The Challenge

Operating in a regulated industry, Income faced multiple challenges to unlocking the economic value of its data for consumer benefit:

1. Unifying Disparate Data Sources: Income needed to consolidate data from various silos to gain real-time insights into omnichannel customer behaviors and respond immediately to individual customer needs.
2. Cultivating a Data-Driven Culture: Transitioning from a brand-centric to a customer-centric approach required fostering a data-first mindset across the organization.
3. Navigating Privacy Regulations: With ever-evolving privacy laws, Income needed to future-proof its privacy strategy through effective data governance and a consent-first customer experience (CX). Establishing a privacy-led, first-party data foundation was crucial for compliant and customer-centric growth.

The Solution

Forging a Visionary Pathway to CX Innovation

Consolidating data and creating data synergy were essential to building Income’s CX innovation capability and achieving sustainable competitive advantage. Merkle was the architect of the complete solution, implementing Google Analytics 360 (GA 360) for audience analysis, journey measurement, and reporting. Martech implementation and services were provided through Salesforce Marketing Cloud, while personalization on web, email, and mobile was enabled via Salesforce Interaction Studio.

Tealium’s vendor-neutral CDP served as the trusted foundation of Income’s best-of-breed martech stack. Tealium’s CDP allowed for centralized audience segmentation and the unification of various data sources into enriched, single, and trusted customer views. This enabled Income to push audience segments into ad platforms like Facebook via Meta’s Conversions API and DV 360 via integration with GA 360 for real-time activation, effectively retargeting audiences with personalized content and messages that resonated most during critical moments.

The CDP Enables Marketing Modernization

In the competitive insurance industry, connected and cohesive omnichannel experiences are the hallmarks of superior CX. Building upon a CDP-enabled trusted data foundation, Income introduced AI and machine learning to anticipate customer behaviors and preemptively meet customer needs, gaining a competitive edge. With Merkle’s expertise and Tealium’s scalable technology, Income established a data center of excellence, empowering its sales force and customer-facing staff to truly understand and anticipate customer needs on an individual basis. This led to substantially increased revenue at a reduced cost through automated hyper-personalization at scale. Moreover, the insurer achieved operational excellence and migrated a significant proportion of its customers to online transactions.

Results

Remarkable Results through Real-Time Intelligence

Post-CDP adoption, Income saw a 40% reduction in cost per acquisition and a 92% improvement in click-through rates. These results highlighted the economic value of real-time insights in enabling relevant communications at meaningful moments along the customer journey.

Income’s successful migration of customers from offline to online channels also delivered category-specific results, including:

• Car insurance: Early online renewal increased from 44% in 2021/22 to 72% in 2022/23.
• Motorcycle insurance: Early online renewal jumped from 52% in 2021/22 to 68% in 2022/23.

Achieving True Marketing Agility

Income’s data-driven success is further evidenced by the surge in online campaigns activated during the post-pandemic travel recovery period. With a CDP, Income nearly doubled the number of campaigns, resulting in an impressive 452% year-over-year increase in online-generated revenue.

Income’s digital CX strategy also enhanced its brand value, a crucial differentiator in a competitive and regulated industry. The success of Income’s CDP-enabled CX innovation journey garnered industry recognition, with Income, Merkle, and Tealium winning the ‘Brilliant Use of Data/Insight’ award at The Drum Awards for Marketing APAC 2023.

Building the Resilient Insurance Enterprise of Tomorrow

Implementing Tealium’s CDP was the first step in Income’s data-driven, customer-centric transformation. Embedding it within its operational framework has since become essential. Much of the initial work by Merkle and Tealium focused on instilling a data culture to propel growth in a data-driven digital economy. The infinite scalability of the Tealium platform ensures that Income’s data culture continues to evolve, extending value across the organization.