Tools of a DTC Marketer
By Matthew Wolf
NewsDirect, August 2021
As covered in the previous newsletter article “DTC: Direct to Consumer, Definitions to Conclusions,” Direct to Consumer (DTC) approaches are emerging areas for innovation and disruption. In this article, I will outline the key tools that are found in a digital marketer’s toolbox, briefly explain the broader digital marketing ecosystem, and outline how digital marketers leverage these tools to attract and engage customers within this ecosystem. The goal of this article is to help actuaries in all areas gain a basic level of familiarity of the world of digital marketing, so they can apply this knowledge to product design, systems design, and business valuation.
The key driving force behind all DTC strategies is a rejection of the old adage, “life insurance is sold, not bought.” But in order for the consumer to shop for and buy insurance, the consumer still needs to find the insurer or distributor—a fundamental challenge for an industry filled with hundreds of relatively unknown brands.[1] The DTC growth marketer has the responsibility to make the consumer aware of the desired brand, attract them to their product offerings, and then engage with them through the purchase cycle. To achieve this goal, the marketer uses a set of marketing technology, or “MarTech,” tools. Searching online for tools, the marketer could easily find thousands of solutions available in the MarTech landscape to select from. The solutions they choose will interact and build on each other and so the combination of those tools is often referred to as their “MarTech stack.”
MarTech Components
While there is no universally accepted categorization of the marketing technology landscape, below is a list of some of the more common types of tools today.
Ad Tech tools allow the marketer to build and deliver advertising campaigns, and then measure their success. Think about all the places you might see digital advertisements, such as search engines, blogs, or the middle of your podcast or music stream. The company organizing that ad would use AdTech tools to build the ads, organize and distribute those campaigns, and figure out what is working. Many of these companies do not have widely known brands, although Facebook and Google are clear exceptions.
Social Media Management tools assist with managing social media posting, marketing, and responses. These tools can be used by companies directly, or by social media management, digital advertising, or public relations firms that the company hires.
Search Engine Optimization tools help make sure your site and content is understood and built in the best way possible for the search engine to rank your company’s site optimally.
Content Management Systems (CMS) provide a platform for managing articles, blogs, and website content. A CMS is a critical tool as part of a SEO strategy for managing all the content needed, in a single location independent from but linkable to the other tools that comprise your MarTech stack.
Email and SMS marketing platforms enable email and SMS campaigns to be designed and automated. The tools generally also allow the campaigns to be tracked to measure their success and adjust accordingly.
Content Testing tools enable marketers to test different content on a site, such as the landing page an ad takes you to, to measure which is more successful at engaging with customers, as well as optimizing the site.
Direct Mail Tools allow automated marketing campaigns to target customers by mail, with postcards and mailers, and to tie those campaigns to the digital activities of the potential consumer.
Automation Software assists the marketer in coordinating the MarTech stack and the various tools and campaigns.
Data Management Platforms—Also known as Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) provide the infrastructure and framework for managing customer and marketing data, and creating the automated pipelines to use that data with various MarTech tools. In many instances, these platforms can become a central hub or repository of the marketing data that feed and are fed by various tools.
Data Analytics Tools give insight into the customer behavior data to optimize the use of the various MarTech tools and strategies to continue to optimize the attraction and engagement of customers. The tool also can help segment customers and identify the customers most likely to engage with a certain set of campaigns, which can be used to target customers who might similarly be interested in that campaign.
Customer Relationship Management Software empowers the user to manage leads and customers information, including communications, in one central place for management of marketing campaigns.
MarTech Platform Ecosystems
DTC companies are increasingly leveraging many if not all of the types of tools listed above, which can quickly become an organizational and technical nightmare. As a result, many MarTech companies have recognized the importance of integration techniques that enable their product(s) to quickly and seamlessly “plug-in” to the client company’s overall MarTech stack and “talk to” the other tools. These integrations have created natural ecosystems, where the selection of one product, such as a CRM or a Data Management Platform, may dictate (or significantly favor) specific options for automation software or email and social marketing, in order to most easily manage the integrations between the tools. A few companies who you may have heard of, such as HubSpot and Salesforce, have even gone so far as to develop or acquire a suite of tools across the various categories within the MarTech stack and have attempted to establish themselves as the platform to build your for MarTech stack.
Using the MarTech Stack to Acquire Customers
Attract Customers
With the ever-expanding categories of MarTech tools, and the plethora of options within each category, it can be overwhelming for a company looking to build a MarTech stack. The first step to selecting the appropriate tools is understanding and identifying the needs of your stack, based on the nature of the product offered by the company. For example, if the product being offered has a niche customer set that needs to be targeted, building a stack around customer segmentation and targeting tools may be the most critical. Alternatively, if the product has mass appeal and therefore the goal is to develop a broad brand campaign to reach any customer, then there may be more of a focus on AdTech and content management systems that allow the marketing team to design and tweak their campaigns quickly as they determine what is most effective.
Some of the most popular tools used to attract customers today are in social media. Social media advertisers provide tools to marketers that allow those marketers to target subsets of customers. Often, the technology companies that provide social media platforms have their own advanced data science teams that develop additional tools to help the marketer find the right customer segmentation by continuously optimizing the traffic. This optimization is dependent on having a vast amount of knowledge of their social media users, allowing them to develop precise algorithms for determining the best customers to reach out to with ads. Recently, however, consumer privacy has become of increased interest, potentially limiting social media companies’ access to this data. One example of this trend is mobile device manufacturers restricting a mobile application’s ability to access data from the mobile device that is not critical to the application itself.[2] Another example is web browsers (such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or Firefox) limiting the ability of websites to track user data without specific consent.[3] As these examples highlight, the space in which the DTC marketer is operating is in constant flux—a strong MarTech stack can help the DTC marketer flex and adapt to this ever-changing landscape.
Engage Customers
By now, it should be clear that attracting customers in the digital marketing space can be tedious and challenging. While DTC marketers dedicate efforts to attracting new customers, they should not lose sight of the current customers they have worked so hard to attract in the past. Therefore, it is critical that DTC marketers not overlook the conversion funnel beyond the first visit. Many of the tools in the MarTech stack are designed to help attract customers or find the customers who are most interested, but there are also tools focused on engaging and nurturing the customers you have already attracted. For example, email and SMS marketing platforms may provide capabilities to set up “drip campaigns,” where a customer who has previously visited your website but who did not complete the purchase journey receives a communication every few days to remind them of your product and entice them to complete the purchase. Paper mail companies can assist as well by identifying a mailing address for your prospect and then sending them a friendly postcard. Getting creative with ways to re-engage customers who have abandoned the purchase journey is particularly important in the insurance world, where purchasing the insurance product may not be a high priority for the customer and therefore can easily fall to the wayside.
Statements of fact and opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors and are not necessarily those of the Society of Actuaries, the newsletter editors, or the respective authors’ employers.
Matthew Wolf, FSA, MAAA, is head of Product and actuary for Dayforward, Inc. He can be contacted at matt@dayforward.com. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/-matt-wolf/.
Endnotes
[1] https://insurancenewsnet.com/innarticle/limra-consumers-brand-awareness-of-life-insurers-remains-low (accessed July 9, 2021)
[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-privacy-change-will-hit-facebooks-core-ad-business-heres-how-11611938750
[3] https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-delays-chromes-blocking-tracking-cookies-late-2023-2021-06-24/