MetLife is a worldwide provider of insurance and unit-linked guarantees, and has been helping people with their financial decisions for over 140 years. In 2007, MetLife Europe opened in the UK to provide guaranteed retirement and investment products to help protect against life’s unknowns.
Strategy – broader business issues the company is facing
MetLife were launching their new Trustee Retirement Portfolio (TRP) product. They had identified that they needed to speak to specialist pension advisers and knew that although the universe they wanted to reach was very small, the potential value that they could deliver was very high. They needed to find an in road’ that would provide a platform for ongoing conversations and an impactful way to introduce their MetLife representative.
A targeted direct mail communications strategy was decided upon to include:
1. Direct mail pack hitting desks on day 1 – a high impact format that:
a. provided a teaser’ on the outer
b. promoted the product benefits and a prize draw in various pieces within the pack
c. included a free gift that linked with the main prize draw
d. promoted the high chance of winning (due to small audience being communicated with)
e. was highly personalised to make it easy for the adviser to get in touch with their personal MetLife representative.
2. Follow-up calls on day 4 (working days) to check the pack was received and introduce the sales representative and the benefits of the TRP product.
3. Follow-up pack on day 10 (working days) to offer another free gift to further encourage response.
4. Follow-up calls to those who still hadn’t reponded to make an appointment.
By offering a high value incentive to only a small number of advisers, MetLife hoped to ensure that the advisers would feel that they had been identified as important and valued customers.
Objectives of the campaign
At the time of launch, MetLife was the only provider offering this type of product with both capital and income guarantees. The key aim was to position MetLife as the leaders in providing unique and valuable retirement solutions, so they would subsequently recommend the TRP to their customers. However, most of these advisers knew very little, if anything about MetLife, so the objectives were three-fold:
1. Develop a high impact, targeted campaign to promote MetLife’s new TRP product.
2. Generate meetings in order to increase the volume and value of TRP sales to help meet ambitious targets.
3. Raise brand awareness and position MetLife as experts in providing unit-linked guarantees.
B2B Marketing Awards 2010 – Best use of Direct Mail – MetLife
The target audience
Through the use of analytic tools, MetLife was able to identify a range of key accounts to target. Typically, TRP-type products are sold by a niche market of SIPP and SSAS pension advisers with high net worth clients. MetLife was only trading with a small number of these specialist advisers and to communicate and develop a relationship with these key accounts could help enormously with their ambitious yearly sales targets.
These providers had to meet the following criteria to be considered for the mailing – earning around £100K in fees/ commission and servicing mass affluent and high net worth clients aged from 40 to 55, who are investment savvy and already have pension savings in a SIPP or SSAS valued from £100K upwards.
Media, channels or techniques used
The campaign was executed in four stages:
1. The initial DM pack had a suitcase outer, and contained a New York Wallpaper City Guide gift’ with cover wrap, a personalised letter, bookmark and an informative product leaflet. The incentive was to make an appointment with their MetLife representative in order to win a weekend for two to New York. As this is a sophisticated audience, it was felt that this high value, luxury prize would be suitably appealing to them. MetLife’s brand ambassador, Snoopy, was central to the creative to build brand awareness and to reflect the creative of the above the line advertising (Fig 1).
2. To maximise impact, the MetLife Representatives then made follow-up calls to their potential clients to introduce themselves, ensure that the DM piece was received, and to try to arrange an appointment to discuss the TRP benefits and arrange a meeting.
3. A simple follow-up mailer was sent to advisers a week before the competition entry deadline containing a personalised letter to encourage advisers who had not yet booked an appointment to do so. The card contained a complimentary £10 Starbucks coffee voucher, to get advisers in the mood for sipping coffee in the Big Apple (Fig 2).
4. Finally, all activity was again followed up with a phone call from the MetLife Representatives to encourage recipients to quickly make an appointment before the competition deadline.
Timescales of the campaign
- Planning commenced – February 2010
- Creative concept presented – March 2010
- Feedback was gathered client – March 2010
- First stage DM distributed – Monday 26th April 2010
- Follow-up calls – w/c 26th April 2010
- Second stage DM distributed – Tuesday 11th May 2010
- Follow-up calls – w/c 10th May 2010
- Competition deadline – Friday 14th May 2010
Results
Total population: 79 (100 per cent)
Returns: 7 (8.86 per cent)
Response – appts made: 32
Response rate: 44 per cent
Industry average*: 11.5 per cent
CPR**: £684
CPP**: £276
CPA**: Not available yet
Note – this does not include cost of competition prize.
- DM pack was received by 72 specialist advisers identified by MetLife.
- Two weeks after the initial mailing, 20 recipients (28%) had already booked an appointment with their MetLife representative and were subsequently entered into the prize draw.
- At the end of week 2 the follow-up card was then distributed to encourage those advisers who had not yet made an appointment to do so. As a result, a further 12 recipients (23% of the remaining 52 recipients) responded.
- In total, 32 advisers booked an appointment as a direct result of the campaign – an outstanding response rate of 44% against the industry average of 11.5%.
- The final response was more than double MetLife’s original targets of 20% (12.5% at the first stage of the campaign, and a further 7.5% at the second stage).
*Source: DMIS (http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/content1?catId=21000315&mediaId=21000317)
**Print of follow up item estimated at £200 as managed by client, so exact cost not yet known
Conversion
- Conversion of quotes into actual sales will be measured – this is ongoing. However, MetLife’s current pipeline for TRP is £1.9 million.
Brand awareness
- Prompted brand awareness increased from 35% in February to 50% in May 2010, an increase of 42% over just 3 months. Whilst there were a number of campaigns running during this period, it is expected that this campaign will have had an impact and helped MetLife branch out to a new audience.
Client testimonial
” I am delighted with the response rate to the TRP mailing which has been impressively high. Not only has it generated a series of business meetings that we would not have previously had but it has helped with the growing of brand awareness for MetLife in the UK. We have had extremely positive feedback from our sales team and IFAs on this. The engagement with IFAs has proved very successful, and it has also helped give the MetLife brand a wider audience.”
Claire Oldstein, head of marketing communications, MetLife
