7% or 93% – Where Does Your Company Fall?

InfoPrint’s most recent endeavor  with the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council, What’s Critical in the Insurance Vertical, approached the insurance industry to see how, if at all, these companies were implementing precision marketing techniques.  We also approached consumers to learn more about how receptive they’d be to receiving customized and relevant communications with their insurance statements.

We uncovered some surprising findings.

Of the total number of insurance companies responding, only 7% percent report that they currently offer a product add-on or cross-sell to their existing policyholders.  Yet 21% of the consumers responding to the survey report that they have considered/bought an additional product offering from their insurance carrier.

The question here is this: is your organization or your customer a part of the 7% or the 93%?

As a career-long insurance marketer myself, many other findings in this most recent CMO Council study are insightful as well. When asked about changes and transformations underway in current marketing operations, only 2% of insurance carriers said there had been an increase in investment for customer data analytics to better segment their audiences.  This statistic clearly reinforces the lack of awareness for the value of customized communications and customer add-ons and cross-sells to further engage the recipient.  If an insurance company does not understand the demographic, psychographic, and economic variables of existing policyholders – how can it grow their loyalty for the company?

Other key stats are:

• When asked what the top customer engagement priorities were for this year, only 2% of carriers said “streamlining communications to deliver a better customer experience”

• Nearly 70% of respondents admitted to no investment currently underway in data analytics/segmentation programs

• When questioned about what elements are seen as essential to the quality of the customer experience, only 1% said “frequency and quality of communications”

Alone, these percentages are startling, but when combined with the obvious consumer desire for more customized communications, it becomes all the more shocking.

• Nearly half of all responding policyholders have a relationship with their provider for more than 5 years

• 21% of respondents said that they have considered/bought an additional product offering from their insurance carrier – what about the remaining 79%?

So what does this mean for your organization? What it comes down to is exploring – exploring how you can implement precision marketing into your company’s or your customers’ communications.