ZELLE

WHEN BRAND BECOMES BEHAVIOR

How Zelle linked awareness to real-world transactions and rewrote its media strategy.

The ChallengE

Prove that brand media can drive actual usage, and provide a guide on how much to spend, and where.

Zelle had strong brand recall. But awareness wasn’t enough because their growth depended on transaction volume, especially within existing bank partners. The problem? Zelle didn’t own the transaction data.

THE INSIGHT

Eden Collective secured anonymized, daily transaction data from partner banks, and then ran Bayesian Media Mix Modeling to map:

  • Media exposure → Transaction lag times

  • Minimum effective spend thresholds

  • Channel-level impact on transaction volume

THE BREAKTHROUGH

The insights revealed through Eden’s analysis informed the transformation of Zelle’s media strategy by shifting the lens from awareness metrics to transactional impact.

Using advanced modeling and aggregated bank data, we revealed the media mix to reflect each channel’s real contribution to incremental volume. 

CTV, out-of-home, and social emerged as powerful dual-performance drivers that built brand equity while directly influencing transactions. Linear TV earned its role as a long-term consideration engine, while audio was deployed with precision to generate rapid response during key campaign windows. 

Every element was tracked, modeled, and forecasted to optimize spend and maximize lift—proving that brand investment, when engineered correctly, can deliver performance outcomes at scale.

THE SHIFT

By broadening the objectives to drive both awareness and conversions, and fully understanding the tradeoffs between the two, we were able to better plan the media and drive efficient results –

identifying the drivers of a 15% lift in transaction while elevating advertising’s strategic value within Zelle’s banking partnerships.

With a clear, data-backed view of how media impacts customer behavior over time, Zelle can now demonstrate to partners how marketing investment directly increases usage, engagement, and long-term value.