A guidebook, written for business leaders, explaining a complex, innovative approach to insurance.
The Situation
A captive is an alternative to traditional insurance in which organizations form their own insurance company and share risks. Instead of paying premiums to a third-party, they pool their funds to pay claims and then return unused dollars at the end of the year.
Sound complicated? Even for CFOs and business leaders, this idea takes some explanation, but as long as the right organizations are included, this risk strategy pays dividends – literally and figuratively – for participants.
The guidebook not only needed to explain the captive structure in a simple way, but also address common misconceptions and reasons for hesitation. Our audience was likely familiar with this concept, had maybe even done previous due diligence, but did not have a full understanding of the advantages and outcomes.
So we launched a content campaign targeted at business leaders within a specific industry – distributors – that were a part of three separate buying groups, in order to educate them about the value of joining a captive.
Our marketing team formed partnerships with these buying groups as a way to tap in to these existing audiences, which we knew included many organizations that fit our ideal profile – high-performing, mid-market, risk and safety conscious organizations with insurable workers’ comp, auto and general liability risks that could fit within the group captive model.
The Strategy
With The Distributor’s Guide to Captives as our tentpole content offering, we launched three separate but streamlined campaigns, centered around the following:
Placements in the buying groups’ quarterly newsletters
An in-person presence at each buying group’s annual conference
Arranging to receive attendee lists well ahead of time, so we could send invitations to qualified prospects asking them to meet our captives expert for a 1:1, coffee or dinner at the event
Digital ads in their event apps & print ads in their programs
An email drip campaign post-event to reinforce the value prop: and suggest next steps
After getting prospects to download the guide, we directed them to provide some basic information about their current insurance program through a simple form: how much they paid in premiums over the past five years versus what was paid out in claims.
The Assets
Landing Page & Blog Series
I developed a custom, co-branded landing page for each buying group which introduced the content and the captive expert.
It also contains a content module directing viewers to a blog series I wrote, providing more in-depth information about captives in case they have additional questions. Each blog has a smart CTA directing them back to the landing page.
The Guide
Based on a previous draft, this campaign coincided with a new website launch and brand update. I reworked the source material, redesigned the digital guide to match our new branding, and conducted interviews with clients to better understand their experiences (and to add member testimonials to the guide).
The digital guide also includes links back to the website.
The Workflow
We built a custom workflow for each buying group, which moved a prospect to a different segment based on their previous actions.
That way, depending on their point of entry, they would be served a deeper level of content. For example, prospects who opted in to communications at a trade show were invited to read the blog series, while those who downloaded the guide were prompted to complete the info review form.
Results
Marketing Qualified Leads
This content is designed for a specific audience, meaning we didn’t expect a high volume of downloads.
Stated more plainly – we’re trying to get this in the right hands. Knowing our audience of mostly owners and CFOs have little time to dive into opportunities that bring them little value, we had to hit the right notes with this campaign.
We had over 25 downloads of this content in the first six months after launch, all of whom:
Represent qualified, mid-market orgs in our target industry
Are the ideal target role: owners, CFOs or risk managers
Either interacted with us at a trade show or previously read a blog, joined a live webinar with a partner organization, or had connected with us in other ways
Closed Business Won
In March, less than a year after our campaign launched, we closed our first deal attributed to this campaign, worth $95K in revenue.
Typically, even with current clients who have been qualified for entry into a captive, we see a sales cycle over 18 months. To achieve this in such a short time was an exciting achievement.