Leverage Milestone Moments as Marketing Opportunities

Birthday or holiday cards are no-brainer tools for retention marketing, but other big moments in clients’ lives correlate closely with insurance shopping and defection.

Agents should be intentional and proactive about integrating life events into a retention marketing strategy. Kevin Ament, Progressive’s agency marketing director, points to these key examples from the company’s database:

Marriage: Typically, 2–3% of Progressive’s customer base marries in a given year, and 50% of those newlyweds defect.

Youthful driver additions: Due to rate shock, this is a shopping event nearly 100% of the time—yet only one in four agents reports having a process to educate and mitigate defections, according to Ament.

Cohabitation: Up from 1–2% in the 1970s, 8% of insurance clients cohabitate—it’s often a precursor to, or substitute for, marriage. Proactive marketing might help retain customers: Two drivers sharing the same address could save 10% by adding a second vehicle to a Progressive auto policy.

Moving: In a given year, 13% of clients move—and younger customers move more frequently. Buying a first home is a big defection risk given the complexity and need for counsel.

Agencies can leverage data triggers from real estate listings, endorsements or third-party shower registries, wedding announcements and registries, and other databases. They can also mine social media posts, then structure services and content marketing—such as email and direct mail—around life events. Citing key words from voicemails and phone calls can trigger responses with relevant value-added offers.

For example, there’s a 200% chance that customers will change their marital status within six months if they show up on a third-party data report for marriage license applications and interactions with wedding invitations vendors and bridal registries, Ament says—so reach out now.

“I like the odds of agents retaining business when they reach out in advance of the insurance conversation between newly married couples,” Ament says. “Millennials aren’t following a set path with first houses and marriages. So look for the triggers among customers, regardless of their ages, to offer them value before it’s too late.”

Like many big companies, Progressive collects customer surveys—some 80,000 each year. Between those and recordings of client calls and voice mails, the company sifts through 10 billion words annually.

Why is that important? Certain customer phrases are highly indicative of future behavior. For instance, a customer who starts a sentence with “I never received…” is 1.5 times more likely to leave the company, Ament says.

Just beware false positives: A data point may indicate a customer is experiencing a life event, but don’t assume. Follow up quickly with a related email survey to give the customer an opportunity to self-identify­ as getting married, for example, and request counsel.

Peter van Aartrijk is an IA contributor.