Designing Financial Wellness for the Next Generation: How Pocketnest Uses Buyer Intelligence to Unlock SaaS Retention

The financial services industry has a blind spot — and it’s worth trillions.

While most advisors still focus on serving baby boomers and ultra-high-net-worth clients, Gen X and millennials now hold over $40 trillion in assets. By the end of the last decade, only 18% of advisors were actively marketing to them. And 98% of millennials plan to fire their parents’ advisor when they inherit wealth.

Jessica Willis saw the opportunity — and the gap. With 20 years of wealth management experience, she knew that younger generations didn’t want quarterly in-office meetings or long reports on small-cap value funds. They wanted digital-first, goal-focused, transparent financial planning.

The result is Pocketnest — a B2B2C SaaS platform that licenses white-labeled financial wellness tools to banks, credit unions, insurance companies, and other institutions. These organizations integrate Pocketnest into their apps, offering customers a comprehensive financial planning experience that keeps them engaged — and keeps them loyal.

Lesson 1: Buyer Intelligence Starts With Behavior, Not Assumptions

Jessica didn’t just build tech and hope it fit. The concept came from years of listening to her peers ask the same financial questions over and over:

“What life insurance do I really need?”
“How do I save for my kids’ college while paying down the mortgage?”
“How do I juggle retirement, cash reserves, and debt at the same time?”

Her insight: the questions were consistent — but the delivery had to evolve.

For institutions, Pocketnest provides more than a tool; it’s a buyer data engine. Every interaction reveals financial priorities, challenges, and readiness signals, giving banks and credit unions a deeper understanding of their customers.

Agency takeaway: The best SaaS retention strategies start with real buyer behavior data — not demographic stereotypes or outdated playbooks.

Lesson 2: B2B2C Retention Requires a Dual-Focus Product Roadmap

Pocketnest serves two audiences:

The institutions that license the platform.
The end-users who engage with it.

The trick? Prioritizing features that deliver value to both.

Jessica’s team puts end-user experience at the center of development — testing constantly to see what drives engagement — while also giving institutions customizable options like:

CRM integrations for large banks.
Admin dashboards for smaller credit unions.
White-label branding to maintain trust with existing customers.

Positioning insight: In a B2B2C model, your product has to delight the end user and make your direct customer look like the hero.

Lesson 3: Engagement Is a Marketing Strategy, Not Just a Feature

Pocketnest doesn’t stop at software delivery. For every institutional launch, Jessica’s team runs engagement strategy sessions to teach partners how to get adoption and stickiness.

This includes:

Targeted onboarding campaigns.
Messaging that resonates with millennials’ financial values.
Education content to drive repeat logins and data completion.

The result? Institutions don’t just “add a tool” — they get a retention engine.

Agency takeaway: If your SaaS has low engagement, it’s not just a UX problem — it’s a marketing alignment problem.

Lesson 4: Network-Driven Sales Can Beat Paid Acquisition in Early Stages

Pocketnest hasn’t spent a dollar on paid marketing campaigns. Growth so far has come from:

Jessica’s industry network and speaking engagements.
Referrals from existing customers.
A strategic reseller agreement with one of the nation’s largest credit union service providers.

For early-stage SaaS, this is a reminder that credibility and relationships can open doors faster than ads — if your positioning is clear.

Lesson 5: Know When to Say No

Early on, some prospects wanted changes that would pull Pocketnest away from its mission. Jessica’s approach:

Evaluate whether requests align with the company’s core vision.
Decline opportunities that require compromising product-market fit.

This discipline ensures the platform stays focused on financial wellness and engagement, rather than chasing short-term revenue.

Buyer intelligence insight: Filtering out misaligned customers improves long-term retention — because the ones you do win will actually use (and love) your product.

The Buyer-Centric SaaS Retention Playbook from Pocketnest

Collect behavioral buyer data from every interaction to shape retention strategies.
Design for both sides of the B2B2C equation — your customer and their customer.
Pair tech with engagement strategy so adoption sticks.
Leverage networks and partnerships before burning budget on ads.
Protect your positioning by filtering out misaligned opportunities.

Why this matters for SaaS founders & tech companies: Pocketnest proves that retention and engagement are designed in from day one — not patched on later. By aligning buyer intelligence, product design, and partner enablement, SaaS companies can turn customer relationships into durable revenue streams.