Marketing On Demand

Distribution
Responding to distributor feedback, a href="https://www.ing.com" target="_blank">ING U.S. Financial Services, part of ING Group (Amsterdam; US$1.5 trillion in total assets), is giving its 48,000 life insurance agents and brokers the ability to personalize marketing materials with the launch of ING Life PromoCenter, a print-on-demand service that can be accessed through the carrier's Web portal. "We saw an opportunity to enhance our print-on-demand capabilities and add some personalized marketing features," says Krissy Grabish, marketing communications specialist and project manager for the ING Life PromoCenter.

Tailored marketing features include the ability for distributors to upload photos and logos, mailing lists, agency phone numbers, personalized marketing orders and a shopping cart tool. "We are offering to do the direct mail support to free up time for the producer to ... sell," says Grabish.

Beginning in February 2006, ING's IT department integrated ING Life PromoCenter with ING's producer extranet, known as the Virtual Financial Center, and also added in the new features. Using programming code reference documents provided by Printable Technologies (Solana Beach, Calif.), ING's internal programmers integrated Web sites so they could be accessed with one sign-on and allow producers to purchase marketing materials. The site went live in September. --M.W.