INSURANCE BARTENDER
INSURANCE CUSTOMER SEGMENTATION MARKET: THE NEXT GROWTH DRIVER FOR INDEPENDENT INSURANCE AGENCIES Both agencies and carriers should be evaluating, developing and implementing a segmentation strategy. Many carriers are developing or already have supporting strategies to meet the evolving needs of their customers. But the question is, as you progress on this journey are you engaging with your carriers and other strategic business partners in the discussion. A well-developed segmentation strategy can help the insurance organization in dividing the market into small segments where the customer needs are similar. Think about the groups of people in your life — family, friends, coworkers, etc. Chances are you don’t communicate with each of these groups the same way. For example, you most likely chat with your family in a different way than you do with your coworkers. You probably have different expectations of and methods of interacting with each of these groups, too. The same goes for your customers. Within your business’s base of customers, there are certainly different groups of people. The people who make up these groups have unique needs, traits, personas, pain points and expectations for your business in terms of communication and support.
channel or platform. • Meeting specific groups of customers where they are • Identifying new opportunities for products, support, and service efficiently Now that you understand what customer segmentation is and why it’s a process worth investing time in, let’s cover the most common models and types of segmentation. Although the following list from HubSpot doesn’t cover every type of customer segmentation, it provides you with a starting point for organizing your customers. Along with each model is an associated list of ways to segment your customers.
The key to creating and maintaining successful relationships with your business’s different customer groups is understanding their preferred styles of communication and their unique needs. This helps you effectively and efficiently meet (and, hopefully, exceed) their expectations by creating a customer experience tailored to their needs. Why segment customers? There are several other reasons why customer segmentation is so important. Here are a few examples of how a segmentation strategy can help agents and carriers: • Learning about your customers on a deeper level so you can tailor your content to their unique needs and challenges • Creating targeted campaigns and ads to resonate with and convert segments of customers • Improving your customer service and customer support efforts by understanding and preparing for challenges different groups are likely to experience • Increasing customer loyalty with customized content and interactions • Understanding who your most valuable customers are and why • Communicating with segments of customers via preferred 10 | MARCH 2022 |
wisconsin INDEPENDENT AGENT
Segmenting customers can be broken down into four easy steps: 1. Determine your customer segmentation goals. Think about why you’re creating a customer segmentation strategy — ask yourself why you are spending time on segmentation and what you hope to derive from the process. Something to note when developing your customer segmentation goals is that they’re going to be unique to your business — segmenting customers isn’t a one-size-fitsall process. For example, your number of goals will be unique to you based on your business’s size, type and industry, as well as who your customers are.
