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Ledger is a technology company specializing in security and cryptocurrency applications. Ledger’s flagship product is the Ledger Nano S, a hardware wallet for cryptocurrency that has sold over 2 million units across 165 countries.
Consumer products are just one aspect of Ledger’s business. The company is also developing solutions for businesses including Ledger Vault, to secure digital assets, and Ledger Origin, to secure data from Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices.
Ledger has built a reputation for security and trust. More importantly, they have built a beloved brand; there’s even a demand for Ledger-branded sweaters and T-shirts.
I spoke to Julien Lucas, Head of Consumer Sales, to understand their eCommerce journey, how they built their community from day one, and how they embraced the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
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How Ledger Built a Brand and a Community
- Engaging the Community in Discussions & Feedback
- Embracing the Ecosystem - through Partnerships and Security
- Building Value for Customers with Ledger Academy and a Referral Program
The Next Challenge: Building the Future
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How Ledger Built a Brand and a Community
Ledger was founded in 2014. Just four years later, Techcrunch wrote: “If you don’t want to get hacked, get a Ledger wallet.”
Ledger has done an incredible job of building a brand synonymous with security, but also beloved by customers.
“There are many things that allow Ledger to be the leader worldwide,” said Julien. “A big part is our strong brand and strong community support.”
During our interview, Julien shared how the Ledger team has actively engaged the community in developing better products; embraced the ecosystem, including partners and competitors; as well as investing in delivering value to customers to create their strong brand.
1. Engaging the Community in Discussions & Feedback
Julien shared that the community has been something the Ledger team has been nurturing since the beginning.
From the start, the team engaged the early adopters. The co-founders of Ledger still actively participate in the Ledger subreddit. This has helped to create active user communities on Twitter and Facebook, as well as ensure a steady stream of content and affiliate traffic from YouTubers and bloggers.
One of the community contests run on Ledger's Facebook page
On top of that, the Ledger team actively seeks out community feedback to guide product development. “We talk to our customers to understand their needs and recruit them for user experience research and beta testing like for our app, Ledger Live.”
“Lucky for us, our customers are more than happy to give us feedback and tell us what they want. “ It was through this process that the team discovered that there was a demand for Ledger T-shirts.
Ledger apparel helps ardent fans to spread the word-of-mouth
2. Embracing the Ecosystem - through Partnerships and Security
From the beginning, Ledger has actively built partnerships within the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Ledger products work with over 200 third-party services and wallets. This decision helped ensure Ledger had strong coverage and was compatible with the most popular apps and services.
Another effort towards driving greater adoption of cryptocurrency was the creation of the Ledger DonJon team of security experts and white hat hackers.
Julien shared that the DonJon team proactively seeks out points of vulnerability in Ledger products, as well as in partners and competitors. Their mission is to find points of failure within the ecosystem and share the information with the companies so they can be patched.
“Our goal is to bring more people to the secure side of the cryptocurrency ecosystem and drive adoption of cryptocurrency.”
Ledger's promotional video underscores why security is so important
As part of this approach, they worked to bring in new Ledger users through creating value for their customers.
3. Building Value for Customers with Ledger Academy and a Referral Program
The Ledger team knew they could count on an active, vocal community behind the brand to bring in new customers. The decision to create a referral program was a no brainer for Julien.
“If you have a strong brand, people will talk about you. They will be even happier to share if you reward them for sharing. And if someone gives you a referral and a discount, you will be more likely to make a purchase.”
Read the ReferralCandy Case Study: How Ledger is building a safer cryptocurrency ecosystem
The Ledger team tested a referral program by manually sending emails and creating coupons codes. When they saw positive results, they benchmarked the top solutions and used ReferralCandy, instead of building the software from scratch. Julien shared that this was similar to their decision to use Shopify, instead of building an eCommerce storefront themselves.
“Some things do not need to be reinvented; we don’t need to build a shopping cart again from scratch. We went with best practices for eCommerce to make it easy for us, and so we can focus on creating things that create value.”
One of these efforts is Ledger Academy, an educational content site providing information on the blockchain, cryptocurrency, and related ideas.
Ledger Academy covers basic concepts like blockchain and public keys up to quantum computing and various cryptocurrencies
By creating an accessible source of content about cryptocurrency, Ledger is better able to educate the ecosystem and future new users to the community.
The Biggest Challenge: Building the Future
Julien views Ledger’s biggest challenge as building products for the future. “We are building products for a market that sometimes does not yet exist. It’s difficult to guess the use cases for tomorrow, but we need to start building it today.”
An example was in 2017 when the demand for Ledger’s hardware wallets suddenly multiplied 100X. Demand outstripped supply for months. The Ledger team learned from the experience and rebuilt their production and supply chains to be more agile, to be able to get products to users more quickly.
Ledger Vault began developing applications for secure banking in 2019 and is now starting to gain attention. Meanwhile, the market for Ledger Origin may take a few more years to mature. Julien is confident that the team will be well-positioned by then.
Ledger’s hardware wallets have made history. Now it’s time for Ledger to build the future.
Ledger: Keep Your Assets Safe
- Ledger Website
- Ledger Academy and the article on Hardware Wallets
- Ledger Apparel shop
- Social Media & Community
- Ledger Facebook Group
- Ledger Subreddit
Ledger is a proud ReferralCandy customer. Read the case study here:
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Darren is a content/SEO writer and product marketer. He doubled search traffic for the blog and put ReferralCandy on the front page of the Shopify AppStore.
