As the insurtech industry braces itself for a looming recession, 2023 continues to see big campaigns and innovation leaps make way for the ‘year of ROI’ as business leaders demand to see a return on everything.
Importantly, this throws the marketing budget under new laser-like focus, with the onus on getting creative and applying new novel ways to add value. Here, Dominik Angerer, CEO and co-founder of enterprise CMS tech, Storyblok explores how insurtech firms can make their marketing budget work harder and achieve the maximum ROI.
Every week seems to bring bad news about the state of the economy and its impact on the tech sector. A continued downturn appears inevitable. Every insurtech firm will experience this recession differently. However, for nearly all, it is likely that building resilience and putting plans into place to ensure their business is able to weather the storm will be the priority. The most obvious approach is to cut costs and increase efficiency. For many, the first department on the chopping block is often marketing. This is because its business impact can seem intangible, the perception being that slicing away some of the marketing pot may not make a huge difference. The truth could not be more different – especially in insurtech.
Alongside the wider financial market, the traditional insurance model continues to embark on a radical transformation. In this digital age, standard solutions and services will no longer cut it. More than ever, customers are pressing for change. Today, they expect their insurers to offer simple, transparent and flexible products and services – all online and underscored by a seamless omnichannel experience. And those that fail to do so will risk losing them.
In this way, reducing or re-prioritising marketing spend during a recession should really not be a question. More often than not it could do a lot more damage than good. Brand presence, something which can take years to establish, is diminished, along with the potential to convert both new and existing customers. Instead, insurers should double down on technological infrastructure, ensuring they have a setup that maximises efficiency, resilience and promotes innovation.
To put it into context, we recently asked 500 business owners and senior decision makers at medium-sized companies a range of questions about how they view their marketing technology. On average, businesses have spent nearly half a million dollars on their marketing technology over the past five years. However, these same businesses also believe they lose, on average, $72,000 a year in sales due to poor website user experience.
Unfortunately, this isn’t a new phenomenon. Marketing departments often have a complicated relationship with accurately measuring the success of their output. However, the good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. However, for this to change the technology that is employed must be fit for purpose.
The starting point for any insurtech business is ensuring that their website is the best it can be. After all, it is a complete waste of resources to invest in driving users to your website if, on arrival, the website fails to function properly and the potential sale is lost. To put it into perspective, we surveyed 6,000 consumers about their online shopping behaviour – 42% said they decide whether to stay on or leave a website within 10 seconds – 20% within 5 seconds. 60% of consumers said they abandoned purchases due to poor website user experience. We calculated the value of these missed sales to total £1.41 billion per year in the UK alone.
Limited payment options, poor navigation or layout, and slow loading speeds were the top reasons why customers abandon a website. Consumers have very clear demands from what they want for a site and the only way to meet these expectations is to have the right tech infrastructure in place.
To ascertain whether your website is fit for purpose, the first port of call is your site analytics. How many people are bouncing or abandoning baskets? At what stage is this happening? The data will tell you a lot about what could be going wrong. You can then employ a series of tests, for example, Google’s speed test to determine page loading times. Go through your site’s navigation again and again – is it intuitive enough to a first time visitor? Are the features you are using adding to the experience or clutter the design? Is the content up-to-date, How does your site perform on different devices, and so forth. Finally, ask your customers what they think.
All of this information will tell you where the most important areas of improvement are. Some of these issues could be rectified by better web design, but more fundamental problems around the user experience, such as loading speeds, a lack of features and ease of updating content are likely to stem from outdated tech infrastructure. The increased complexity of websites and marketing in general, means that big, monolithic tech stacks aren’t flexible enough or appropriate for most businesses. They are also usually much more expensive to implement and maintain than newer solutions.
One of the major hurdles to updating enterprise CMS tech that we come across at businesses is the misconception that the process of renewing tech infrastructure will be incredibly costly, risky and time consuming. That may have been true in the past, however, it is far from the case now as many solutions can be more easily incorporated into existing tech stacks. There is also generally a trend away from needing ‘power users’. A lot of platforms, such as Storyblok prioritise being able to be operated effectively by non-technical users. This means extensive retraining or making new specialist hires are generally not needed. The end result is a relatively quick payback period – just six months – and a huge 582% ROI over 3 years.
Even amid the current economy, our fast-changing world means insurers cannot afford to remain staid. More than ever, their online proposition must entice, excite and adapt to the evolving needs of the digital-first customer. But it doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive. By taking advantage of the latest enterprise CMS tech, insurers can achieve a best-in-class online offering with ease and flexibility – in the ultimate insurance for their future.
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