Fenris Digital Predictive-AI and Application Data Prefill Suite
By Jen Linton
When our founding team launched Elephant Auto Insurance in 2009, we aggressively aimed to sell the first policy within the first 18 months. Setting up a carrier is more time-consuming than setting up an MGA or agency due to the regulatory hurdles, need for reserves, and filing and approval of rates.
But long story short, we sold our first policy within 10 months of my start date. We hired and trained two cohorts of insurance agents to man the phones. My job was to lead US Marketing and keep the website busy quoting and the phones ringing with consumers seeking to buy auto insurance from a newly formed insurance company.
My KPIs in Insurance Marketing were very number-driven. It was a “sales overnight, brand over time” environment. We needed to achieve growth targets, and specifically, I was responsible for the cost per quote (CPQ) and cost per sale (CPS). I had a budget of millions of dollars to deploy across a variety of channels, such as TV, radio, outdoor, and online.
In the early days, it was about quantity and getting as many “good, cheap” quotes as possible. However, that was short-sighted. The ultimate goal is and should always be quality over quantity, which is more accurate than ever in today’s market economy.
Imagine the expense of dozens of agents in a call center answering the phones of the leads purchased, only to achieve a 1-2% conversion rate. And let me assure you that it was considered a tremendous success to drive that conversion level, especially for an unknown carrier competing against the big incumbents. In fact, each sale was celebrated by ringing the bell, and sometimes, we offered a victory lap at the end of a particularly successful results day. Still, many agents burned out due to the high level of quote abandonment, and very few first-call closed leads. The actual cost per sale was much higher due to agent churn than my marketing expense ratios indicate.
What if I had the tools that Fenris makes available to its clients today to enable optimization at every step of the sales funnel?
The results would have been to increase the conversion rate and improve the average premium.
As is sometimes jokingly said, “Half of all marketing spend is effective; we just don’t know which half.” But with Fenris, more is known about every lead, applicant, and policyholder, and this insurance-specific data is leveraged in predictive AI scoring to match appetite, promote a higher propensity to buy, and drive the growth of more profitable businesses.
If you’re buying leads, clicks, or calls, there is a smart way to apply intelligence earlier than ever before, in real-time, to ensure every marketing dollar goes further and drives better results.
