ICICI Lombard drives insurance purchases and renewals with Adobe Campaign
Last year, ICICI Lombard issued over 29 million insurance policies and settled 2.3 million claims. With insurance penetration rates in India on the rise in both urban and rural areas, the company is working to provide even more options to consumers seeking protection against the unexpected. To put itself in a position to scale and accomplish its goals for growth, ICICI Lombard prioritized a technology-forward approach.
While many customers seek service in person at ICICI Lombard’s 283 branches or with service agents, a growing number are comfortable conducting research and making purchases online. Some begin online and purchase after speaking by phone with a representative from ICICI Lombard’s call center. To attract tech-savvy consumers and grow its market share, the company uses Adobe Campaign to deliver relevant marketing messages and personalize the scripts used by customer service representatives.
Converting quote takers to customers with personalized nudges
Paromita Mandal, associate vice president of digital marketing for ICICI Lombard, helped the adoption of Campaign at ICICI Lombard five years ago. Initially her team targeted prospects using a “Quote No Sale” campaign to reach people who previously got a quote on the company’s website but did not end up purchasing a policy.
Mandal’s team uses the information from the online quote request forms, such as car make and model for auto insurance inquiries, to flow into emails and other messages. Rules-based workflows prioritize and segment the leads into appropriate, customized campaigns with personalized insurance quotes.
Today, these campaign activities trigger as soon as a customer completes the web form. Activities can include email, SMS, and WhatsApp messages, as well as automated calls using interactive voice response (IVR) technology via an API integration between Campaign and the company’s call center software, Genesys.
Leads that receive IVR calls can express their interest to connect to a live agent with the push of a button on their phone. Call center agents personally greet callers and quickly assist them with information tailored to their needs, thanks to the personalized information that is automatically passed to the Genesys system.
Disposition data, such as whether the prospect answered the phone call, flows back to the system. This enables ICICI Lombard to send follow-up email or text messages — for example, to let a prospect know that the call they received from an unrecognized number is from the company’s customer service center, thereby increasing the prospect’s likelihood of accepting the call on the next attempt. “It’s an automated cycle of real time two-way data flowing in and out of Adobe Campaign that helps us increase conversion,” says Mandal.
Low-scoring leads may be routed away from higher-cost call center activities and instead toward more cost-effective digital messaging channels. Messages include a link that lands the prospect on the personalized web page where they dropped off, such as a plan page, so they can seamlessly continue their journey.
ICICI Lombard sends Quote No Sale messages to all prospects who don’t initially convert. The revenue from this campaign alone is responsible for 85% of the total CRM revenue from new business by making productive leads readily available. A feedback section in the messages also helps the company understand the challenges leads are facing, as well as any special requirements or expectations they have from the product offering. “The automation has been instrumental in driving profitable growth for us,” Mandal says.
Digital-first renewals improve retention, cut costs
Once prospects become customers, Nandini Baluja, senior digital marketing manager for ICICI Lombard, fosters loyalty with campaigns that educate customers on helpful, relevant topics, such as how to make a claim. When the company’s call center had to close due to lockdown policies at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the digital marketing team sprang into action. At the time, all the company’s retention campaigns were majorly reliant on call center efforts, including those for customers who purchased policies online.
“We had to come up with a digital solution to nudge customers for renewal and avert business loss. Within a week’s time, we set up retention campaigns for digital customers,” Mandal says. “The results were highly promising; we were able to achieve renewal rates comparable to pre-lockdown level. This opened a lot of new avenues for us.”
Based on the success of the digital business unit, ICICI Lombard expanded its digital-first renewal strategy to its offline business units. After rolling out a successful pilot campaign for one of the offline business verticals, the company entrusted the digital business unit with managing retention campaigns for motor and health insurance for the entire organization. ICICI Lombard has seen an approximate 20% increase in online retention with 55% of renewals of offline business verticals influenced by the digital renewal strategy.
The team is continuing to improve upon its strategy, with deeper personalization, enriched data via system integration, advanced channels and features, and efforts to upsell customers with offerings such as add-on coverage.
Striving to make an even bigger impact on business results, the digital marketing team is working on getting more data into the system. With it, Mandal aims to implement even more detailed campaign personalization, such as in tailored IVR message wording or customized images used in a mailer. She says, “With richer data we can create more intelligent and effective campaigns.”
Learn more about how Adobe Campaign can help companies across industries create and deliver multichannel marketing campaigns that deliver results.
You can also read the Forrester report The Total Economic Impact™ of Adobe Campaign to learn how organizations are seeing up to a 293% ROI and experiencing a payback period of just six months.