they offer a rarity – a win-win situation for both sides of the marketing equation, the user and advertiser.
Mint already has made waves in the mobile space for personal finance. The service was the first to provide free SMS text message alerts of upcoming bills, low balances and bank fees on accounts at over 7,500 US financial institutions. Incoming SMS text services were added last month, allowing users to check account balances in any of their bank, credit card or investment accounts by texting BAL to MyMint (696468).
Mobile advertising opportunities on Mint’s iPhone app may be limited to the finance space for the time being, but in the future maybe they’ll open their doors to other advertisers. The app would be a perfect place to start growing that mobile coupon market that’s expected to take off by 2013.
It may seem sci-fi, but one day an iPhone app like Mint could help you stay in budget by sending you coupons while you’re shopping. Start dreaming up mobile marketing ideas for Mint’s dollar-savvy audience – they might be do-able sooner than you think.
Recent Mint.com research indicated that its users had not found a mobile personal finance application that met their needs. Over 70% of active Mint.com users said they used “no mobile money management service” as of September, 2008. At the same time, over 90% of users believed that they would use a mobile Mint.com application — with 30% saying they’d use it daily or several times per day.
