Aetna Zeroes in on Target

With the objective of providing prospective policyholders with customized benefits information, Aetna Group Insurance will use Fair, Isaac's (San Rafael, CA) Market Smart technology to target individual demographics.

Aetna Group Insurance, a division of Aetna (Hartford, $47.4 billion in assets), will use Market Smart to provide prospects with specific benefits information. Also part of Aetna's strategy will be the rollout of a Web capability that will enable policyholders to access benefit information based on the so-called attitudinal segment—such as saver, selfless, risk averse or planner—into which they fall.

"Aetna Group Insurance can differentiate messages that consumers receive based on the needs of the consumer," explains Len Havens, director of marketing, Aetna Group Insurance. Employer clients can transfer employee information, usually names and addresses, to the Market Smart Web site, says Larry Gulden, director of market offering management, Fair, Isaac. Data is then cleansed and compared against R.L. Polk (Southfield, MI) and Acxiom (Little Rock) databases. Information such as age, income, marital status and sex from these databases is appended to the names and addresses.

"Now we can send out messages based on age, income, marital status and sex," Havens says. Specific literature can be sent to women, retirees, baby boomers or young people, for example. Market Smart's Business Objects component tool helps the insurer analyze its own data, and then better allocate marketing costs by sending more expensive information packets to groups that are more likely to buy certain types of insurance products.