Insurance Carrier Improves Customer Retention
with Multi-touch Marketing Campaign

A customer retention program can be a powerful tool in the arsenal of customer relationship management.  While many companies struggle to differentiate themselves from one another, one leading national insurance carrier took action to build lasting customer relationships, to measure the effectiveness of its “contact” tactics, and to improve customer retention rates with more frequent and relevant engagement.

Attrition Rates on the Rise
Providing benefits through employers in all 50 states, this insurance carrier sends members printed and electronic information to help them make better decisions about their insurance coverage.  Still, the company’s Marketing department wrestled with poorly addressed product and situational market segment opportunities complicated by a broad and growing range of insurance products and related services.

Historical client retention data showed that an estimated 20 to 25 percent of customers were lost each year for a variety of known regional, competitive, and market conditions, and for numerous unknown reasons.  Because the cost of acquiring a new customer far surpasses that of maintaining a relationship with a current customer, this insurance provider turned to Standard Register for a consultative approach to developing scalable marketing solutions and a customer retention program to fit their needs.

Reduce Churn, Increase Margins
It came as no surprise to the firm that attempts to renew customer policies after a 10-month period with limited customer communications were unsuccessful.  Still, how might they efficiently get their arms around a problem that affected such a diverse customer base ….and how would they know how, if, and when their tactics were working?

The company suspected that targeted, personalized communications and calls-to-action might help.  Realizing that reducing churn and policy lapses within their small and mid-market business unit could yield significant low-cost margin gains, a 12-month pilot program was crafted that aimed at building familiarity, trust and repetition with targeted clients. 

Program Design & Delivery
In order to keep the company’s products and services top of mind with customers and subscribers, a multi-touch marketing campaign was developed.  During the course of the year, customers would experience at least six different communication “touches” – everything from direct mail and e-mail, to telemarketing and personalized URLs for response.  And that’s just the beginning.

The end-to-end program incorporates customer profiling and segmentation to effectively target the company’s newest clients and measure program results against the traditional “control” model.  Coupled with creative design services provided by Standard Register, the right message and tone is delivered repetitively to the right audience in a very personalized way.

Printed materials are produced on demand, kitted with supplemental materials if necessary, and distributed to recipients direct from one of Standard Register’s strategically-located print facilities. 

Early Indicators
Deployed in select national test markets during the course of 2008, the insurance provider is already starting to see results.  

Though the program is still in its infancy, intense focus on frequency and measurement appears to be working.  The company has already seen an increase in their response rates as compared to historical controls and is pleased with the ability to quickly measure tactics with personalized URLs and e-mail click-through data. Further, their strategic callouts can now direct clients away from an overloaded Web site resource, for example, to a very specific online location that quickly simplifies a typically long search process.

By analyzing response rates and results throughout the year, the company will be able to establish a strategic model across all markets for 2009, while simultaneously learning more about each tactic and refining the program as needed.

Today, marketing solutions are expanding beyond traditional print and direct mail channels to include e-mail, variable data and other nimble delivery technologies.  A satisfied customer represents cross-selling and referral opportunities.  To turn those leads into sales, the focus must be on analytics, reporting, and investment returns for any pilot or live strategy. 

It’s important to keep in mind that the implementation of a customer retention program does not guarantee success.  Still, with careful planning, invested time, good execution, and ongoing measurement, tomorrow’s retention strategies will  improve on today’s model and that will help firms to find significant margin that is now there for the taking, with focus…and Standard Register’s assistance.

If you’d like more information on how your company can execute a mult-touch marketing campaign with highly-targeted, personalized customer communications, contact Standard Register today.