Most insurance marketers acknowledge they’re not able to deliver the right messages to the right customers at the right times. The result is wasted investment and ineffective marketing. As this new report explains, just-in-time marketing can fix this. It examines why just-in-time marketers outperform those using conventional marketing practices. It’s not that they spend more on analytics or digital – their operating model and skills mix are different.

1. Just-in-Time-Marketing
Bolstering the
Effectiveness and
Efficiency of Your
Insurance Marketing
Strategy

2. 2
A wide chasm stretches between insurers’ growth goals and their marketing
executives’ confidence in hitting those targets. Growth has always been a top
priority for carriers, but only about half of their chief marketing officers (CMOs)
believe they can meet their growth objectives, according to Accenture research.1
How can insurers bridge that span? Just-in-time (JiT) marketers in various
industries around the world are demonstrating how: by eliminating wasteful and
ineffective marketing practices, creating customer opportunities and shaping
the customer experience. These marketers focus on the right kind of investment
tradeoffs, principally by using the most appropriate channels to reach in-market
consumers—those who are most likely to make a purchase soon. These consumers
are offered the products and services they desire at an attractive price, thereby
meeting or exceeding their demands and expectations. As a result, JiT marketers’
revenue growth is significantly out-performing their peers’.
As Accenture explains in its survey report, Building the Just-in-Time Marketing
Organization, JiT marketers—unlike their peers—have abandoned three main
tenets of conventional marketing wisdom. These are the same tenets that largely
guide insurance marketers:
The greater the marketing investment,
the greater the consumer awareness and
interest of the offering will be.
There are limited opportunities to engage
with consumers.
The marketing function is limited to a
tactical and supportive role for its
organization’s lines of business.
Before spending, study where an investment would
create the greatest incremental value. This includes
understanding and accepting when an audience is
too broad to justify an investment.
Create opportunities and constantly remain
relevant by considering consumers’ needs
and activities.
JiT marketers drive and shape the evolving
customer experience across channels and offerings
by taking a leadership role within the enterprise.
Conventional marketing tenets JiT marketing tenets
Introduction

3. 3
With their updated set of marketing principles,
JiT marketers differentiate themselves from their
peers by:
• Collecting and interpreting actionable consumer
data to plan and execute effective marketing
strategies.
• Establishing the marketing capabilities needed
to optimally communicate and execute their
value propositions.
• Making their organizations more agile than
competitors’ by executing a marketing mix that
tailors value propositions at the right time and
price to reach only the most likely in-market
consumers through channels they prefer.
Among JiT marketers across all industries
worldwide, more than 60 percent are very
satisfied with their ability to target only in-market
customers, and a similar number are very satisfied
with their ability to deliver the right message
at the right time, Accenture research shows. In
comparison, approximately 40 percent of non-JiT
marketers globally feel the same on both counts.
Looking specifically at insurance marketers, the
findings are similar.2
In the evolving, increasingly digital consumer
marketplace, the JiT approach significantly
improves marketers’ odds of providing a superior
consumer experience and meeting and exceeding
consumers’ increasingly liquid expectations and
demands. A by-product of the digital marketplace,
consumer expectations increasingly are becoming
liquid, seeping over from one industry to entirely
different industries.
The impact that the JiT approach has had on
its converts’ growth is eye-opening. Across all
industries, these marketers report significantly
higher growth rates than their peers: JiT marketers
were at least three times likelier than their peers to
realize annual growth rates of at least 26 percent
in both the past year and past three years.3

4. 4
To appreciate why CMOs at some companies have
been comfortable adopting the JiT approach,
insurers need only examine their own marketplace.
Accenture’s 2016 JiT survey4
found that only
17 percent of all consumers reached across all
channels through the conventional marketing
approach were in-market customers. As a result,
only about one-third—36 percent—of insurance
marketing executives were very satisfied
with the value-for-money of their marketing
efforts. It’s also not difficult to understand
why only 53 percent of insurance marketing
executives—less than in any other surveyed
industry—felt assured they could meet the
performance objectives of their organizations.5
The evolution of the overall consumer marketplace
over the past decade is the main cause of the
short reach of conventional marketing practices.
Today’s marketplace has been transformed in
part by an effect that Accenture calls Big Bang
Disruption: Existing products and services are
becoming outdated and even obsolete faster than
ever as newer, differentiated, customized and
cheaper offerings explode into the marketplace.
This trend extends into the insurance industry
with the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT).
In the past 12 months, there has been a two- to
three-fold increase in the number of IoT-related
products, services and pilots focused on homes and
buildings, health and fitness, and other wearables.6
Hardly surprising, in the wake of this accelerated
competitor-driven obsolescence, is that
customers’ brand loyalty is waning: 56 percent
of consumers report that the number of brands
they consider before making a purchase has
increased significantly over the past 10 years. In
addition, 46 percent say they are more likely to
switch providers today than they were a decade
ago.7
All of this means that consumers have
grown accustomed to the newer, differentiated,
customized and cheaper offerings that the
transformed market is making available.
The new consumer marketplace

5. 5
The agility of JiT marketers allows them to
negotiate the evolved marketplace environment
remarkably well. They are more focused on, and
adept at, reaching the right consumers through
the most appropriate channels—particularly
digital, but most importantly the channels
that customers prefer—with messages that
resonate and are most opportunely timed.
When they proactively engage customers,
JiT marketers deliver content that is relevant,
meaningful, and compelling on a real-time basis
to respond to customers’ changing demands and
liquid expectations. These high-growth companies
understand that today’s digital customer expects
a relevant and appealing experience at all times
and across all channels. Among all industries,
89 percent of high-growth companies are
focused on the importance of the customer
experience, compared to only 60 percent of
low-growth companies. At 69 percent of high-
growth companies, the customer experience
is the number one recipient of investments
out of 26 options, while the same is true at
only 40 percent of low-growth companies.8
It’s not that the JiT marketing function has
different building blocks than the conventional
marketing function. All have the same elements
associated with organization, processes,
information and technology. And, notably, JiT
marketers’ capabilities are not a function of
spending more on analytics or digital than their
peers. Indeed, Accenture research shows that
their analytics spend is about the same: 25
percent of their marketing budgets. This applies
across industries as well as to insurance. What’s
more, while all of those groups are expected
to increase their analytics budget allocations
over the next three years, JiT marketers expect
to increase their commitment slightly less.
Similarly, the average of JiT marketers’ digital
sales as a percentage of their total sales is slightly
greater than the global average and even further
ahead of their peers’ and the insurance industry’s.
In three years, however, the percentage for all
four groups likely will increase and reach nearly
identical levels. In marketing activities such as
customer acquisition, customer retention and
deepening customer relationships, the average
degree of digitization varies only marginally
when JiT marketers are compared with their
peers, the insurance industry and the global
average. It ranges between 50 and 60 percent
for all of those groups in all three categories.9
But despite the similarities among these groups
in their core investments and digitization, JiT
marketers have notably different operating
models compared to conventional marketers.
One important point of differentiation is
that JiT marketers do not isolate their digital
marketing efforts from the rest of their marketing
organization. For example, they do not set up
separate dedicated teams for mobile, social,
analytics or the digital customer experience.
Instead, they unify their digital and traditional
strategic initiatives and execution. Fifty-
eight percent of JiT marketers described their
digital and traditional marketing initiatives
as “very highly integrated,” while only 19
percent of their peers using conventional
marketing practices reported the same.10
The success of that integration depends on
establishing the appropriate marketing operating
model with the appropriate mix of digital
and analytics skills. It’s an important point of
differentiation between JiT and conventional
marketers that, research shows, does not typically
involve additional investment. JiT marketers embed
What JiT marketers do better

6. 6
people with these talents in all their marketing
teams, regardless of whether those teams focus
on specific campaigns, customer segments or
product or service categories. JiT marketers also
embed dedicated centers of excellence to make
digital and analytics capabilities readily available
in all of their marketing strategies and programs.
Notably, many insurers lack the required
competencies to transform into digitally mature
organizations. A Forrester Consulting study,
conducted on behalf of Accenture Interactive,
found that only 9 percent of insurance digital-
experience decision makers believe they are
exceeding their customers’ expectations. That
indicates very few insurers believe they have
mastered digital to a point of differentiation
from their competitors.11
JiT and conventional marketers also manage their
technology investments differently. Fifty-six percent
of JiT marketers said they independently choose or
invest in their IT solutions, while only 14 percent
of their more traditional peers reported the same.
This independence could be a reflection of the
more collaborative relationship between JiT CMOs
and chief information officers. This relationship
generally works best when the marketing function
is able to define and communicate its requirements
to the IT function, which then has the option
of either delivering within an agreed timeframe
or allowing marketing to directly meet those
requirements elsewhere.12
Significantly, many Accenture survey respondents
cited a lack of the right technology for the job
as a major barrier to managing their marketing
investments more effectively and efficiently.
The above survey findings suggest that a too-
rigid technology infrastructure could be among
the problems they face, along with a legacy
infrastructure, insufficient IT know-how to deliver
against business needs, and a lack of resource
capacity and competency.
The Forrester study shows that a minority of
insurance marketing respondents “completely
agree” that they have the technology (38 percent),
the operational processes (25 percent), and the
organization (30 percent) to execute their digital
strategies effectively.13

7. 7
To fully support a shift to JiT marketing and deliver
a differentiated customer experience, insurers
would need to develop several competencies.
They should:
1. Invest in data platforms that capture and
leverage information across all customer
touchpoints.
2. Build actionable customer segments and extract
insights from them to inform a go-to-market
approach.
3. Enable real-time, on-demand personalization
and customization of content that is
contextually relevant. The execution will differ
for direct-to-consumer and agent intermediary
models.
4. Deploy channel capabilities that support
customization of modular content. This is
content that can be easily tailored based on
customer-specific information, such as purchase
intent, online behavior, sentiments, product
mix and market competitive dynamics. Again,
execution will have to vary depending on the
insurer’s distribution model.
5. Integrate with partners that will provide access
and knowledge to an in-market audience;
deliver, augment, or expand the insurer’s
offerings; and provide new capabilities or new-
to-market innovations. Participating in this
ecosystem will make insurance solutions more
compelling and play a more active and engaging
role in customers’ lives.
6. Develop an integrated and balanced customer-
centric operating model, which would enable
all of the above. (That model would require
insurers to take several measures – see Elements
of the Operating Model For Just-in-Time
Marketers on page 8).
All of this means that the insurance marketing
function has to move beyond providing only a
tactical and supportive role to its organization’s
lines of business. CMOs will need to drive and
shape evolving customer experiences across
channels and offerings by taking a leadership role
within the enterprise.
Supporting JiT marketing

8. 8
To fully support a shift to just-in-time marketing, insurers should
implement an integrated and balanced customer-centric operating model.
To that end, they must:
• Focus equally on the tailored solutions that
address customers’ needs, passions and
interests in a contextually relevant manner,
and on the evolution and competitiveness
of insurance products and services. Issuers
have traditionally focused more on the product
and less on the customer.
• Develop an integrated go-to-market strategy
from demand generation to closing the
sale. Insurers typically develop and manage
marketing and sales strategies in silos.
• Develop a geographically integrated marketing
and sales strategy. These programs should be
aligned at the national, regional, and local
levels. Some local marketing programs are
not coordinated or supported by the broader
national marketing efforts.
• Achieve cross-channel integration of marketing
and sales channels. Some insurers execute
digital marketing efforts outside of the
marketing function, leading to sub-optimal
performance and higher costs.
Elements of the operating model
for JiT marketers

9. There are no easy fixes for eliminating the waste inherent in the conventional
marketing approach. But that should not delay insurer CMOs a moment from
beginning to build a JiT marketing function.
Research shows that competent JiT marketers help enterprises reach their
growth goals by engaging only in-market consumers with relevant messages
at just the right moment, significantly reducing the substantial waste and
ineffectiveness common in conventional marketing. Beyond a significant
increase in cost-efficiency and effectiveness, JiT marketing also should provide
customers a more delightful experience. Those hidden values should add up to a
sustainable competitive advantage.
To build this marketplace advantage, insurer CMOs will need to take a leading
role in reshaping the marketing function. Analytics and digital capabilities must
be integrated throughout the marketing function. Marketing and sales strategies
must be coordinated geographically and across all channels. And the marketing
function must be able to help shape and inform the technology spend needed to
accomplish all this.
Companies in various industries across the globe have generated far greater
growth than their peers by adopting a JiT marketing approach. Insurers can, too.
Conclusion
9

10. Copyright © 2016 Accenture
All rights reserved.
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High Performance Delivered
are trademarks of Accenture.
About Accenture
Accenture is a leading global professional services company,
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Contact the Authors
To learn more about how Accenture can help your organization,
please contact the authors:
Author
Julio J. Rivera
Senior Principle, Global Marketing Transformation Lead,
Accenture Financial Services Distribution and Marketing
julio.j.rivera@accenture.com
Contributing Author
Josh B. Bellin
Research fellow, Accenture Institute for High Performance
joshua.b.bellin@accenture.com
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References
1 The Digital Insurer—CMOs: Time for digital transformation.
Baiju Hah, Glen Hartman and Brian Whipple. Accenture.
2 Building the Just-in-Time Marketing Organization. Joshua Bellin
and Paul F. Nunes. Accenture Institute for High Performance.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 The Digital Insurer—CMOs: Time for digital transformation.
Baiju Hah, Glen Hartman and Brian Whipple. Accenture.
6 Accenture Distribution and Agency Management Survey |
Reimagining Insurance Distribution. Erik Sandquist,
Jean-Francois Gasc and Robert Sollmann. Accenture.
7 U.S. “Switching Economy” Up 29 Percent since 2010 as
Companies Struggle to Keep Up with the Nonstop
Customer. Jan. 21, 2015. Accenture Global Consumer
Pulse Research.
8 The Digital Insurer—CMOs: Time for digital transformation.
Baiju Hah, Glen Hartman and Brian Whipple. Accenture.
9 Building the Just-in-Time Marketing Organization. Joshua Bellin
and Paul F. Nunes. Accenture Institute for High Performance.
10 Ibid.
11 Digital Transformation In The Age Of The Customer: A Spotlight
On Insurance. November 2015. Forrester Consulting,
commissioned by Accenture Interactive.
12 Building the Just-in-Time Marketing Organization. Joshua Bellin
and Paul F. Nunes. Accenture Institute for High Performance.
13 Digital Transformation In The Age Of The Customer: A Spotlight
On Insurance. November 2015. Forrester Consulting,
commissioned by Accenture Interactive.
This document is produced by consultants at Accenture as general
guidance. It is not intended to provide specific advice on your
circumstances. If you require advice or further details on any
matters referred to, please contact your Accenture representative.