Last week, we introduced our blog series on insurance commerce. We discussed the need to consider all the commerce activities that take place before the customer engages in a purchase.

First, You’ll Need a Strategy

There are many versions of the famous quote that says, “Strategy without execution is a dream, and execution without strategy is a nightmare,” but the intent is clear – a sound strategy is required to achieve expected results. For insurance commerce, desired outcomes should consider converting the customer to a policyholder and delivering a journey that makes them confident in their purchase and more likely to become loyal to your brand.

We’ll discuss setting your commerce strategy as the foundation of your insurance commerce discipline to achieve the desired outcomes of customer conversion and retention.

Some key elements and levels of maturity to consider when designing a commerce strategy:

Market Opportunity – How well do you know your market opportunity for existing products, and how well are you leveraging digital tools and innovation? How are you leveraging opportunities to grow your business?
Competitive Market Situation – What is known and validated about what direct competitors are doing in this space? How are you leveraging these insights to be competitive and create differentiation?
Your Go-to-Market Strategy – How are your go-to-market strategies responding to support the evolving digitally enlightened customer? Are they the same as they have been for the last 10 years with just a new website, or are you truly embracing the digital-first approach to help your consumers engage, discover, ask, use, and buy?
Goals and Objectives – Finally, how do you measure success? You’ll want to inspect what you expect. Who is setting cross-functional commerce goals that are aligned to business outcomes? Consider leading and lagging indicators to help inform if you are tracking the desired outcomes of conversion and retention. Items such as website content traffic, customer satisfaction, and household relationships are great leading indicators to help inform conversion and retention.

Our Key Takeaways with Strategy

Focusing on these elements of commerce will lead to a strategy that engages the consumer along their entire journey, not just the shopping cart.

For more information on enhancing your commerce strategy with the assistance of rising insurance trends, download our guide, Commerce Experiences and the Rise of Digital-First Insurance, and connect with Brian Bell and Beth Duerr on LinkedIn to engage with them further on the growing relationship between commerce and insurance.