‘Which’ and ‘how much’ are important – but don’t forget ‘why’

In an upcoming Customer Respect Group study, we will look at various attributes of Life Insurance websites, ranking them on how they help prospects answer key questions  online.

Clearly, one of the most important questions to answer is why taking out life cover is a good idea in the first place.  We are seeing a wide and surprising variation in how well companies answer this question.

Some cut to the chase and summarize the key reasons for purchasing life cover, under a heading or page title that reflects the question directly such as MetLife’s ‘Do I Need Life Insurance’ or AXA Equitable’s ‘Life Insurance – Do You Need It?’. Mutual of Omaha (Who Needs Life Insurance?) and Garden State Life (Who Should Get Life Insurance Protection?) are similarly direct.

A  second approach is to focus on what would happen if you did not take out life cover, which though slightly less direct, is another good way of attracting the attention of prospects that are not yet sure that they need it. Western & Southern Life, for example, uses the heading ‘What if You Weren’t There to Provide for Them?’

Too many companies, however, seem to assume that prospects have already decided to purchase and focus squarely on product detail, needs estimators or quote engines. The danger is, though, that unless the prospect is convinced that they need insurance in the first place, they might never get to those sections.

Others spread the message across many site sections, such as ‘Life Stages’ areas and general education articles, but miss out on answering the question directly. Prospects with time and patience to read his material would eventually be convinced that life cover is a good idea but a concise and prominent statement is a safer way to win them over. Examples and case studies are good to reinforce the message and are good supplementary resources, but unless the need is established upfront and with simplicity, an unconvinced prospect may go elsewhere.

Insurance Industry Facebook Latest Rankings – USAA, Progressive, American Family top the list; 20,000 New Fans this month

The latest Insurance Facebook Monthly Review uses the same methodology as previously albeit with minor additional tweaks to collect ever-increasing amounts of information.  

The methodology includes:

• Ease of finding the company presence – All too often, there are too many confusing options resulting from a Facebook search, many use the company logo and name. We look for an obvious company page including the use of a simple URL e.g. http://www.facebook.com/statefarm.
• Extent of Content – This ranges from a very simple page through to quite extensive, almost parallel online websites. USAA and Progressive are great examples to view.
• Use of Corporate Branding – We look for use of logo, acknowledgement that this was the official Facebook page, correct corporate address and telephone, company bios etc.
• Use of Video – Facebook can be a visual medium and most company post videos, most often of commercials but some, such as AllState go further.
• Integration to other ‘outposts’ – Facebook is not a standalone presence so should link to alternative channels. Here we looked for links to agent locators, twitter pages, corporate websites etc. Progressive, esurance, Thrivent Financial and American Family are all strong.
• Options to request quotes – While, this is not part of the business plan for all companies, it could be argued that this is home to more computer-comfortable users who might prefer to self-serve quotes. While this factor has a low weighting, it was nonetheless a useful metric to collect. Progressive and Travelers are best here.
• Fan base –Why does anyone become a fan of an Insurance company? Presumably to become a repetitive visitor and are an implied reference. There must be up to date content that will attract users to become fans so this is an important factor.

New Additions

Three new entrants entered the Facebook stakes this month, as Facebook becomes a critical outpost for insurance companies. The new Facebook pages belonged to:

• New York Life,
• Pacific Life and
• Progressive Motorcycle

Stop press – since this article was released Liberty Mutual contacted us to announce their new Facebook page. Given their recent aggressive Twitter campaign and an excellent community blog, watch out for developments from Liberty Mutual.

Progressive Insurance already hosts an active Facebook page but have elected to communicate to motorcycle customers separately, possibly using Facebook for micro-marketing. Impressively, Progressive Motorcycle signed up over 1000 fans in that short time.  The main Progressive page hosts 4500 fans, an increase of 680 over the month.

Key Takeaways – Fan Base

• AFLAC continues to have, by far, the biggest fan base for the industry but as the focus of attraction for the page is the Aflac duck; their overall rating is not as high. The AFLAC fan base is now over 136,000 and would offer an excellent channel assuming that this people are interested in insurance products.
• The top insurance companies added almost 20,000 fans in the month
• The increase in fan base in the last month alone across major companies is a staggering 28% representing a rapidly growing marketing base.
• The biggest growth in fan base was AFLAC at 8913, USAA (+3970), Progressive Motorcycle (+1012), State Farm Insurance (+962) and American Family (+869).
• The highest percentage fan base growth, (tends to suggest a concerted fan acquisition campaign) came from The Hartford (+163%), State Farm (+35%), American Family (+33%), and Thrivent Financial (+33%). The Hartford experienced a similar increase in Twitter followers last month so watch out for new social media strategy.
• Esurnace (+19), Nationwide (+147) and Travelers (+8) experienced a comparitive stall in fan acquisition. always possible after initial excitment in social media. 

Fan Base Leaders

Company	June	July	Adds	Percent Increase
AFLAC	127225	136138	8913	7%
USAA	23650	27620	3970	17%
Geico	5285	5827	542	10%
Progressive Insurance	3864	4544	680	18%
State Farm Insurance	2756	3718	962	35%
American Family	2659	3528	869	33%
Nationwide	1631	1778	147	9%
Allstate	1082	1386	304	28%
Progressive Motorcycle	0	1012	1012
Thrivent Financial	600	795	195	33%
Principal	600	680	80	13%
Westfield Insurance	395	450	55	14%
The Hartford	152	399	247	163%
Esurance	341	360	19	6%
Travelers Insurance	268	276	8	3%
Amica Mutual	110	123	13	12%
Mutual of Omaha	56	77	21	38%
Pacific Life	0	44	44
NewYorkLife	0	30	30

Facebook Rating

Fan base is not, on its own, the only critical objective. It remains to be seen just how many AFLAC duck fans create a positive business impact. The Facebook Rating takes into account the level of insurance focus, thus attracting a business-positive fan base. Using all of the factors listed above to access the Facebook business presence and impact, the leaders are:

1. USAA
2. Progressive Insurance
3. American Family
4. Thrivent Financial
5. State Farm Insurance
6. Geico
7. Nationwide
8. The Hartford
9. Esurance
10. Allstate
11. Westfield Insurance
12. AFLAC
13. Progressive Motorcycle
14. Travelers Insurance
15. Mutual of Omaha
16. Pacific Life
17. NewYorkLife

 Key Rating Takeaways

• AllState has developed a comprehensive presence but seems to have focused recruitment efforts to twitter, where they had a very strong month.
• Progressive spent a lot of effort launching the motorcycle page , and did see a lower recruitment rate on their main page
• USAA use Twitter to drive readers to their facebook page and seem focused on building a large loyal following in both locations
• New York Life and Pacific life created their first pages and while they do not have a very ambiguous strategy, they are creating a staging post.
• Principal Financial Group and Amica Mutual have have built Facebook pages focused entirely on internal careers and recruitment.

There has been an increase in agent and agency Facebook pages, resulting in some confusion from company searches. Many agents use social networking as a natural extension of their activities and help ‘spread the word’ but the growing confusion with brand identity may result. The screen below shows results from searching for Ameriprise, none of which point to an official page.

 

Ameriprise Facebook Search

 What is the Role of Facebook for Insurance Carriers?

There is no clear single strategy, which could be copied, or regarded as current best practice. High fan bases (AFLAC/Geico) could be motivated more on the cuteness of the duck and Geeko and while these images advance marketing goals, it does little to exploit the unique features of social media. Facebook is mostly used to push occasional news announcements and respond to messages from customers (fans). The online content is varied but most companies post video advertisements, links to websites, and basic information. Less frequently, agent locators, quote engines and product-orientated content is found but is the exception to date.

Many companies adopt a more whimsical or light approach on Facebook and promote fun brand images, events, sponsorships – few currently adopt a strictly business approach.

Some of the typical wall announcements are:

• AFLAC – Sponsorship promotions and news about the ducks ‘summer vacation’ (just visited Paris)
• AllState – Links to blog based video content such as safety tips and community pages – part od co-ordinated social media strategy
• State Farm – Sponsored events, news items –gets higher than average positive fan comments, mostly positive
• Progressive – News announcements and ‘Flo’ (Progressive ad personality) image building
• New York Life – Strictly business, website links, little new content
• Nationwide – Sponsorship news e.g. NASCAR.
• Thrivent – Helpful articles on budgeting, job seeking, stress reduction
• Geico – Geeko brand building, enthusiastic fan base
• USAA – Announcements and news, new applications, new products, business focused
• Western & Southern – Sponsored Tennis tournament news

 What is the potential of Facebook?

Companies see Facebook in many ways and it may be illustrative just to list quotes made on interviews regarding Facebook strategy

• “The objective is to assist in lead generation with a twist. A fan of the company is a public reference. If one of your ‘friends’ is a fan, we hope that will create more of a referral than a lead.”
• “Facebook is just another feeder webpage and we must find a way to integrate Facebook and other outposts into the complete online strategy”
• “Facebook allows customers to interact with the company; as yet however, we do not know why they would and how to cope with these comments.”
• “Facebook allows the company to push regular news and announcements to people that have implicitly indicated a strong opt-in. Facebook and other mediums will replace email newsletters.”
• “Facebook allows the company to address specific demographic groups”
• “Social media allows us to increase levels of trust which are essential as we develop greater direct online sales”

One comment is worth pulling out – “Facebook is owned by the brand management/PR groups as with all social media”. A few months ago, this was quite common, now, realtively rare.

 Companies without a Facebook Presence

Just under 50% of insurance providers have a Facebook presence which leaves a lot of major players still on the sidelines. The following companies are among many those that have yet to build an official Facebook page.

Great West, Liberty Mutual (started just as this was printed – see above comment), Securian, Genworth, Unum, Farmers Insurance, Ameriprise, Metlife

AXA-Equitable, Prudential, Mass Mutual, Garden State Life, ColonialPenn, Transamerica, Zurich, Minnesota Life, John Hancock, AIG, Erie Insurance

 Should you build a Facebook Presence?

There are dangers in both building and not building a page. If you build a page, you are inviting fans to write on your wall and they expect a response. You will receive negative comments. Active communities are built by internal community managers and most companies do not employ such a person or have a process to interact.

Facebook content needs to be refreshed, checked, and reviewed. As Facebook evolves and as other sites emerge, they all need maintenance. A content manager needs to be appointed.

 But, not building a page might be worse, you could fall behind on fan base acquisition, as other companies establish marketing and lead generation channels that you cannot match. Possibly worse, most companies have a presence whether they know it or not. Pages, many using the logo and company name have been set up by interns, employee groups, ex-employees, customers, IT groups, local agents and unhappy ex-customers. The company message is being presented but not necessarily by the company. The Farmers Insurance Facebook page shown below looks official but hosted by a single agency, possibly correctly, possibly not.

 

Farmers Insurance 'unofficial page'

 The Metlife Facebook page shown below, not been updated for 3 years, attracts 294 fans and has a constant stream of customer messages, the most recent, yesterday.

 

MetLife Dated Facebook Page

 

 

Facebook strategy, whatever that might be, is important. The fastest growth in Facebook activity is in the 35-44 age group with good income levels. They represent prime insurance prospects and will use social media to communicate about; if not with, insurance companies. Facebook must be one of the outposts of the online strategy and it may be a series of babysteps. As said earlier, no one has cracked the problem, the time now is for watching, measuring, understanding. Somebody will crack the problem and you do not need to be first, just do not be last.

USAA add 700 followers, maintains Insurance Twitter lead; top 20 insurers add 3000 followers in July

 

The July Insurance Twitter Index makes for interesting reading albeit we are just in the second month of recording statistics and we see wild early swings as company strategies evolve. Twitter continues to be a work in progress for many companies as they attempt to work out where it fits into the corporate objectives. Having said that, and despite a twitter cull of  dubious followers in the month, the industry posted impressive growth. In the past month, having spoken to many companies in the industry, and the legal departments must be working overtime; banning twitter, demanding guidelines and worrying about the implications, the growth of Twitter is proving too fast to ignore and while we may well see a few ‘teething problems’ before things settle down, expect most carriers to engage by year end. Adding followers to the twitter and facebook pages now provides for a new marketing mechanism to promote content, products and services. Twitter is also being used to support customers and facilitate additional dialog. In other industries, we now see very aggressive Follower-Recruitment activity in play. United Airlines promote ‘Twares’ (cheap flights only to Twitter followers), American Airlines are running competitions to drive new fans to its Facebook page.  Western National Insurance have ‘fan appreciation week’ to encourage ‘retweets’ by offering prizes. As Western are starting from a very low base (90 followers), we’ll monitor the results to see how this plan works – in the first day, they added 11 followers.

Twitter Followers

As for follower recruitment in the insurance industry, the key findings are:

• USAA continues to aggressively add followers with 733 additions in July to further increase their lead. They now have 5352 (16% percent month on month increase).
• State Farm and Allstate add 419 and 403 for totals of 2821 and 1817. Allstate’s increase of 31% leads the major twitter players.
• Progressive increased followers by 30% (269 additions) to reach 1156 for July.
• The top newcomer in follower ‘adds’ was The Hartford that started from just 56 to end at 289 at the end of the month.
• The top 20 Insurance tweeters added almost 3000 followers in July.

The top insurance companies for July for Twitter followers are:

Company	Followers	Adds	Growth Rate (month to month)	Previous Rank
USAA	5352	733	16%	1
State Farm Insurance	2821	419	17%	2
Aflac	2471	403	19%	3
Allstate	1817	427	31%	4
Nationwide	1344	187	16%	5
Progressive Insurance	1156	269	30%	6
Esurance	529	54	11%	7
AXA	377	45	14%	8
NorthWestern Mutual	311	60	24%	9
The Hartford	289	233	416%	17
Thrivent Financial	226	60	36%	12
Unum	201	5	3%	10
American Family	179	8	5%	11
Travelers Insurance	154	22	17%	13
Ameriprise	144	17	13%	14

 

Twitter Activity

As for Twitter activity, there are also interesting statistics to look at. USAA is never the most active tweeter and July was a weak month for the company with just 25 messages. This may be due to vacation and if so, illustrates the relative immaturity of the medium. State Farm led the way and pushed out 181 messages during the month. Newcomers to watch going forward as we start to see markedly increased activity levels are:

• Liberty Mutual
• Amica Mutual
• Thrivent
• The Hartford

 

Liberty Mutual has updated their Twitter page from a non-branded to a fully branded presence with links to the main website and to their blog.  

The most active ‘tweeters’ in July were:

State Farm Insurance

Progressive Insurance

Nationwide

Allstate

The Hartford

Aflac

Esurance

USAA

Thrivent Financial

 

Maximum Twitter Reach

The role of Twitter can be problematic, as to its function and goals and we see some companies increasing activity of type of activity while others go in the opposite direction. American Family had, in the first quarter, a very active account, which has now dropped to virtually nothing.

Combining the follower count and the activity levels provides a measure of monthly reach. This does not help understand quality, message or success but can help understand the trends. The July reach leaders were:

 

Company	July Reach	Month on month change
State Farm Insurance	510601	+47%
Allstate	252563	+139%
Nationwide	198912	+28%
Progressive Insurance	175712	+100%
USAA	133800	-38%
Aflac	123550	+7%
Esurance	22218	+14%
The Hartford	21964	+2351%
Thrivent Financial	4972	+1398%
NorthWestern Mutual	2488	-24%

 

As can be seen in the above table, these statistics have wild elements before we start to see stability. The Hartford has the highest growth in reach and this illustrates a new focus so one to watch. State Farm combines a strong following with an aggressive message count to lead the way.

 What Twitter Activity?

Most companies are pushing out news items as well as links to specialist content. Allstate hosts a number of videos on their community site, which they link to continuously. Liberty Mutual, a new entry, is looking to drive traffic to their blog. Nationwide promotes their NASCAR sponsorship heavily, a technique used by many companies including State Farm. Amica has started tweeting more heavily and in a large part are promoting positive consumer reports rankings. Some companies monitor their brand on twitter and interacting with customers. Esurance and Progressive are good examples of companies that proactively reach out to customers who indicate having a problem or question.

One measure of activity-type is determined by reviewing the percentage of ‘@replies messages’. These are messages sent directly to a person, who may or may not be a follower. This is an indicator of the number of conversations.

Twitter Conversation Metric

Company	Percentage of @replies
Progressive Insurance	72%
Esurance	55%
Allstate	50%
The Hartford	36%
Aflac	33%
State Farm Insurance	32%
American Family	31%
Liberty Mutual	31%
Amica Mutual	13%
USAA	8%
Nationwide	7%
Western National	4%
Unum	4%

 

Marketing Tweets

If we look at the reach again but this time eliminate the @replies assuming that the majority of these do not reach the entire audience (but they can), we can calculate a ‘marketing reach’ number, which is looking to drive awareness, traffic and brand, more traditional marketing objectives.

The marketing reach leaders are:

Company	Marketing Reach
State Farm Insurance	347209
Nationwide	184988
Allstate	126282
USAA	123765
Aflac	82779
Progressive Insurance	49199
The Hartford	14057
Esurance	9998
Thrivent Financial	4972
NorthWestern Mutual	2488

 

Allstate, Progressive drop down the table due to their higher reply activity and USAA and Nationwide move up as they are predominately market and engage far less.

 Next month we will review the data again, I expect the leaders to continue to stake their ground but expect Liberty Mutual, Amica, Progressive and The Hartford to become more aggressive. A Facebook insurance study will follow next on this blog as we see similar trends on that platform and many of the same leaders.