Financial services: Red C's campaign for Swinton Insurance

Objectives
Engage with the 1.3 million audience during the other 11 months of the year. Deliver a new online lead source. Achieve a high open rate, low unsubscribe rate and a cost per quote of below £5.

Strategy and targeting
Swinton needed to keep customer and prospect relationships warm during the 11 months of the year when their core insurance product isn’t due for renewal, keeping the brand front of mind, cross-selling products and maintaining engagement. Red C had to grab people's attention, make them smile, and sell them the products, so Red C used everyday events and breaking news.

Customers love offers, so the emails had added value: the Oscars email included a Lovefilm discount and the World Cup Warm Ups an exclusive offer on beer. There were 1.3 million addresses for an audience most receptive to being contacted by email. This makes distribution costs cheap and allows Swinton to react very quickly to events and news: for the emergency budget Red C designed, built and distributed an email within 24 hours.

Email heat-map analysis and ongoing results analysis allows the campaign team to evolve the emails. Time is a big factor in ensuring success – the emails must be really relevant to maximise response. Html copy ensures the team has the flexibility to pop in timely and relevant messages. To ensure fast turnaround of these emails, the team agreed with compliance teams that the content would mirror that of the website. Product offers are always as per the site but then woven into a creative theme.

Database
The campaign delivered at least 1,548 new customers onto the database, and 2984 additional quote seekers who didn’t convert.

Results
The campaign generated £222,000 of additional premium income, and driven 60,277 click-throughs to the site, with an average cost per quote of £4.68, against a target of £5. The April Fools Day emails generated significant PR, and were voted 2010’s top 10 web hoax by Techradar. It generated an average open rate of 13% and unsubscribe rate of 0.4% from an audience of 1.3 million lapsed or live customers and prospects.