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Management Strategies

11:25 AM
John Dambach
John Dambach
Commentary
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Building a Marketing Enablement Platform for Insurance

Insurers struggle with how to optimize their media spending across the lifecycle, as well as across the myriad interaction points used by the now-empowered consumer.

A host of insurance companies are taking advantage of various components of addressability with the use of open web tactics, social media platforms, and search. However, one of the most challenging aspects for these organizations is fully integrating these tactics to create a seamless interaction at scale with the customer across the customer lifecycle. They struggle with how to optimize their media spending across the lifecycle, as well as across the myriad interaction points used by the now-empowered consumer. In order to leverage the identity management process across media and channels, insurance companies need to plan out and cost justify the enablement platforms, in addition to the expertise required to manage and optimize these multitouch campaigns.

[Previously from Merkle: Optimizing a Digital Media Plan in Insurance]

This effort starts with developing a business plan that identifies and connects data across your marketing platform. For many carriers, knowing where to start and what to include in this business plan can be difficult. The marketing technology landscape continues to evolve, with new technologies continually being developed or even being absorbed into other technology providers. Staying on top of and being able to react to this dynamic marketplace would be challenging for any organization. However, developing the right business plan will help set the stage to build infrastructure that is scalable and will enable carriers to maximize their first- and third-party data assets.

  1. Map out and understand the customer journey for each business segment: You can do this by developing a set of use cases that reflect the typical path your customer will follow when making a purchase decision. The moments of truth that you identify for each business segment will provide a line of sight into the integration currencies needed to support your programs. Many organizations will have pieces of the enablement platform to support these integration currencies already in place, but they still struggle with integrating or adding to this technology to optimize the overall customer experience. Developing use cases for each business segment across the acquisition lifecycle, starting with general targeting efforts of exposure, consideration, purchase, and post-purchase, events will create the foundation from which you can leverage your first- and third-party data to operate at scale.
  2. Build the supporting framework: Once you understand how your business segments will most likely interact with your organization, you can build the framework to support the platforms and currencies required to reach your targeted audience across owned and paid media channels. The integration of this framework will be key to how you measure and support your campaigns across the known and unknown universe. Again, this step may sound simple, but there is a tremendous amount of complexity between the onboarding, linking, and measurement of how data is and can be used across the various platforms available today.
  3. Identify the addressable audience: The final step in putting together your business plan is centered on sizing your universe by business segment and audience platform and linking this data to your core key perfomance indicators. Typically, you will find that each business segment operates within a finite universe. It is important for you to know the true potential for each segment in order to effectively manage the investment to reach these individuals. Unfortunately, not many organizations have the ability or experience to gain visibility into the true reach of these audiences, which limits their ability to scale their marketing efforts. The point here is that it is possible to create an accurate lens into the total market size and gauge how you can scale your programs to reach these individuals effectively and efficiently.

At the end of the day, the tools, technology, and experiences exist today to create a line of sight into the attitudes and behaviors of both known and unknown individuals. The questions most carriers face: Where do I start, and how do I build enough scale to justify the investment required to reach my audiences with the right message at the right time? The ability to craft a thorough plan around these efforts will put you on the path to making the right amount of investment in these enablement platforms.

In his 20 years in the insurance industry, John has consistently led successful business development teams that have been centered on the creation and positioning of marketing and risk management solutions for the insurance marketplace that were inclusive of data, technology, ... View Full Bio

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