Elisa is the Marketing Director of a well established and prestigious insurance company. Her client portfolio has not stopped growing year after year, despite the strong competition in the sector, and has proved to be able to maintain a high rate of loyalty.
The company has undoubtedly earned this by making many improvements in efficiency and management, offering ever-competitive premiums and improving service in performance.
However, the last few years have been harder in this respect. The proliferation of online comparators and simulators, together with the effective action of the bank on already loyal customers, is increasingly influencing the flight of customers, who now more than before can easily pass from one company to another. To correct this situation Elisa and the whole management team of the company are evaluating alternatives.
One way of compensating for customer leakage when we do not have mechanisms to control it, may be the incorporation of new sales channels. The incorporation of a new network of mediators, a bancassurance company, a telecommunications operator or a retailer for example.
We see that all of them offer a high capillarity in the access to clients, and although some more than others, all of them interact in a habitual way with their clients; this provides, throughout the time, many opportunities of attraction and loyalty, once the new client has been captured.
This approach will allow us to alleviate, and even compensate for the situation without ignoring the cost of attracting customers through the new channels. However, Elisa would like to have mechanisms that allow your company to increase loyalty and Upselling on the existing client portfolio. With this she knows that she would achieve a more solid and sustainable growth in time.
Unlike the sectors mentioned above as possible channels, precisely because of the frequency of their contact with customers, the nature of the insurance business provides us with very few opportunities to interact with our customers. There are basically two moments when contact is necessary: the contracting and the declaration of a claim.
This is why we customers of insurance companies forget about them in our daily lives; this is why many people, despite having life and accident insurance with a company, go skiing or go on a holiday trip and do not take out insurance with the company they are already customers of; we are more likely to use the one offered by the ski resort, the credit card we are going to pay with, or the website where we have booked the trip.
Fortunately, the technologies that exist today allow us to have the Contextual Marketing platforms, powerful tools that allow us to successfully face the problem of customer loyalty in the Insurance Sector.
These platforms privilege the mobile device as a key instrument in the relationship between the company and the insured, allowing, through an app of the company installed in the mobile, to learn from our client what is necessary to establish a privileged communication channel with him, in which we talk exclusively about the subjects that he is interested in and at the moment he is interested in.
When we talk about loyalty, I think of valuable content for the client, such as the one recently shared on Linkedin by Antonio Huertas, President of MAPFRE, and which I, as a cycling lover, have loved and would like to take out an insurance policy for my sporting activity with this company.
Optionally, if we want this content to be even more relevant to our client, we can offer it only after he has used a cycling related app like Bikegears or Wikiloc
Thinking about other contents that companies usually offer like recommendations to be safe when travelling abroad, or to take care of your house while you are away, they can be more valuable if they are offered to our client when he has just used an application from an airline.
As I write this, I am evoking the conversations we have all had many times about our privacy, but the truth is that we are much less concerned when those who use information with our permission do so solely to provide us with something that is of great value to us. In fact, the same people who have sometimes spoken out against these issues, are happy when Google on our mobile phone recommends a better way to get home after work to avoid a traffic jam, and so enjoy 15 or 20 minutes more with our family.
Without forgetting that the best way to build customer loyalty is to continue to contract new products, in this regard I cannot forget the magnificent presentation on instant insurance that Óscar Herencia, General Manager of Metlife in Spain and Portugal, gave at the last Marketing and Communication Meeting in the Insurance sector, organised by INESE.
Oscar told us about his dream of being able to take out an insurance policy from his mobile phone that would cover him when he goes running a few kilometres in the park in any city or in the countryside. He also told us about being able to take out insurance from his mobile phone when you are at the airport in the boarding hall, to be covered during that trip.
In this area, Contextual Marketing platforms are the essential means of determining precisely what type of instant insurance the customer needs based on his profile, his location and the use he has made of the apps on his mobile device during the last few hours, and based on this, to be able to establish the appropriate and personalised dialogue through the app, which will facilitate the contract.
To conclude, I would like that if Elisa reads my post, she would encourage her company to launch a Contextual Marketing platform. This way, the next time I'm going to spend the weekend skiing with my family, I'll be offered an insurance through my mobile device, which I'm sure I won't hesitate to take out.
