Income is a Singapore-based life, health and general insurance cooperative which has garnered a successful social media presence. Its Chief Marketing Officer Mr Marcus Chew shares some of its digital strategies in this month's issue of Asia Insurance Review, and how they had a measurable impact on sales.
Strong digital presence a must
To lead as a digital insurer, anchoring on a strong social media presence is key, says Mr Chew. The Income Facebook page boasts over 71,000 followers. Income used Facebook Live, then unchartered territory still for many companies, for a discussion on financial planning, which reached nearly 109,000 people, more than what would have been possible at a traditional forum, increasing web traffic to Income’s savings and retirement plans at the same time. This led to an increase in customer enquiries and eventually 25% more policies sold compared to the same period the year before.
Another example was using Instagram to engage consumers with peer travellers’ content through a “Travel made Different” campaign. This led to double-digit growth in travel insurance business.
The decrease of focus on “vanity metrics” such as page likes or engagement rates, and instead the rise of conversion rates and cost per conversation will show the success of digital campaigns.
Pay attention to personalisation
Big data, marketing automation and content marketing can help facilitate a seamless consumer experience online from awareness to purchase. By tailoring websites to the needs and wants of consumers, according to data such as their pages viewed, items purchased and other user characteristics, helps insurers to personalise initiatives. Advances in data science and prediction models and make widespread application of behavioural prediction more powerful in the next few years.
Content marketing
Content marketing on social media channels helps not only to drive awareness and call to action, but also advocacy and bonding with the brand and product.
Clever marketing automation by leveraging technologies to more effectively market on multiple online channels and automating repetitive tasks, will continue to be an important consideration.
Developing insurance products for the digital space
Online users prefer to complete transactions digitally. While it is insurance such as travel insurance that most lends itself to online purchase, the implication is that considering how one advances eWallet options, for example, will impact consumers’ purchase experience and journey online. It will take an overhaul of mindset to develop products for the digital space, which should be generally more straightforward for customers to understand. With the speed of an online purchase, we need to rethink information gathering for underwriting requirements to keep things simple and to minimise drop-out rate.
"Always-on" for consumers
Accessibility--being anywhere and everywhere for consumers--has never been more important than now. And Income is currently looking to take this further, such as in deployment of always-on artificial intelligence (AI) in insurance advisory and service.
The full version of Mr Marcus Chew's article in February's Asia Insurance Review can be read here.