Culture and Leadership
In our Anatomy of a Solution series, we take a look at some direct challenges and disruptive solutions that Amsive has driven for clients. This week, we take you through how our demand gen expertise turned around diminishing response rates for a long-lasting insurance client.
The Basics
Insurance companies need the right tools to identify and verify the right prospects and customers — this is exactly the mindset we brought to a campaign for a national property and casualty insurance carrier that aimed to amplify its acquisition strategy.
The carrier’s marketing previously relied heavily on affinity audiences through partnerships with employers, vehicle manufacturers, and alumni associations. Although they targeted millions of consumers from those audiences through episodical campaigns, their goal was to expand more in the open market and increase quote activity for auto, home, or bundled insurance.
The carrier approached Amsive to test and deploy a new demand generation strategy. Our focus was to identify qualified prospects and target them with personalized insurance offers to drive quotes.
The Challenge
The carrier wanted to find a way to expand its prospect pool beyond its affinityiAffinity marketing is when one business partners with another to provide products or services in exchange for access to a new market. The two brands work together to promote this mutually beneficial campaign that if executed properly, can expose both entities to new audiences. Simply put, it's the opposite of competitive marketing, so instead of positioning your brand as b... Read More audiences, as well as ensure high-quality incremental leads that were responsive to insurance offers. To meet the carrier’s objectives, Amsive worked within our strategic framework, took a bottom-of-the-funneliIn the marketing or sales funnel that illustrates the customer journey, the bottom of that funnel is where a company wants its leads to be. This is the action-taking step where leads are converted to customers. As a prospect completes their journey from awareness to interest and finally down to consideration, this is where you engage in action-based activity and drive home... Read More approach, and built a solution utilizing prescreen insurance triggers.
Getting data is one thing, but how you use the data and how we execute this type of program makes all the difference.
At the initial outset of the client relationship, prescreen insurance triggers were not on the carrier’s radar. These prescreen insurance triggers are daily credit bureau-sourced leads. All consumers have a known need and were either actively quoting for insurance from competitors or applying for financial products like loans or credit cards. Consumers who passed established credit selection criteria were solicited with a relevant offer at the most opportune time.
Amsive worked through a credentialing process, demonstrated our adherence to Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) requirements, and outlined a solid execution strategy. With buy-in from the carrier’s marketing and risk teams, we moved forward with the recommended program.
The Solution
Getting data is one thing, but how you use the data and how we execute this type of program makes all the difference. We leveraged data insights from the prescreen insurance triggers program to develop our audience, channel, and messaging strategies in the context of Amsive’s strategic framework:
- Audience Strategy: Sourcing leads from more than one credit bureau and implementing a process for deduplication between bureaus helped the carrier achieve the greatest coverage at the most efficient cost. We also worked in partnership with the carrier to develop a proprietary set of criteria and segmentation that both fit the carrier’s desired risk profile and targeted those most likely to respond.
- Channel Strategy: Direct mail was the primary channel for this program and drove higher response rates compared to other channels. Our direct mail manufacturing environment and investments in automationiMarketing automation is the technology that manages marketing campaigns across multiple channels through automated systems. Marketing automation allows businesses to target customers with messages via email, social media and texts helping with everything from lead generation to nurturing and measurement of overall ROI on a marketing campaign. Marketing automation not only ... Read More enabled us to achieve speed-to-market and reach consumers quickly.
- Messaging Strategy: When the program was initially piloted, we developed multiple direct mailiDirect mail is the act of using the postal service to deliver promotional marketing material direct to a customer based on demographic information such as age, location or income. Direct mail pieces can include postcards, catalogs and other promotional pieces enables one-on-one communication with your audience, so you can control who receives the message and when they rece... Read More concepts that leveraged our best practices and consumer-driven response tactics. We eventually declared a “champion” concept, which is still in market today in a similar form. The champion creative focused on the prospect’s known need and features and benefits the carrier offers that were most relevant given our insights. This enabled us to achieve a level of personalization that proved to be effective in increasing readership and helping to drive quotes.
We leveraged data insights from the prescreen insurance triggers program to develop our audience, channel, and messaging strategies in the context of Amsive’s strategic framework.
The Results
Amsive’s prescreen insurance triggers program helped amplify acquisition for the carrier, with whom we have since developed a long-lasting partnership. Below is evidence that, when comparing KPIsiKey performance indicators, or KPIs are important measurements that are used to gauge the efficacy of a marketing campaign. For example, is the goal of a certain marketing campaign to convert leads? gain social media followers? get subscriptions to a newsletter? At the onset of a marketing campaign, it's important to determine what your barometers for success are, so that ... Read More to similar campaigns, our new demand generation strategy achieved:
- A substantial increase in quote rate
- A 45 percent increase in identified qualified prospects
