When you only have to serve a few hundred clients as an advisor , you can be close to the client and know approximately what is going on. For an office with (tens of) thousands of clients, such one-on-one service is effectively no longer possible. Important client information is in the heads of advisors, of which you need more and more. That's risky and expensive. Personalization based on data analysis is then the only scalable method to also get and stay close to your customer. By personalization in this context we mean: communicating (only) the right information and offers, to the right customer, at the right time, through the right channel (mail, app, phone and the like) and that in the right tone-of-voice.

In short: continuously being as relevant as possible to each customer, that's the goal.

Key to success

In the short term, you can still benefit from your reputation and past results, but to stand out to your customer requires more. In this, personalization is a key to success. A personal approach creates a familiar feeling. This increases trust in the organization. As a customer, you feel understood and seen.

Customers demand personalization

Personalization in itself is nothing new. It started with companies that started sending personalized e-mail campaigns simply to increase the chances that someone felt addressed by their value proposition. However, that appeal and engagement is becoming increasingly difficult, as customers are setting the bar higher and higher. This means that as a firm you are no longer competing with a comparable insurance company, but with companies that offer excellent customer service with far-reaching personalization, such as Bol.com, Booking or Amazon. Recent research by McKinsey & Company (Next in Personalization 2021 Report) indicates that a whopping 71 percent of consumers expect a company to deliver personalized interactions. Worse, 76 percent get frustrated when this does not happen. More than three-quarters subsequently look for another company!

So not starting personalization means you can lose many customers because expectations are not met. People simply lose trust in your company.

'Everyone in the organization must be made aware of the importance of data quality'

Personalization, by the way, pays big dividends: the study shows that companies that are good at this show an average of 40 percent better results. Another recent study (conducted by TJIP) dealt with the reorientation of consumers in the financial products they purchase through financial service providers. The key finding of that survey was that 72 percent find it crucial that they are approached regularly as well as with a personalized offer. Personalization is thus no longer a nice-to-have, but a must-have.

Personalization examples

Customers themselves know very well what they expect with personalization. A customer wants to feel special, to be treated as an individual and not as a (policy) number. A customer also notices immediately if communication is irrelevant or useless. So you need to give the customer a positive experience at every touch point throughout the customer journey. And remember, for insurance or mortgages, unlike short cycles at Bol.com, the customer journey is more of a life journey. Moreover, investing in the relationship often only pays off in the long run.

Real-world examples of personalization:

• Asking for interests rather than just focusing on a transaction;

• Welcoming a customer to your company when he has completed an initial product;

• Send only relevant information (i.e., not the same newsletter to everyone);

• Send short how-to videos or white papers on a topic relevant and specific to that client;

• Celebrate anniversaries (x years of customer, total relationship) with the customer;

• Proactively anticipate upcoming life events (e.g., moving in together, moving out);

• Proactively offer the customer attractive deals on insurance or other services, even if it is not directly in your company's interest;

• Help with difficult choices: 'Others like you, usually choose this...'

• Dynamic frequently asked questions (FAQs) on your website/intranet to proactively capture common questions;

• Asking a customer to post a review.

How do you get started?

As mentioned, data quality is important to get started, although many organizations don't realize that they secretly already have plenty of data/customer information. Start with the piece of your portfolio where you are confident about data quality and build from there. Once you have taken a first step, you can more easily demonstrate internally why continuously collecting more contact and customer data (such as very basic a correct e-mail address) is very important for long-term success. Everyone in the organization needs to be made aware of this.

Many companies start by creating certain clusters of customers who have similar needs, for example, startups, families with children, retirees, SMBs or self-employed people. Then to use marketing automation software to send information to each cluster instead of the same newsletters to everyone.

To get a feel for how it can work, this is a good first step. The downside of this approach is that it takes a lot of time, is not really distinctive, and the clusters are often too large to be truly relevant.

Especially if you have a large office (say, more than 50,000 customers), it is more interesting to skip this step and start directly with one-to-one personalization. If you want to continuously provide so many customers with daily changing needs and ever-changing customer journeys with relevant information, you need advanced technology that is self-learning (artificial intelligence). Fortunately, this technology is increasingly readily available. For small offices, for example, it can be done through your software vendor or service provider. Be well informed, there is no need to reinvent the wheel.

Expert tips:

Wilbert Beelen, digital marketing specialist at Univé:

• Approach customers who have completed an initial product immediately afterwards for an overall conversation. You're still top-of-mind then. Introduce them to what you have to offer. You can do this effectively by only approaching customers with a high predicted Customer Life Value for a personal interview.

• Add the loyalty factor into the customer journey by making customers members of your community, offering them additional services or benefits, for example.

• Dare to make mistakes. Personalization never goes 100 percent right the first time. If things go 'wrong' somewhere, for example someone gets the wrong offer, the advisor can easily catch this face-to-face with a customer. Inform your advisors about campaigns in advance and don't discuss 'mistakes' with clients by e-mail.

Mark Kruisman, senior digital marketing specialist at Centraal Beheer:

• For example, set as your primary goal that you want to help as many entrepreneurs as possible with specific issues instead of focusing only on selling insurance. For example, target start-up entrepreneurs. If you are starting a business, what should you think about? Hiring staff, how does that work? Look at what people do or don't respond to and fine-tune your content accordingly. You can then show more specifically what solutions are appropriate: offering insurance and/or perhaps other services. Centraal Beheer actively embraces the partner in life strategy (tip: read the book The offer you can't refuse by Steven van Belleghem).

• Ease of use is the new form of loyalty. The less effort something takes, the more loyal customers will be. Competing on premium or conditions is then less important. The amount of effort a customer has to make, for example, to report a claim or take out insurance, can be measured with the Customer Effect Score (CES). The CES is based on the question, "How much effort did it take you to get your question answered by organization X?" (5-point scale). The lower the CES, the easier customers were helped. With the Net Promoter Score (NPS), you measure how loyal customers are. The NPS deals with the question, "To what extent would you recommend us to friends and family?" (10-point scale).

• Your data is the most important thing. Get that in order. Start personalization in a place where you can easily keep direction. Email marketing is the perfect channel to start experimenting with personalization. You can send campaigns in which you ask for more information from your customer, so you get a better idea of what is relevant to the customer. Adjust your communications accordingly. Then measure everything.

Source: This article originally appeared in the VVP, read here it the online version.