For decades, diversified insurers have doggedly pursued the Holy Grail: getting customers to purchase from them multiple types of coverage.

Success has been elusive, and a recent study by LIMRA, a financial-services research group, offers a surprising explanation why: Many consumers don’t have a clue their insurer even offers other products.

Only 48 percent of consumers surveyed by LIMRA were aware that their multiline insurer offered life insurance. The study also found that one in three people who purchased life insurance from a company other than their auto insurer did so because they didn’t even know their auto carrier sold the product.

Talk about a deflating revelation. For all these years, could the root of the P&C industry’s cross-sell struggle be this simple?

Many insurers and their representatives would probably scoff at this prospect, arguing that they routinely advise customers about other available coverages, through advertising as well as live interactions.

The problem is, insurers and agents may be talking—but customers aren’t listening. And so, despite multiline carriers’ best efforts, their diversified product line ends up being their best-kept secret.

Consumers are bombarded with thousands of marketing messages each day. It’s no wonder if they disregard a life insurance mailer, or their agent’s passing reference to disability coverage. If the relevance of the message isn’t immediately clear, our brains just tune it out.

THE MOMENT, NOT THE MAILER

So how can multiline insurers achieve relevance, increasing the likelihood that a customer actually absorbs the cross-sell message? The answer is they need to focus on the moment rather than the mailer.

A simple message conveyed in the right context can have a lot more relevance and impact than even the most gorgeous marketing piece.

What is the “right context”? Here are three examples of customer touch points to which insurers should pay greater attention:

1. The Welcome Package: Policy delivery is often viewed as an administrative exercise, but it’s actually one of the few times, outside of claims, where customers can be receptive to learning about their coverage and their insurer. It presents an opportunity for customers to verify that “what they’ve got” aligns with “what they thought they bought.”

So insurers should use this moment to deliver more than just a stack of complex policy pages. A thoughtful and inviting welcome package can plant the seed about other available products at a time when the policy owner is primed to listen.

2. The Annual Review: Coverage anniversaries provide another moment of truth when customers are more receptive to actually reading something from their insurer or agent. It’s a chance to convey information about premium changes, new discounts and other policy developments.

Insurers that view annual renewal communications as just another transactional touch point are missing a key opportunity to reinforce the policy owner’s purchase decision and retell the multiline story.

3. A New Personal Narrative: The third touch point: Those instances in which a customer’s behavior implies a change in their personal narrative, such as marriage, divorce, having kids, buying a home, etc.—something that makes a conversation about insurance more timely and relevant.

This might sound like standard “life event” marketing, but many companies apply that discipline as a blunt instrument, messaging customers based not on their individual behavior, but their demographic characteristics. A more surgical, behavioral approach is far preferable.

Take my experience trading in a Volvo sedan for a Toyota minivan. Amazingly, my longtime auto insurer never used the moment to engage me in a conversation about life insurance. The minivan purchase was a clear signal my family was expanding. Yet, other than an unintelligible policy summary and premium notice, the insurer was silent.

I ended up purchasing life insurance from another carrier. My auto insurer, to whom I had developed great loyalty, wasn’t even in my consideration set, for all the wrong reasons.

The allure of cross-selling is undeniable—lower acquisition costs, better retention, improved profitability. The strategy is particularly appealing in today’s growth-challenged environment.

Many point to sophisticated customer analytics as the ultimate solution to these industry woes. But while better technology can help, it’s not the only answer.

You don’t need a computer to tell you that a renewal package will garner more attention than a generic mailer. And a million-dollar system isn’t required to interpret customer behavior, if you’ve got empathetic, insightful and well-trained representatives working with the public.

Insurers need to get smarter about engaging customers in the cross-sell dialogue—and putting down the megaphone in favor of a more thoughtful conversation. That means speaking to customers when they’re more likely to listen…and listening to customers to know when it’s time to speak.

Special Reports /

The Secret to Selling Multiple Lines

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