financial services

Study: Insurance Marketers Missing Opportunities

Businessman-Consumer-B

A study from the Chief Marketing Officer Council shows that insurance marketers are too focused on new acquisitions and are missing ways to grow business with existing customers.

For the most part, consumers are happy with their insurance experience, but 12% those surveyed say they resent not hearing from companies until it is time to pay the bill. The biggest communications oversight seems to be silence on the part of the insurance companies.

According to the findings of "What's Critical in the Insurance Vertical," more than 55% of consumers polled have held their existing insurance policies for more than five years and are open to receiving information from their trusted providers on new or complimentary services. And 21% of consumers purchased or increased the value of their existing policies after receiving communications, according to the study from the Palo Alto, Calif., group. However, only 7% of marketers in the insurance vertical value up-sell and cross-sell tactics as critical to route to revenue.

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The report, sponsored by InfoPrint Solutions Co., reveals that insurance marketers could increase their business by executing data-driven, targeted retention marketing strategies. Yet many feel they must focus on acquisition strategies or servicing the needs of top-performing or strategic accounts.

Insurance marketers need to break the cycle of "data paralysis," according to Sandra Zoratti, vice president of global solutions marketing at InfoPrint Solutions Company and the author of the report.

"To me, there are two key findings which point to the fact that insurers are clearly not leveraging or maximizing value in their current customer base through data-driven cross-sell and up-sell opportunities which help drive incremental revenue, improved loyalty and increased customer lifetime value," Zoratti tells Marketing Daily. " Simultaneously, insurers continue to focus most of their marketing spend on new customer acquisition which is a more costly avenue to pursue, especially when their current customers are making it clear that they would buy more from their current insurer if asked."

For the report, more than 100 insurance marketers provided insights on how they market and sell insurance, while over 1,100 consumers provided feedback on their experiences shopping for insurance and selecting providers. The insurance industry's net premiums total more than $1 trillion annually. There are more than 2,700 property/ casualty insurers and more than 1,100 life/health insurers in the U.S., according to the Insurance Information Institute.

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