Ligo Full-Funnel Growth Engine

Ligo is a digital wallet that lets people in Peru send, receive and pay without a traditional bank account. When I took over growth, acquisition was working but in silos: messages, visuals and targeting were not fully aligned, and there was almost no structured lifecycle marketing after registration.

I led the design and execution of a full-funnel growth engine that connected:

  • Clearer positioning and creative at the top of the funnel.
  • Better acquisition structure and tracking.
  • Automated activation, reactivation and retention flows.

From January to October 2025, this work contributed to a 67.32% increase in contribution, a 48.71% increase in registrations, a 66.19% increase in MAUs, and a 16.95% reduction in blended CAC versus the same period in 2024.

Context & Challenge

Before the overhaul:

  • Acquisition campaigns, landing pages and in-app experiences were not telling the same story.
  • Most of the focus was on new registrations, with limited attention to what happened after the first login.
  • Lifecycle messages were mostly manual or one-off pushes, not automated journeys.
  • Marketing had data, but it wasn’t consistently tied to clear funnel stages and KPIs.

We needed a coherent system that treated growth as a continuum—from first impression to long-term usage—not just a series of isolated campaigns.

Objectives

Strategic objectives

  • Build a full-funnel growth model for Ligo: awareness → acquisition → activation → reactivation → retention.
  • Align messaging, creatives and targeting across paid, owned and in-app channels.
  • Implement automated lifecycle flows to move users from install to active monthly usage.

Business objectives

  • Increase contribution and MAUs.
  • Grow registrations without sacrificing lead quality.
  • Reduce blended CAC and improve efficiency of spend.

Results

The full-funnel growth engine had a measurable impact on Ligo’s performance:

  • Contribution increased by 67.32% between January and October year over year.
  • Blended CAC decreased by 16.95% year over year.
  • In October specifically, CAC dropped by 27.40% while registrations grew by 35.28%.
  • Total registrations grew by 48.71% year over year.
  • MAUs in October grew by 66.19%, showing that more users were not only registering but also staying active.

In short, we grew contribution and usage significantly while making acquisition and lifecycle programs more efficient.

My Role

As Head of Marketing, I:

  • Defined the overall growth strategy and funnel framework for Ligo.
  • Led the redesign of messaging and visual identity used in acquisition and lifecycle campaigns.
  • Worked with Product and BI to set up tracking, cohorts and dashboards.
  • Designed and launched automated journeys for activation, reactivation and retention.
  • Managed the experimentation roadmap and weekly performance reviews.

Approach

1. Reframing the Funnel

I mapped Ligo’s growth into clear stages:

  1. Awareness & consideration – influencers, social, website.
  2. Acquisition – ads and campaigns
  3. Activation – first key transactions (pay, send, receive).
  4. Reactivation – bringing back dormant users.
  5. Retention & frequency – reinforcing habits and value.

Each stage got its own north-star metric, key conversion goals and main levers.

2. Top-of-Funnel: Messaging, Visuals & Acquisition

To strengthen the first part of the funnel, we:

  • Updated core messaging to focus less on features and more on outcomes: control of money, speed and freedom from traditional banking.
  • Rolled out the refreshed visual identity (color, contrast, mascot) across acquisition creatives to increase stopping power and brand recall.
  • Restructured paid campaigns by intent and product promise instead of generic “install” ads.
  • Optimized landing pages and app store presence so that visuals, copy and value props were fully aligned.

This alignment helped us attract more of the right users and set clearer expectations for what Ligo could do for them.

3. Mid-Funnel: Activation Campaigns & Journeys

Once users registered, the focus shifted to getting them to their first meaningful action:

  • Identified the key activation events (e.g. first payment, first transfer, first bill paid).
  • Worked with Product to simplify the early in-app flows around those actions.
  • Designed multi-step onboarding sequences (push, in-app and email) showing:
    • How to add money.
    • How to pay services and merchants.
    • How to take advantage of promos and cashback.
  • Launched educational campaigns explaining the wallet’s use cases (receive money, pay services, send to friends, use the card).

These efforts increased the share of new users who became active MAUs instead of one-time registrants.

4. Down-Funnel: Reactivation & Retention

To avoid losing users after initial usage, we built:

  • Reactivation flows for dormant users, with tailored messages based on last activity (e.g. last payment type, last promo used).
  • Habit-building campaigns with recurring prompts around common use cases: paying services, topping up, sending money to contacts.
  • Seasonal and promo-based journeys that connected Ligo’s benefits to real-life moments.
  • Security and education content (e.g. how to avoid scams, financial tips) to build trust and keep Ligo top of mind.

5. Automation & Data

A key part of the project was turning manual pushes into automated, data-driven flows:

  • Implemented segmented journeys based on behavior and lifecycle stage (new, active, at risk, dormant).
  • Used event data to trigger messages at the right moment (e.g. first transaction, failed transaction, long periods of inactivity).
  • Built dashboards tracking contribution, CAC, registrations, MAUs and the performance of each automated flow.

This allowed us to scale personalization without scaling manual work.