Comparison site wants to move to single view of customer as part of shift in customer approach and new marketing initiatives
iSelect is continuing to transform its relationship to customers and further develop digital marketing through automation and new affiliates to improve personalisation for enhanced customer journeys and ROI.
The ASX-listed marketplace made the comments as part of its full-year results announcement this week.
ISelect's underlying revenue (excluding iMoney) was down 16 per cent to $150.7 million, a result it attributed to prioritising profitable revenue and focusing on core business. The company has $22 million in cash and no debt.
ISelect has spent the past 18 months working to transform its back-end systems in order to pivot customer interactions from transactional to relationship-oriented, and is committed to starting the live rollout in the second-half of this financial year. Investments stretch from technology to outcome-based design and innovation and a substantial increase in delivery in the technology release cycle.
“Our technology initiatives will continue to focus on the core – customers, partners and operations – taking us from a transactional to a relationship business. This will transform the way customers interact with us in the future,” iSelect CEO, Brodie Arnhold, said in a statement.
iSelect is also striving to create a single view of customer, and has a raft of developments in the pipeline to own more household finance management along with improved product recommendations and the ability to cross-sell. The company also wants to enable subscription services, auto-compare features and bill upload and monitoring.
On the marketing side, several new marketing initiatives were detailed, including introducing a lead handling services for B2B clients and further developing white-label solutions for B2B partners to be part of iSelect comparison offering.There are also plans for improved personalisation and marketing automation for enhanced customer journeys and marketing spend ROI, supported by an internal marketing cloud.
“When you look at the pillars of our marketing strategy through our digital efficiency, affiliates, new lead sources, marketing cloud and iSelect brand, in FY20 we intend to build on these foundations and we look forward to seeing continued efficiencies as a result,” Arnhold said in a statement.
On the digital front, iSelect is looking for further digital efficiencies by continuing to optimise and automate its digital marketing investment.
“With strategic marketing investment and focus on ROI underpinning the greater efficiency and EBITDA growth seen in FY19, we will continue this into FY20 while also investing further in our brand,” Arnhold said.
On the financials front, iSelect said a focus on marketing ROI has resulted in EBITDA uplift across the business for the full-year to 30 June 2019. Among these are the health business, which has strategically shifted away from traditional lead sources to a focus on marketing ROI, resulting in an expected decline in revenue, leads, sales units and RPS, and produced an uplift in EBITDA of 7 per cent.
The loss of an affiliate partner and market demand produced a revenue decline in iSelect's energy and telco business. The company's life and general insurance business saw an uplift of 43 per cent in leads thanks to growth in newer general insurance verticals of home and contents, pet and travel insurance.
Follow CMO on Twitter: @CMOAustralia, take part in the CMO conversation on LinkedIn: CMO ANZ, follow our regular updates via CMO Australia's Linkedin company page, or join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CMOAustralia.
Leaning into brand building is a key way IAG's NRMA and CGU businesses are getting through the COVID-19 pandemic, chief marketing officer, Brent Smart, says.
For a while now, I have been following a fabulous design strategy and research colleague, Tatiana Toutikian, a speculative designer. This is someone specialising in calling out near future phenomena, what the various aspects of our future will be, and how the design we create will support it.
Online identity is a hot topic as more consumers are waking up to how their data is being used. So what does the marketing industry need to do to avoid a complete loss of public trust, in instances such as the COVID-19 tracing app?
CMOs are looking to ensure investment decisions in marketing initiatives are good value for money. Yet they are frustrated in understanding the value of product placements within this mix for a very simple reason: Product placements are broadly defined and as a result, mean very different things to different people.
University of Adelaide Business School and University of South Australia
Well done, team at Larsen. Fantastic story of how to continually invest in customer experience.
Adam Frank
A designer jewellery brand's take on customer relations
Great piece Katja. It will be fascinating to see how the shift in people's perception of value will affect design, products and services ...
Paul Scott
How to design for a speculative future - Customer Design - CMO Australia
Google collects as much data as it can about you. It would be foolish to believe Google cares about your privacy. I did cut off Google fr...
Phil Davis
ACCC launches fresh legal challenge against Google's consumer data practices for advertising
“This new logo has been noticed and it replaces a logo no one really knew existed so I’d say it’s abided by the ‘rule’ of brand equity - ...
Lawrence
Brand Australia misses the mark
IMHO a logo that needs to be explained really doesn't achieve it's purpose.I admit coming to the debate a little late, but has anyone els...
JV_at_lAttitude_in_Cairns
Brand Australia misses the mark