Financial services firm centralizes its database to strengthen customized marketing
Add Assurant Group to the ranks of firms mining their databases to customize financial services promotions.
Admittedly, Assurant is still in the early stages of developing its customer relationship strategy. The Atlanta-based firm’s current efforts marketing by phone or mail don’t create a “perfect” one-to-one loop, says Craig Metz, executive vice president. He feels that’s only possible online, which is why the company is studying how to employ e-mail in future efforts.
To get on the one-to-one fast track, Assurant pulled records from DM campaigns over the past two years to create a central database. The next step will be to see how compatible the company’s 42 call centers are for data warehousing. The centers process in excess of 75 million outbound calls and close to 15 million inbound calls annually. Assurant uses campaign management software installed by Chicago-based Recognition Systems Inc.
Response and promotion history data is used to automatically score individual customer records and create predictive models to tailor marketing communications. For example, basic offers that pop up on a telerep’s screens automatically branch out to follow-up offers, depending on the customer’s response to a prior campaign.
Via partnerships with other companies, Assurant gains access to database records from institutions such banks, mortgage companies, credit card companies and retail chains. This data is used to target hundreds of financial products to consumers through teleservices and direct mail campaigns. Besides analyzing data supplied by its partners, Assurant also uses its own database and information obtained from third-party vendors.
Fortis Inc., a New York financial services company, formed Assurant last year after acquiring Miami’s American Bankers Insurance Group and merging it with another Fortis subsidiary, American Security Group of Atlanta. Prior to the merger, American Bankers and American Security were both working toward one-to-one from different starting points. While American Bankers marketed products mainly through banks, American Security had more experience in the retail and utility markets.
Network
