Customer and content first
Genuinely customer-focused services and content made the results of LähiTapiola digital marketing soar.
Selling insurance to consumers is not easy. Most consumers understand that insurance is important, but choosing between options is often a struggle. Insurance means a big financial commitment, and involves things nobody really wants to think about: accidents, illness, death.
Today, most of the interaction between an insurance company and its customer takes place digitally. A key success factor for the insurance company is its ability to manage engagement with different customers in their different circumstances.
LähiTapiola, one of the largest insurance companies in Finland with over a million customers, sought help to this problem from Avaus. They were looking for a partner for data-driven, customer-oriented marketing, and the purchase of a marketing automation tool. A wide scope of collaboration began that renewed LähiTapiola’s approach to digital marketing – while giving excellent returns for the money invested.
“Not the product but customer insight”
The first step in the partnership was the procurement and management of a marketing automation system building on data-driven insights into the company’s customers and their behaviour. The system was piloted with a reimbursement use case related to the reimbursements paid to LähiTapiola’s private customers.
The result was a drop in customer churn. The impact of the model was verified by comparing the drain between customers covered and not covered by the action.
“The important thing is that the marketing team works closely with people who know how to analyse data and have an in-depth understanding of the customer. Starting from customer insight changes the entire marketing process. The product does not have a central role, customer insight does,” says Kirsi Juusti, Planning Director and Head of Marketing Team at LähiTapiola.
LähiTapiola’s journey towards more successful marketing in collaboration with Avaus has later continued with online sales optimisation. By analysing LähiTapiola’s in-house customer data, marketing and contents have been successfully targeted to win many new private customers with key variables similar to existing customers. Targeting and content management based on own customer data have become a key competitive factor in LähiTapiola’s marketing.
Advertising has been continuously optimised based on results, with consistently excellent ROI. In addition to data analysis and targeted advertising, the cooperation between Avaus and LähiTapiola has expanded to content design and management both in the private customer business and marketing to corporate customers.
”Focus on how your content benefits the customer”
A key aspect in the cooperation between LähiTapiola and Avaus has been a new approach to digital marketing. The earlier focus on products and systems is now replaced by a thoroughly customer-oriented mindset.
“Marketing automation starts with what we want to achieve with customers. What, for example, are the key touchpoints along the customer’s lifecycle, and how should we be present at those points?” says Kirsi Juusti.
“Next you need to think which of those encounters should be automated and which not. At this point, it is important you have a partner you can trust. Platform and marketing cloud choices come only after that. It is important to start with customer insight instead of platforms or systems. I also encourage everyone to pay attention to the contents of the marketed services. Don’t focus on the product or selling too much – think what kind of content would benefit your customer.”
Ms. Juusti emphasises that marketing automation systems and transforming a marketing organisation into a customer-oriented entity are major investments. Their business benefits are measured over a long time. It is certain, though, that the investments have been profitable, both tactically and strategically.
LähiTapiola’s online services have seen significantly rising user numbers. At the same time, customer drain has started to go down.
”We have been carefully monitoring our customer data, and are seeing a downturn in customer drain, quite exceptional in our business. In many of our online sales projects, new targeting has yielded excellent sales results. We are extremely satisfied,” says Kirsi Juusti.
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