How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (2024)

Key Takeaways

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (1)

Venmo has successfully captured a younger demographic, with over 83% of Venmo app users falling under the 18 to 34 age bracket. The brand mainly uses social media to communicate with its Millennial and Gen Z audience on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.

  • Instagram Tactic — Promotional Ads: Venmo focuses their advertising efforts strictly on Instagram where the brand spends on average $407K per month on the platform. Top Instagram ads feature a promotion in the copy, such as the 3% cash back promo and the $25 referral bonus.
  • Instagram Tactic — Boost Giveaway Posts: Every month, Venmo hosts two giveaways on Instagram which typically generate 16K contest entries and 11K new Instagram followers. Each giveaway has a certain theme and purpose to celebrate various holidays such as Mother’s Day and Women’s Day. For one particular giveaway, Venmo boosted the post with a spend of $4.1K which resulted in 151K contest entries and +66K new Instagram followers.
  • Twitter Tactic — Payment Captions: On Twitter, Venmo encourages their app users to share their payment captions and rewards users by surprising them with $25. In order to send or request money on Venmo, users have to add a caption to accompany the transaction. Venmo users often add in humorous captions and emojis, which present a great opportunity for user-generated content.


TikTok Tactic — Influencer Collaborations: To generate brand awareness about the $25 referral program, rather than creating their own content, Venmo partnered up with a diverse group of TikTok influencers to reach their target audience. Partnering up with influencers is a great way to create content on emerging platforms such as TikTok as they are the most up to date with TikTok trends and have a good idea of what their audience is looking for when it comes to engaging content.

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (2)

Venmo is a mobile payment service that was launched in 2009. The brand targeted a younger demographic of people who are splitting bills with their friends. In 2013, Venmo was acquired by PayPal for $800 million.

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (3)

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (4)

In the past six months, Venmo has generated a steady volume of downloads with 2.3M mobile app downloads per month.

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (5)

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (6)

Venmo has successfully captured a younger demographic, with over 83% of Venmo’s app users falling under the 18 to 34 age bracket.

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (7)

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (8)

Outside of direct and search, social drives the highest volume of web traffic for Venmo on mobile devices.

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (9)

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (10)

Venmo has the largest audience size on Instagram with 159K followers, and an average engagement rate of 1.17% which is about 5X higher than Twitter.

Venmo currently does not have an active YouTube and Facebook page.

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (11)

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (12)

1. Instagram

Instagram is Venmo’s largest social platform with 159K followers, it is also the channel that receives the highest paid ad spend with a monthly budget of $407K. Venmo focuses their advertising efforts strictly on Instagram and on average the brand spends $407K per month on the platform.The spike in ad spend in March 2021 was due to the launch of the credit card QR code campaign.

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (13)

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (14)

Top Instagram ads featured a promotion in the copy such as the 3% cash back promo and the $25 referral bonus.

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (15)

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (16)

Venmo’s Instagram page gained +66K followers in March 2021, due to a #VenmoItForward Spring Break giveaway post which received 151K entries.

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (17)

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (18)

The Spring Break giveaway post performed exceptionally well as it was the only giveaway post that was boosted in 2021, with a spend of $4.1K.

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (19)

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (20)

On average, a typical organic giveaway post with zero ad spend generates 16K contest entries and 11K Instagram followers. Every month, Venmo hosts two giveaways.

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (21)

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (22)

Outside of giveaways, top performing content buckets on Instagram include:

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (23)

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (24)

On Instagram, Venmo partnered up with the @girlboss community in collaboration with their parent company, PayPal. The influencer post advertised the ease of cashing in stimulus checks. All influencer posts use the hashtag #venmopartner, which currently has 452 posts.

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (25)

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (26)

2. Twitter

On Twitter, Venmo puts priority on creating a two-way dialogue between the brand and its app users. The brand consistently reposts tweets and engages with their followers.Venmo encourages their app users to share their payment captions and rewards users by surprising them with $25.

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (27)

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (28)

To increase engagement, Venmo poses a question to the audience through Tweets and uses the polling function to settle heated debates, such as “What’s the king of food emojis?”

  • Pose a Question. Venmo makes it easy for the audience to answer questions by asking them to respond using an emoji.
  • Polls. Venmo created a fun game out of Twitter’s polling feature by asking their audience every week which food emoji was their favorite.
  • Each poll was a face-off between two different food emojis, to crown the ultimate winner.

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (29)

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (30)

3. TikTok

While Venmo’s TikTok channel is mainly reserved for advertisem*nts, they collaborate with a large number of TikTok influencers to increase brand awareness about their referral program.

Venmo collaborated with a diverse group of TikTok influencers including comedians and dogs to promote their referral program where users can get up to $25 for referring new friends to Venmo.

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (31)

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (32)

Every influencer uses the hashtag #venmopartner which currently has 11M views on TikTok. Creating a hashtag specifically for collaborations makes it easy for the audience to find other similar content.

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (33)

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (34)

Venmo ran an ad in collaboration with TikTok influencer @jeffrightnow who boasts 2.4M followers on the platform. The ad generated 29M views in total and advertised the Venmo referral program.


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How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media (2024)

FAQs

How Venmo Reaches Millennials & Gen Zers on Social Media? ›

The brand mainly uses social media to communicate with its Millennial and Gen Z audience on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Instagram Tactic — Promotional Ads: Venmo focuses their advertising efforts strictly on Instagram where the brand spends on average $407K per month on the platform.

How do Gen Z and millennials use social media? ›

Social Media Usage Style

Millennials are more likely than Gen Z to be following small business and big brands, while Gen Z is more likely to be consuming (and spreading) social media trends and viral content. 89% of Gen Z uses social media to discover new content related to their unique passions.

Why has Venmo gained popularity as a social mobile payment app? ›

Why Venmo Is Popular. Like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, Venmo grew exponentially through peer-to-peer networking. Users are attracted to the following features: Unlike its competitors, Venmo doesn't charge users to send or receive more money, although credit card-based payments are charged.

What is the demographic of Venmo? ›

Across each of the platforms measured in the survey, adults under 50 have adopted these tools at higher rates. But the starkest age gap relates to Venmo: 57% of 18- to 29-year-olds report using Venmo, compared with 49% of those ages 30 to 49 and smaller shares among those 50-64 (28%) and 65 and older (15%).

Is Venmo linked to social media? ›

For example, if you connect your Venmo account to a social media account, we will receive personal information from the social media provider via the account connection.

What is the most popular social media platform for Millennials? ›

Social platform preference

According to data published by Digital Media Ninja, Facebook remains the social platform used at least once per week by the highest percentage of millennials (87%), followed by Instagram (71%), Snapchat (52%) and Twitter (42%). If playback doesn't begin shortly, try restarting your device.

Which generation spends most time on social media? ›

For instance, adult Gen Z users spend significantly more time on social media—particularly TikTok—than older users.

Why is everyone use Venmo instead of PayPal? ›

For those making primarily personal payments to someone they know and trust, Venmo is the ideal choice. With its social interface, making payments with Venmo and seeing exchanges among your contacts feels like a friendly and personable arena. PayPal can also be used for paying your friends and family.

Who is the target audience of Venmo? ›

Venmo has successfully captured a younger demographic, with over 83% of Venmo app users falling under the 18 to 34 age bracket. The brand mainly uses social media to communicate with its Millennial and Gen Z audience on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.

Why do people prefer Venmo? ›

Venmo for Personal Use

When two people have Venmo accounts, the app is one of the easiest ways to transfer money between them. Venmo allows you to send money between friends and pay people for expenses like rent, shared utilities or a meal.

What do people use Venmo for the most? ›

Venmo allows you to pay and request money from your friends. At its core, Venmo provides a social way to pay your friends when you owe them money and don't want to deal with cash.

How do people have so many friends on Venmo? ›

When you sign up for Venmo (or right before you use a feature for the first time), you'll be asked to grant Venmo permission to access the contacts on your phone. If you allow access, we'll look for any friends that are already on Venmo and automatically add them to your friend list (and you'll be added to theirs).

What is the downside to Venmo? ›

The main disadvantage for users is privacy issues. The thing is that Venmo automatically sets up public payments for new accounts. When you send money to someone, other users can see the attached message, your name, and the sender's name. The amount of the transaction is also not disclosed.

Do influencers use Venmo? ›

How brands usually pay influencers (and why it isn't necessarily safer) The payment method of choice will depend on the influencer's preference. Typically, the financial services used for transactions are PayPal, Venmo, Google Wallet, TransferWise, and Google Pay.

What is Venmo's competitive advantage? ›

With its user-friendly interface and social sharing features, Venmo has gained significant traction among millennials and Gen Z users. Thanks to its business-focused features and initiatives, Venmo is positioning itself as not just a P2P payment app but also as a viable payment solution for merchants.

How do different generations use social media? ›

A 2022 survey found that younger consumers were most likely to use social media as a news source, with 50 percent of Gen Z and 44 percent of millennials reporting daily usage. By contrast, 43 percent of Boomers said that they never used social networks for news.

What is the difference between Gen Z and Millennials? ›

Millennials were born between 1981 and 1996 while members of the Gen Z years Gen Z years were born between 1997 and 2012. Millennials expect faster customer service. Gen Z tends to be better at accepting delayed gratification than millennials. Millennial customer service expectations are higher than Gen Z customers.

How social media affects Gen Z positively? ›

Social media has both positive and negative effects on Gen Z. On the positive side, social media can increase creativity and participation in various activities, and it serves as a digital communication channel and source of information. It also plays a role in maintaining existing relationships and meeting new people.

Is Gen Z the first generation to grow up with social media? ›

As the first real “digital natives,” Gen Zers are the first generation to have grown up with access to social media and the internet from a really young age.

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