A 2018 ICTA nomination
Toronto, ON (Jan. 18, 2018) – Kanetix.ca, Canada’s largest comparison website for insurance quotes, leveraged the digital marketing expertise of Kanetix Digital, to triple their client acquisition margin by using power of offline data integration and machine learning in their digital advertising capabilities.
In 2016, Kanetix.ca began testing the automated bidding and machine learning capabilities available in Google AdWords in order to improve ROI on their auto insurance digital marketing campaigns within Google. The volume of leads increased significantly and the cost of acquiring each new auto insurance quote reduced. However, in 2017, Kanetix.ca was motivated to measure their digital customer acquisition tactics closer to the point of sale in order to achieve more accurate tracking of the entire customer journey and to grow the margin from this source of traffic. They collaborated with Kanetix Digital to address the challenge with a technical solution.
The challenge within the Kanetix.ca customer journey, and as with the majority of the insurance industry, is that the transaction occurs offline over the phone making it more challenging to track a sale back to an online traffic source in real time – a requirement for leveraging automated bidding and machine learning to its fullest.
Kanetix.ca, with the guidance of Kanetix Digital, developed a solution to integrate offline event tracking into their digital marketing on Google AdWords in order to create new levels of efficiency by feeding the machine more data to optimize performance.
This was accomplished by linking the offline conversion to the Google Analytics ID (GAID). An event was then pushed to Google analytics when the offline conversion took place and was matched back to the ID. A goal was then created within analytics for that transaction.
Within Google Adwords, auto tagging was enabled and set up so that parameters along with other data could be pushed to analytics and Kanetix.ca’s own internal data warehouse.
Since Kanetix.ca’s Google Adwords and Analytics accounts were linked and now automatically tagged, the team were able to import the goals from analytics that tied the offline goal to the original click that created it within the search platform, telling Google which keywords and ads had achieved the transaction. This additional insight works to improve the effectiveness of Google’s bidding strategy.
From there the team changed the goal that was driving the machine learning to utilize the offline conversion and adjusted the bids accordingly. All of this was done in conjunction with a switch in how conversions were attributed. We went from a last click attribution model to a data based one that also used machine learning, thus feeding the machine two new sources of data (the new attribution model and the offline conversion). This continued to improve the ROI and margin.
Once the offline tracking data was feeding the machine, Kanetix Digital and Kanetix.ca worked closely with Google to continually improve results. With this new level of end-to-end tracking, Kanetix.ca and Kanetix Digital were able to see which search campaigns were driving the most return on investment on each new customer acquired through Google, despite the final conversion occurring offline. By optimizing the digital campaigns further to adjust budgets and targeting strategies by device, Kanetix.ca was able to achieve a step change in performance.
Results
Kanetix.ca now fully relies on machine learning in their Google AdWords campaigns and uses it to actively influence the company’s margins from digital advertising. The combination of data integration and machine learning has enabled them to triple margins by driving nearly 40% more volume of acquired customers at a 25% lower cost.
Kanetix.ca is now extending this technological solution to other products such as Travel Insurance.
Benefits
This new approach to digital marketing and data integration has had a profound impact on the business, allowing us to increase the volume of new customers acquired, at a much lower cost. The business is benefiting from a 3x improvement in auto insurance search engine marketing margin , along with a 25% reduction in the cost per acquisition for each new customer and a 37% increase in the volume of new customers acquired.
Further, the solution and the approach can now be leveraged for other product lines sold via the Kanetix.ca site, such as travel insurance and property insurance.
The Kanetix Digital team are leveraging this technical solution with their insurance clients. By applying the insights and experience gained through this process, they are able to help other insurance companies market more effectively and track their offline conversions/sales to fully utilize machine learning in their digital marketing strategies.
About Kanetix Ltd.
Kanetix Ltd. is Canada’s largest digital customer acquisition platform for insurance and financial services. With over 8 million shoppers visiting their five consumer-facing brands yearly, Kanetix Ltd. works directly with the country’s top insurers, financial institutions and brokers. Kanetix Ltd.’s mission is to help every Canadian make better money decisions.
About Kanetix Digital
Kanetix Digital offers customized digital acquisition solutions for the insurance industry, directly aligned with driving results. Services range from website design and development, to conversion optimization, digital advertising and marketing automation. Kanetix Digital works with insurance clients to gain a keen understanding of their target market in order to create a plan that delivers a return on investment.
SOURCE: Kanetix Ltd.
Tags: ICTA nomination, Kanetix, Machine Learning (ML)
