The difference is in the tables

Product comparison tables are a great way to highlight differences between offerings. They save visitors time, removing the need  to read lots of content to establish which products are most suitable.

Surprisingly, many life insurance websites force visitors into doing the work. Products are described, in summary or detailed form, without a list of differences. Some sites we have evaluated don’t even discuss differences in text areas, and just provide long lists of features.

A simple table takes little time or effort to produce. Some companies have clearly considered what prospects need to know and have produced tables that are easy to read. Thrivent Financial’s, for example, lists features that are available across five insurance products.

Thrivent's table of differences is simple and easy to read

Nationwide offers a similar table, with the addition of ‘Learn More’ buttons that provide a quick path to detailed information about each product.

Nationwide's table of differences includes a 'Learn More' link

Western & Southern’s table offers another dimension of information, including advantages and disadvantages of each feature for each product.

Life insurance is complicated for novices, and not providing a table of differences is adding unnecessary complexity to the education process.

 

Is the Twitter Appeal Dropping for Insurers?

Is Twitter losing its excitement for the insurance industry or has it become just one task too many in a busy day. Twitter does require a lot of time and effort, it needs to be monitored, and you need to think about what the objective of the next ‘tweet’ might be; to direct traffic to the blog, to the website, to help drive up follower count? In the last measurement period, the number of tweets posted by insurance company tweeters fell for the first time since we started measuring. This has not stopped the growth in followers; the increase is still impressive. But why this drop in activity at a time of the year when you might expect the opposite? In some companies we spoke to, a busy September for marketing personnel just took time away from twitter. In other companies, it was the maturity of social media causing the slow down, more people wanting to understand the strategy – the too many cooks syndrome. In at least 2 companies they had simply got bored of Twitter. Facebook was a contributor to the decline, it has taken on a bigger role in many insurers and that is beginning to impact the Twitter effort. Facebook is a true outpost, a presence, an opportunity to drive marketing and generate referrals from growing fan bases. As an overly generalized comment, Facebook is better for marketing and Twitter is better for outreach customer service.

Key Findings

• Month over month since last period
• Follower count for insurance companies up 21 percent
• All tweet meesages sent by insurers down 9 percent
• Number of promotional messages sent by the group down by 11 percent
• Number of customer service tweets remains constant
• The number of message hits (promotional message times follower count) down by 5 percent

Follower Count

Follower count is simple to measure and indicates the degree that twitter is built into other customer touchpoints.

Company	Follower Count	Increase since last month
USAA	6805	13%
State Farm Insurance	3921	22%
Aflac	3375	14%
Allstate	2700	25%
Progressive Insurance	2191	45%
Nationwide	1670	11%
Esurance	731	21%
The Hartford	535	35%
Liberty Mutual	490	51%
NorthWestern Mutual	467	32%
Thrivent Financial	411	42%
Unum	233	9%
Travelers Insurance	222	28%
American Family	208	7%
Western National	130	13%
Amica Mutual	101	80%
Westfield Insurance	68	162%

Key Findings

• USAA continue to drive follower count but groweth rate slows down
• Progressive continues to show highest percentage follower growth for providers with greater than 1000 followers. Strong customer following
• State Farm and AllState add ‘Twitter Follow Me’ link on website home pages and maintain an impressive follower growth rate
• Liberty Mutual continue strong follower count growth into second month of activity, breaks into top 10

Marketing Reach

Marketing Reach is calculated by multiplying the promotional messages by the number of followers for each message. One on one messages, as common in customer interaction have little impact but a message sent to all followers scores high.

Company	Marketing Reach	Increased since last month
State Farm Insurance	305320	1%
Allstate	212220	46%
Nationwide	171891	-37%
USAA	164899	-39%
Aflac	121095	0%
Progressive Insurance	84555	3%
Esurance	50147	296%
Liberty Mutual	27724	17%
The Hartford	12966	21%
Thrivent Financial	9453	42%
NorthWestern Mutual	1868	32%
Western National	1590	-39%
Amica Mutual	1343	29%
American Family	1292
Westfield Insurance	884	325%
Travelers Insurance	559	-5%
Unum	449	-26%

Key Findings

• State Farm, USAA and Nationwide all drop message count affecting marketing reach
• AllState drops message count only slightly but high follower growth compensates
• American Family revived Twitter activity after a 4 month break
• Esurance introduces esurancecares to handle customer service issues so more tweets from the original id are now promotional

 

Customer Interaction

Customer Interaction is measured by looking at the number of messages directed to a single or named people. These are, to the most part, responding to incoming messages or outreach to people making comments about the company on Twitter.

Company	Percentage of interactive tweets
Progressive Insurance	73%
Allstate	40%
State Farm Insurance	38%
Travelers Insurance	37%
The Hartford	35%
Liberty Mutual	31%
American Family	31%
Amica Mutual	30%
Esurance	30%
Aflac	22%
USAA	7%
Western National	6%
Nationwide	6%
Unum	4%
NorthWestern Mutual	0%
Thrivent Financial	0%
Westfield Insurance	0%

Key Findings

• Progressive continue to focus on customer and propect outreach with impressive 73 percent interactive ratio
• Esurance drops (from 50% to 30%) following introduction of esurancecares
• AllState and StateFarm maintain high interaction numbers with constant message rates
• USAA and Nationwide, despite having high follower counts, resist significant interaction