Aligning marketing and sales at Swiss Reinsurance Company

Financial Services Marketing Strategy (Case Study)

Marketing and sales often work in silos, with little transparency and insight into each other's activities. What might a coordinated marketing and sales organisation look like? How can key account managers, business development representatives, and marketing teams gain the same understanding of what activities are optimal at different stages of the customer journey?

Challenge

Our client, the large international reinsurance company Swiss Re, wanted to transform and strengthen its marketing function with the goal to become the preferred risk partner of its global customers and deliver sustainable profits to its shareholders.

Swiss Re was dissatisfied with their marketing activities, which were scattered across customer segments and regions rather randomly and in an uncoordinated way. They wanted to develop and implement a clean and systematic market cultivation approach that enables a targeted and individual end-to-end customer experience across all touchpoints.

The biggest challenge was to understand the needs of the various stakeholders in detail, which was further complicated by the complexity of Swiss Re’s global organisation. This also meant getting the buy-in from a very large number of stakeholders around the world, all with different needs. Furthermore, these needs and requirements had to be analysed and collected in a granular way and in the context of locally different service portfolios.

"Marketing transformation is more than taking marketing activities to a new level and providing tailor-made customer journeys. It’s about putting the human being centre-stage. Only a change in mindset delivers sustainable results."

Mattias Eklund,Head of Digital Marketing, PwC Switzerland

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Solution

Together with the experts from Swiss Re we developed a Marketing 2.0 mindset centralised around a Marketing 2.0 playbook that provides clear guidelines and suggests marketing measures that enable upselling and cross-selling.

What sets the resulting playbook apart from all others is the fact that it offers directly implementable solutions: all activities in the playbook are ready to use. It is not just a conceptual framework, but a user-friendly, interactive platform. This platform – hosted by Seismic – works like a one-stop-shop. The business users can browse the relevant shelves, select appropriate actions, and send them directly to their customers – creating an immediate impact in the market with just a few clicks.

Some examples of the key ready-to-use activities and assets integrated in the Marketing 2.0 playbook are:

Questionnaire on marketing tactics for integrating marketing into clients’ strategy
Building blocks for social engagement and harnessing the power of social media
Alumni relations management
Framework for nurturing campaigns
Asset supermarket to integrate Swiss Re’s latest market and client research

In addition to the Marketing 2.0 playbook, we developed an integrated campaign framework to ensure that marketing activities are relevant to the business – from awareness to engagement to conversion. Our integrated campaign framework enables the handover between marketing and sales by integrating highly personalised and account-based marketing activities.

Approach

Swiss Re was looking for a marketing transformation partner to support them from strategy to implementation and to deliver tangible results. Our experience with our own marketing transformation allowed us to communicate at eye level.

To deal with the complexity of the project, we followed our proven four-step approach (analysis, concept and design, development, execution) including agile BXT and accelerator methodologies. BXT (business, experience, technology) unites fragmented viewpoints to get everyone to focus on a single purpose and solution – something that isn’t possible when viewed through a single lens only.

We brought together our marketing, sales and financial services experts to identify gaps, create ideas, determine and prioritise growth opportunities, and develop the framework and initiatives for the playbook – from concept and design to immersion sessions and workshops to specific marketing measures.

To test our solution, we conducted several pilot activities with key stakeholders to drive the integration of the Marketing 2.0 mindset in the daily business. These pilot activities allowed us to collect and continuously integrate feedback to improve the playbook and related activities.

To maintain momentum and ensure the further scalability of the Marketing 2.0 mindset, we established and aligned marketing governance and mandate with the relevant stakeholders.

Results

Using the playbook, we were able to create a simple, systematic, and actionable framework for Swiss Re to target their customers in a personalised way across the sales funnel. But more than that, by embarking on this journey we brought together multiple teams from key account management, business development, and marketing, to develop a unified approach to targeting key customers and driving business growth.

At the heart of our new global strategy, 'The New Equation', is our focus on putting the client at the centre and striving for sustainable outcomes rather than short-term goals. This project was no different. We brought together our team of unconventional problem solvers with different skillsets to achieve long-term results and ensure sustainable success of the client’s business.