Drive Profitability through Data-Driven Optimization

March 1, 2021
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Delve Goes Deeper: Insurance Marketing

Understand how to maximize conversion by defining and pinpointing profitable consumer segments.

This is the second post in our Insurance Marketing series, sharing tools to help insurance providers identify their most profitable audience segments, increase their marketing ROI, and drive conversion and revenue growth.

For many insurance brands, gaining a holistic view of their audience segments (both prospects and customers) and efficiently engaging them will require new approaches to campaign targeting, ad delivery and optimization. To achieve their revenue goals, insurance carriers need to leverage omnichannel attribution insights, data-driven conversion models, advanced targeting tactics and media personalization to reduce waste from marketing budgets and attract and retain more profitable customers. 

The payoff of personalizing the right offer at the right time can be significant and measurable. McKinsey & Company notes that “Today’s personalization leaders have found proven ways to drive 5 to 15 percent increases in revenue and 10 to 30 percent increases in marketing spend efficiency.”

While this can sound daunting for insurance marketing teams that are struggling to assimilate their data and apply analytics, it doesn’t have to be. In fact, McKinsey & Company notes that, “Marketers often view personalization at scale as a daunting undertaking, requiring millions in IT investments. But successful players often start small, generate top-line impact quickly—in a matter of weeks, often—and self-fund the initiative after that.” Efficiently acquiring, retaining and growing policyholder share of wallet begins with smarter (data-driven) targeting and personalized offer orchestration.

What Insurance Leaders Do Differently

Insurance leaders understand that marketing efficiency is all about aligning the right message, in the right medium, at the right time, to the right audience to maximize conversion. Doing it well means having a deep understanding of audience segments (both prospects and customers) so that the appropriate message, medium and timing can be orchestrated. 

Simply put, when it comes to digital media, industry leaders “buy smart, not more” by hyper targeting high-value, high-conversion potential audiences. They also realize that consumers and businesses alike want experiences—and that includes personalized offers that speak to their lifestyle, life stage, and/or business needs.

Deloitte’s insurance study reveals a roadmap for orchestrating offers along the customer journey:

1. Customer Awareness: Build and Know Segments 

• Build segmentation including information on a select of priority life events (e.g., marriage, having a child, buying a home, financial change) that tend to be reliable predictors of life insurance purchase

• Form holistic segment-specific engagement strategies that consider both life events and the role of advice since both drive awareness and purchase

• Identify and execute around segment specific “triggering moments” within key life events

2. Purchasing Decision: Engage Them Effectively 

• Leverage engagement channel preferences of each segment effectively, combining digital capabilities with higher-touch, consultative customer interactions

• Leverage advisory position in the consideration and decision process to build customer understanding of how life insurance can support a customer’s broader financial priorities (e.g., providing for family)

3. Customer Retention: Keep Them Engaged

• Plan and execute pot-purchase follow-up that can reinforce the importance of life insurance and remind customers why they initially purchased to prevent lapsing

• Continuing to execute engagement using a segment-specific mix of digital and higher-touch channels; direct contact can be more impactful than digital channels alone on preventing lapse

By deepening customer understanding and orchestrating the right message and right medium at the right time, insurance marketers can eliminate budget waste from their media campaigns and broader marketing investments.

As we dive further into this series, we look at the challenges and trends impacting insurers today, discuss why now is the time to act, and introduce several best practice ideas for applying data insights to eliminate waste and improve marketing efficiency.


Ready to take your ads, and your business, to the next level? Get in touch with the DELVE team today.