Pierre Bourdeau—Director P&C Insurance Marketing
Any marketing campaign’s success relies on knowing who your ideal customer is. If you’re not talking to the right person about what matters to them in a way that resonates with them, you’re wasting your marketing dollars. For your marketing efforts to be successful, you’ll need to figure out who your ideal customers are.
Here’s the good news: your ideal customer information already exists. It’s all captured in your Broker Management System (BMS). All it takes is knowing how to identify it.
Start by defining who your ideal customer is.
Think about who your best customers are. Ask yourself if they’re:
- The ones who are easiest to deal with
- Those who have been with you the longest
- Those who have never filed a claim
- Those who spend the most money with you
- Those who are the most profitable for you
You may find that your best customer has a mix of these traits. Take a look at the data in your BMS and decide what kind of customers you want more of.
Make a list of your best customers’ addresses.
Next, use your BMS to see where your ideal customers live. What matters here are their postal codes—you’ll need both the first three characters (Forward Sorting Area, or the FSA) and the last three characters (Local Delivery Unit, or the LDU).
Wondering why postal codes are valuable? That old saying “birds of a feather flock together” has a lot of truth to it: people who live in the same neighbourhood often have a lot in common. Once you find your best customer, you’re likely to find a lot of other similarly profiled customers living close by. People who live in the same communities often have the following things in common:
Household make-up. Communities are made of people with similar demographics. Young families tend to gather in neighbourhoods near schools, community centres and conveniences. Newly marrieds often live near transit and in smaller homes as they start out. Empty nesters are usually found in more established neighbourhoods or condominiums.
Values and lifestyles. When household make-ups are similar, chances are high that values and lifestyles will be similar, too. Young families will likely have two vehicles to get their kids to various programs and may require insurance. Empty nester-based communities may be more likely to own vacation properties that need insurance. Mine your data and see if your ideal customer has insured their home equipment against breakdown, insured a cottage or even added any riders for artwork or jewellery. Highlighting these offerings may be a way to reach similar customers.
Use Canada Post to target your prospects.
Canada Post has a free tool you can use to reach your target audience. Called Precision TargeterTM, this powerful tool can help you reach your ideal customers using the postal codes captured in your BMS. Just choose the LDUs where your best customers live and use the tool’s built-in filters to zero in further. Think about things like:
- Did they purchase water coverage? Chances are their neighbour is concerned about flooding, too.
- Is there a vacation property on their policy? Their neighbours might have one as well and they’ll need to insure it.
- Does your target customer have several cars insured with you? Their neighbours may have several cars too, and a multi-vehicle discount may be the way to catch their attention.
Reach more of your ideal customers on digital.
Have you heard about lookalike audiences in digital media? It works similarly to the Canada Post Precision Targeter. Only in this case, you’re mining a database you already have, and by using a free tool that social media platforms offer, you can mirror your ideal customer to reach other customers just like them. That’s a win-win-win.
A word of caution: whether you’re using the social media tool or the one from Canada Post, be sure to filter out your existing customers. The last thing you want to do is send a long-standing customer an introductory marketing message.