IAG has a dominant market share, insuring over 60% of New Zealanders. However, along with a drive to prevent customer churn, they still have a desire to continue to attract new customers to their leading direct insurance brands – State and AMI.

When it comes to attracting new customers, the obvious choice is to go big, using mass media as it fulfills all objectives for high reach. But for State and AMI, returns using mass media were diminishing, so they needed to find a smarter way. How could they effectively target new customers at a reasonable cost while not cannibalising their own client base?

The answer was to ‘map’ the whole of NZ and identify all the addresses that were not IAG customers (either State or AMI). They then determined which brand (State or AMI) prospects were more likely to identify with; that they were more likely to own their home; and, furthermore, that they could afford insurance. Finally, a number of variables (format, offer, messaging) were tested to work out the best way to attack cold acquisition, and the strongest performing combination rolled out.

The results were outstanding. The number of policy sales in the campaign period increased by 17% compared with the previous 4 months, resulting in a massive $1,280,872 increase in annual premiums.