How PIMA Insights Awards Winner, WAEPA, Found Its Audience
Worldwide Assurance for Employees of Public Agencies, known as WAEPA, was one of the 2022 winners of PIMA’s insurance industry awards, known as the Insights Awards, for its lead generation efforts. In this article, we at TPG detail the innovative tactics and strategy that resulted in the agency’s success.
WAEPA exclusively targets current and former civilian federal employees. In 2021, WAEPA introduced group short-term disability insurance to its portfolio. This product launch filled a gap in the insurance market for federal employees. Federal benefits do not include short-term disability coverage; government workers had to essentially fend for themselves in times of crisis and needed something to help cover them.
As its marketing agency, TPG has a long-standing relationship with WAEPA and was included at this point to collaborate with WAEPA as it began creating a campaign announcing this new short-term disability coverage.
Creating the Campaign Strategy
One of the main challenges of this project was finding the audience for the product. While WAEPA’s target audience is clear — current and former civilian federal employees — it’s not a simple task to find them online or on marketing lists.
Therefore, the first step of this campaign strategy included creating and building awareness, as well as identifying the audience, while testing lead-generating tactics. These strategies utilized multiple mediums, including direct mail, email, display ads, Facebook ads, and a press release. As a result, we were able to contact people in their times of need and through their mediums of choice, alerting them of this new product offering. Our direct marketing campaign, for example, needed to first create the need for short-term disability insurance and educate the audience on why they needed it, all while trying to catch their attention.
In doing this, we were able to find and contact potential customers through their preferred mediums, creating interest in WAEPA’s short-term disability coverage. What started out as a major challenge became a strength — we found the ideal audience for this message by recognizing the insights and delivering on the behavioral changes needed for them to act. The net was wide, inclusive of both prospects (current and former federal employees), while using WAEPA’s own members as a metric baseline. The algorithms were able to find the target audience of WAEPA’s larger, and previously unknown, audience.
Beyond initial insurance lead generation, we built both digital display and social media ads with the same messages to WAEPA members and prospects. We drove them to a comprehensive landing page, which we leveraged like a mini website to overcome barriers to entry and answer the first burning questions people had.
A Successful Insurance Marketing Campaign
The results of this initial campaign exceeded expectations. Pre-campaign, our goal for app rates was 0.18%. Our app rate by the end of the initial campaign was much higher at 0.42%. On top of that, the landing page for the new offering received 77 application starts and 25 completed short-term disability applications over the course of the initial campaign period. The mini website page also produced the most leads.
Why was the campaign so successful for WAEPA and its new product? WAEPA and New York Life Insurance Company introduced a product that met a unique need. The government wasn’t currently sponsoring any short-term disability benefits, forcing federal employees to rely on paid sick leave, annual leave, the leave bank, or workers’ comp should they get sick or be unable to perform their jobs for less than one year. The campaign messaging communicated this and gave our audience clear steps to take to fill this need.
Partnership Was at the Heart of this Meaningful Campaign
PIMA membership helped TPG, WAEPA, and New York Life come together to create something great for a particular audience. The campaign took a PIMA business partner member (TPG), a product provider member (New York Life), and a distributor member (WAEPA) and brought them together to provide great value to customers. The campaign worked because behind this spirit of partnership was a genuine insight into the world around us and what WAEPA’s audience needed at that time.
If you’d like to learn more about the benefits of becoming a PIMA member, contact us today. PIMA offers more than networking, peer-to-peer learning, and continuing education. It can also help your company meet customers’ expectations and generate business growth through collaboration and innovation with industry leaders.
Published on April, 4, 2023.
PIMA® (Professional Insurance Marketing Association®) is a member-driven trade association focused exclusively on the affinity market.
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