Fortune 1000 insurer cuts time-to-market in half by accelerating production of tailored marketing communications

Challenge: IT and agencies create bottlenecks

A large, reputable U.S. insurance organization relies on sophisticated marketing strategies to provide high-quality insurance products and services to its nationwide network of credit union partners and their members. The company invests significant time and resources in direct marketing to credit union members, sending millions of communications every month. Its results-driven approach involves a great deal of A/B testing to continually analyze and refine messaging and presentation to many distinct audiences.

Unfortunately, the marketing team faced enormous bottlenecks in getting the new or modified communications out the door. Not only did the team depend on outside agencies to design the communications, but they were also reliant on the IT team to build the materials using the company’s customer communications management (CCM) system, Quadient Inspire. IT then had to usher each mailer through multiple review and approval steps, further slowing the process. The typical time required to create or modify, approve and produce a new mailer was six months.

Recognizing the need to be more agile and efficient in its marketing, the company’s marketing team turned to its mail house partners for advice. Their recommendation: get Messagepoint.

Solution: Putting marketing in control

With Messagepoint, the company’s business groups are now empowered to manage the entire process of creating or modifying their marketing communications, without having to rely on IT or external agencies. Marketing teams can now enter or modify content on their own in Messagepoint’s easy-to-use, SaaS content management solution. They can also leverage standardized graphical elements to create or modify mailer designs and all communications can be instantly proofed and tested. This decreases their reliance on external agencies and accelerates their time to market, generating significant savings.

Given the company’s thousands of credit union partners and its commitment to A/B testing, managing variations is a critical task. Messagepoint’s patent-pending, rules-based variation management technology dramatically streamlines and simplifies the process of creating multiple versions of highly personalized communications for specific customer segments in a way that wasn’t possible with Quadient Inspire. Content and design variations are stored in a centralized Messagepoint library, and by following simple “if/then” logic, users can rapidly compose mailers with content tailored to each customer segment. When a change is made to shared content in the Messagepoint library, it automatically updates across all communications with that content—a big time saver and a huge win for consistency in brand communications.

Messagepoint also streamlines the organizations rigorous proofing, approval and compliance processes. All stakeholders now access prepared communications via the centralized, cloud-based Messagepoint workflow to review, edit and approve—without having to wait for IT. In addition, seamless integration with Quadient’s composition engine enables easy and rapid production, while protecting the company’s technology investment.

Impact: More personalization and consistency in half the time

Soon after adopting Messagepoint, the company slashed its time-to-market for new marketing communications due to its lengthy approval process by 50 per cent—dramatically improving its agility. The process is now the leanest it has ever been, considering the rigorous approval process for communications the organization requires.

By minimizing reliance on its IT department and external design agencies, the company’s business groups now enjoy greater control over their communications. By streamlining business processes, Messagepoint has improved efficiency at every step, freeing IT to focus on the company’s technology infrastructure, rather than its communications.

Messagepoint helped slash time-to-market for new mailings by 50%.

What’s more, as the company expands its marketing communications into email, Messagepoint’s omnichannel approach will enable them to deliver a consistent, seamless user and customer experience across all touchpoints. And Messagepoint’s new integration with Salesforce Journey Builder will provide even greater control over the company’s marketing campaign management—from creating and producing communications to analyzing results.

Benefits

• Shortened production time by 50%
• Content control enables improved targeting, personalization and quality of messaging
• Improved agility and efficiency

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