$330,000 to $16.8 million online in four years.
Damian was college roommates with Michael, who played on my hockey team. They'd both just graduated with degrees in digital marketing, and Michael had introduced us a few months earlier at a Blues and Ducks game. Then Damian got hired to run internet marketing at Veterinary Pet Insurance, the first pet insurer in the country, and he called Michael to ask if I could help. Damian came over. We looked at the site, and it wasn't very good.
These are this engagement's results. Your business is different, so they aren't a promise of yours.
In 1999 the website took 1,355 applications and brought in about $330,000, for a company selling a product most pet owners had never heard of. The site described the product. It didn't sell it. You can still see it on the Wayback Machine, and if you do, you'll see what Damian and I saw: a brochure with a phone number on it.
I put a bid together, and my team at Stirling Bridge and VPI's people started working on something that would work for their audience. Not one audience, it turned out. Four.
Four front doors
A pet owner, a policyholder, a veterinarian and a breeder all want different things from a pet insurance site. We gave each of them their own way in, instead of one page trying to talk to everyone.
A quote engine
A quote in minutes, on the site, instead of a call back. If you want someone to buy insurance online, the price has to be there when they are.
Enrollment on the site
Quote to policy without a phone call or a mailed form. Every step that used to need a person became a step the site did.
Payments and renewals
Premiums paid on the site, policies renewed automatically, and a warning before a card expired, so a policy didn't lapse just because a card did. Years before most companies had any of it.
Keeping the customer
Retention was built in from the start. The site kept working for a policyholder after the sale, and renewal revenue stacked on top of new sales every year.
The plan that carried it
VPI's own long-range plan in 2003 projected 40% growth a year and a company aiming at $1 billion in revenue by 2010, with the website carrying more of the new business every year.
Within four years online applications went from 1,355 to 64,210, and online revenue from $330,000 to $16.8 million, about 40% of everything new the company sold. It helped make the company profitable. Nationwide later acquired VPI, and the business is Nationwide Pet Insurance today. Damian and I have worked together for more than twenty years since, and he's still one of the first calls I make.
“What I would want another executive to know is that John thinks about the business first and the technology second. I have worked with him for more than twenty years, and he is still one of the first calls I make.”
Is your site describing the product or selling it?
Tell me a little about what you're doing and what you've tried. If there's a fit, the next step is a conversation of about 30 minutes, at no charge. Launching something new? That work is now Market Entry Intelligence.