How a Marketing Agency Can Add Value to Insurers

Take a step ahead of the competition with an omnichannel and data-driven strategy.

In such a highly competitive insurance market, major insurance brands spend in droves to establish as wide a presence as possible. Everywhere you turn you see messages about insurance across any number of channels — TV, direct mail, digital, and more. In fact, it comes as no surprise that such widespread marketing comes at a price: the top five insurance brands collectively spent $4.4 billion in advertising. While flooding the market works for some, others are left trying to find their niche. When insurers can’t compete with an avalanche of spending, they can win with marketing data intelligence. 

Consumer insights drive the smartest marketing in insurance today. Using the power of consumer insights can find the best new prospects, dive into the ways to acquire new policyholders, brainstorm the best retention strategies for existing policyholders, and orchestrate campaigns to cross-sell multi-lines of insurance more effectively — but only with the right marketing services.

Marketing powered by consumer insights is no longer just for the largest insurers with the widest spending. Data-centric, omnichannel marketing services agencies that have invested in accessible data platforms for mid-market insurers can just as easily create the best insights to facilitate the most efficient, cost-effective, and successful marketing insights to create the much-needed big-picture market presence. But you must be able to harness the power of data.

The Benefits of Insurance Agency Marketing Services

One of the only certainties in the insurance industry today is constant change. Regulations and advancements in technology disrupt decades-old models, while policyholder demands are becoming granular down to the most personal levels. To keep up, and stay relevant among big insurers and hungry startups alike, mid-market insurers must shift the focus on optimizing their marketing operations to solve these crippling pain points and connect with new and current consumers alike.

Let’s take a step back. If you’re in insurance, do you ask yourself if any of the following challenges seem to persistently hold your company back?

• My data is siloed and I can’t get my arms around it in a way my larger competitors can.
• I’m spending too much money trying to get my products and services in front of people who don’t need what we are offering.
• We have a customer attribution problem but can’t identify why.
• I know customers are shopping my competitors, but I don’t have a way to capture It.
• We don’t have the technology or platform to implement the personalized customer journeys I need.

Insurers are always looking for ways to grow, expand their products and services, recruit agents, onboard new consumers, and increase overall personalization for their policyholders. But this sort of challenge doesn’t need to come solely from within. In fact, in such a rapidly changing landscape it can’t — at least not completely.

Solutions Across the Customer Journey

Consumers’ lives are constantly changing, and so are their insurance needs. Successful marketing can improve the way insurers acquire, retain, and grow customer relationships by leveraging data and insights that are in tune with these evolving needs. 

Ultimately, marketing empowers insurers with highly relevant touchpoints that drive meaningful, measurable connections across the entire consumer journey. Let’s take a look at the step-by-step benefits that marketing can open up for insurers and beyond.

Acquisition

• Truly collaborative marketing can identify ideal customer acquisition opportunities for underwriting new policies
• Whether insurers distribute via captive agents, independent agents, call centers, or web and app-based applications, functionality across all distribution models must be available to increase overall market share.
• From comprehensive to sub-prime, this primes insurers to be able to acquire consumers that align with the quality and value of desired target markets as well as the ability to meet and exceed cost-per-policy acquisition requirements.

Onboarding

• Marketing adds value by using messaging and touchpoints to demonstrate that insurers know and care about new policyholders
• Introduce the policyholder to agents for captive or independent agent distribution models and onboarding is the first step to deepening relationships
• Another key step is to use marketing to orchestrate a personalized experience that leads to additional opportunities with other products by consistently delivering personalized information and solutions to improve the customer experience.

Cross-Sell

• It’s essential to provide value to your policyholders before you try to offer them additional coverage through cross-sell opportunities. Consumer insights can create a thoughtful, personalized assortment of offers aligned to policyholders as their needs change
• At the same time, marketing can educate on the need for changes and additional coverage through the customer life cycle, which will ultimately lower the risk of policyholder churn.
• Methods such as behavior triggers, AI, and signals give policyholders the solutions they need to help them wherever they are in their journey.

Engagement

• Respond quickly to changing policyholder needs and deliver proactive messaging before they switch carriers
• Educate on the importance of protecting major assets should an accident occur to stem attrition
• Share purpose-based messaging like community or philanthropic involvement

To get real results, insurers must listen to customer signals and act on them using the best marketing available. Partners like Amsive can help facilitate the most efficient, cost-effective, and successful marketing campaigns across the industry.

The original version of this page was published at:  https://www.amsive.com/2022/09/07/how-a-marketing-agency-can-add-value-to-insurers/