How IAG is kickstarting a digital marketing revolution

Step 3: Tackle a single customer view

Alongside navigating the technology environment, IAG faced a data challenge. While a huge array of data exists across the organisation, significant chunks resided in data silos.

“We’ve effectively been changing the engine on the plane while we’re still flying the plane,” Burgess said. “Our core data environment is critical to driving martech and adtech, and the tech stack. It’s been a challenge, but we’re taking an innovative approach to both data and tech pieces.” 

As part of the shift to a centralised data model, IAG is moving from a traditional data warehouse environment to a big data approach where everything is pooled into one data lake.

 “We are contextualising that into what we call the ‘single view of customer’, then we’re building a customer analytical record, which is marrying all extended attributes of behavioural data. Those two things combined will be driving our martech and adtech.”

Burgess noted the difference between having a legal entity versus an analytical match of a customer using data. “You can use an analytical match to understand segments of cohorts of people, understand trends, behaviour, and do deep analysis around the types of products and services we should be delivering to our customers,” he said.

“That’s different to the legal entity match. We’re at the point now of recreating what we had in BI, which was a lot of context built up over the course of five years and lots of embedded knowledge in people and those groups, in a way that gives us the confidence that we’re sending out communications to the right people.

“That’s the context the data team are working on at the moment, and that will allow us to accelerate delivery of campaigns.”

Step 4: Build the future marketer

Technology and process are just two of the three legs of any modern marketing stool, however. Burgess said work on fostering the “marketer of the future” is the third priority.

“Kicking off our marketing innovation build internally was effectively a change of practice internally bringing different marketing departments together,” he said. To help, IAG appointed its first group CMO, Brent Smart, in late 2016.

“Traditional marketing was about having a brief, working with an agency, and having the agency do the creative to a first brief. Execution of our channels was also outsourced, so we’d provide them with a whitelist and they’d execute then report back, which could take weeks. There’d be questions on if it was accurate, and if we’d measured the effectiveness of our campaigns. That’s not being effective.

“The skills and marketer of the future is something we’re now working on.”

As well as extensive platform training, marketing staff are sitting with IAG’s martech implementation partner on a daily basis to ensure skills around executing data-driven, digitally fuelled and iterative marketing campaigns are transferred.

“Changing that marketer of the future from a technology perspective is one thing; then there is the marketing operations that will be driving things, generating reporting, and understanding the effectiveness of campaigns,” Burgess said. “Again, that blend of marketing and technology is a new skill we’re working to develop internally.”

More execution capability from agencies must become internalised, Burgess said. “Once we digitise those processes, and have the collateral and creative under our control and ownership, this technology will allow us to assemble campaigns incredibly rapidly,” he said. “That’s what we’re aiming for.” 

What’s further helping foster agility is adopting a lean enterprise approach across the entire organisation, led by IAG CEO, Peter Harmer. With any change, executive endorsement is vital, Burgess claimed.

“I don’t believe when you’re trying to change an organisation internally that you can do it as a grassroots movement,” he said. “You will not achieve the outcomes you need to in order to affect lasting change.”

Now that marketing is coming together at IAG, a centralised martech plan has been established and campaigns have started rolling out, Burgess said change is well underway.

Step 5: Keep changing

Burgess’ next priority is scaling the martech platform to encompass all of IAG’s campaign activity. Key to that is the data piece, and looking at which of the 300 or more campaigns run today should be migrated, versus those that shouldn’t, he said.

The team also wants to up other channels outside of email, and is now working to enable SMS and outbound. Simultaneously, a team led by IAG’s personalisation engineering director, Willem Paling, is investigating how to improve adtech capabilities.

Burgess noted the insurance industry is ripe for disruption and shaking up marketing is part of a much larger change the organisation must go through if it’s to stay relevant in a connected customer age. 

“With the advent of autonomous vehicles, the sharing economy, and so on, we know traditional products, which have a typical 6-12 month lifespan based around renewal, are going to change dramatically,” he said.

“The work we’re doing in the data space for example, is about understanding our customers’ networks, relationships, their behaviour and their intent. It’s about creating the products and services that meet their needs, as opposed to insuring an asset.

“If we can insure you, your family and network and have a far more frequent interaction with you, then we become more relevant. We believe this will create growth for new products and services that meet your needs.

“This is setting us up to have far more relevant and timely conversations with you across channels as we develop those products and services of the future.”

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