Introduction Technology is evolving every day. Every sector is enhancing its performance with the use of respective technologies. There has been a special boom in the information technology in recent years which has led to revolutionary change in the service industry. Insurance industry being a financial service se rvice industry is not aloof. aloo f. In India, there are 52 insurance companies. Every insurance company has its dedicated website today. Most of them have started doing a fair amount of business through online channe channel. l. Sinc Sincee insur insuranc ancee in India India is not perceive perceived d as it is percei perceived ved in the develope developed d countries, it is worthwhile to understand the nuances of online distribution of insurance and the digital mareting aspect of this trade. !ccording to "orld #an Survey of 2$%&, the percentage of internet users in India grew from '.5( in 2$%$ to %5.%( in 2$%& and further amounts to 2)& million internet users in *anuary 2$%5. There are around %)5.+ million Indian users on social media platforms today and the number num ber is epect epected ed to rise rise up to 22).2 22).2 milli million on by 2$% 2$%-. -.
Thes Th esee incre increasi asing ng number numberss
themselves highlight the importance of digital and social media mareting in todays India.
Reasons for inclination of people for online purchase of insurance: Webpage:
The insurance companies have a separate web page for promoting their online insurance services. The webpage provides almost all the details about the products and the features, reason to buy, duration of the policies, sum assured and assumed bonus, etc., this online facility increases the strength of the company in the digital space Power shifts from seller to buyer:
/nlie traditional mareting, the power has been transferred to the buyer, will help them to now, analyse, and mae decisions based on the alternatives of policies. Greater transparency:
0ompanies are maintaining greater transparency can be maintained in product details through the websites. 0ustomers will now about the new arrivals of products and the changes in the policies time to time. No agents required:
In online platform prospective buyers dont re1uire the services of any agent to choose the suitable product. They can choose their product easily through the web. Web Aggregators:
!ggregators have own sites that will help the prospects to now the variations between the policies will be given. They give some additional information about the products. They also provide an option for comparison which helps prospects to choose a better product. Better Pricing:
nline insurance products are relatively cheaper than those sold through tradition channels of distribution. This gives customers a better value for money and can also allow a better cover at same price which is definitely a win3win situation for the customer.
igital
!ar"eting and
#ocial !edia
!ar"eting:
$rom Insurance
%ompany&s Prospecti'e Insurance is a high involvement product, as it is considered as an epense in India. 0onsumers obtain information about insurance from advertisements, salespeople, family, friends, neighbours and ac1uaintances. They perceive little difference among brands. So involvement of the company in social media platforms has become a necessity for the insurance companies. The ma4or purpose visible from outside is the promotion or mareting. #ut in todays era of advanced analytics, social media mareting and digital mareting plays a much bigger role for a company than 4ust promotion in form of social analytics. Most buyers today have access to an additional source of information in the form of social networing sites. ere, buyers share their brand eperience, which is then accessible to a larger audience. In the traditional insurance, customers are routed to agents on the basis of their perceived business value, purchase history and status. nline social networs provide a
larger platform to sociali6e and echange information and opinions. This renders the traditional method of maret segmentation almost meaningless. Social analytics integrate, analyse and enable companies to act on intelligence gathered from online conversations occurring across consumer oriented social media sites. 0ompanies can etract important insights, sentiments, hidden patterns, trends and unnown correlations from customer3centric conversations and proactively act upon them to drive business outcome.
!ain Attributes or (ey Performance Indicators of a #ocial !edia !ar"eting are: )* Brand awareness and reputation: Brand awareness and reputation
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#haring of information 3 7umber of conversations out the brand #entiment analysis 8 analysis of sentiments of customers which may be positive,
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negative 9 neutral about the companys products, using social analytics. #ocial engagement 8 engaging a number of people to tal about the your product or
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analysing the people who are taling about all similar products from other companies to assess the brand awareness.
+* !ar"eting program effecti'eness • #ocial reach 8 !im to increase the total number of followers across all social
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•
platforms. :aunching new campaigns and ads to increase social reach. Growth 9 %ost benefit analysis 8 evaluation of Monthly 9 ;uarterly growth of the company and contribution of social media mareting and the cost associated with it. ,ngagement 8 analysis of total 7umber of :ies < number of shares < number of blog comments per number of published posts. This will give an idea of effectiveness of the campaigns. Engagement needs to be monitored for each social platform
&. #ales: Sales can be 4udged on following two parameters=3 -eads generated 8 7umber of new leads through social channel > total number of •
•
leads Actual sales 8 7umber of sales coming from social channel > total number of sales
The social mareting eercise generally revolve around these attributes which can be considered as the ey performance indicators.
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!E?7 @eligare :ife Insurance is a 4oint venture between !E?7, @eligare and #ennett, 0oleman 9 company. The tagline of the company is A-ife can surprise you be insured B. !E?7 @eligare :ife Insurance offers a range of insurance products for financial planning and life insurance in India. !@:I launched its operations in *uly, 2$$-. !E?7 @eligare :ife Insurance C!@:ID offers a complete product suite consisting of Term lans, ealth lans, Savings lans, 0hild lans and /nit3lined plans. !E?7 @eligare employs more than %5$$ employees, over +,5$$ :ife !dvisors or financial advisors, with '$ branches across the country.
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!E?7 religare has always been a pioneer in regards to digital media mareting. They have always been very active in Social Media ptimi6ation CSMD, Search Engine ptimi6ation CSED and Search Engine Mareting CSEMD. In 2$$F they came up with a portal http=>>buyonline.aegonreligare.com, which purely relies on digital communication. !E?7 @eligareGs nline Insurance 0hannel reaches %'2 cities. ! number of products, including !E?7 @eligareiTerm, !E?7 @eligareiMaimi6e, !E?7 @eligareiealth
and !E?7 @eligarei?uarantee were launched to offer a complete product suite to the online customer.
!E?7 @eligare has a balanced distribution networ through #anc assurance, Hirect Sales orce and online products. This includes a direct sales force of more than +,5$$ financial planning advisers, in '$ branches across the country and multiple banc assurance partnerships with private sector bans, co3operatives and regional rural bans. Through its distribution setup and partnerships, !E?7 @eligare reaches customers in over %$$$ towns and cities across India.
#.%IA- !,IA .P1I!I2A1I.N
!bbreviated as SM, social media optimi6ation is the process of increasing the awareness of a product, brand or event by using a number of social media outlets and communities to generate viral publicity. Social media optimi6ation includes using @SS feeds, social news and boomaring sites, as well as social media sites and video and blogging sites. SM is similar to SE Csearch engine optimi6ationD in that the goal is to drive traffic to the "eb site.
!E?7 @eligare have their presence on many of the social media platforms lie JouTube, google<, twitter, :inedIn, etc. The company has also been very active on social media platforms lie aceboo, twitter, google<, etc. "e will discuss their efforts one by one.
$aceboo":
The aceboo page of !E?7 @eligare shows continuous updates about the latest news in the company and it also promotes various campaigns the company launches. "hereas on the other side, if we go by the number of lies the page has are 1uite low, i.e., +&,2'5. !E?7
religare life insurance 0ompany is very active on aceboo. n an average they post around every third to fourth day, and on festive occasions lie dushera, ganesh chaturthi, etc. They even organise some contests for their customers in an attempt to mae the conversations two way and they also mae sure to reward the winners in some way or the other lie the winners of the dussehra contest were rewarded with eciting gift vouchers. The company also shares the lins of the websites lie www.mouthshut.com wherein the customers of the company have given their reviews about the products and the services provided by the company. Thus aceboo page of the company is 1uite interactive, they eep on asing general 1uestions about the life insurance sector to the customers. !lso the customer base they have is interactive. The posts by the company do receive lies on a regular basis and these posts are also shared by the people. n an average lies received by the posts can be figured at around '3%$ and so is the case with sharing of the posts. The company believes in eeping in constant contact with their customer base in order to strengthen their relationship. or this purpose they never forget to wish their followers on every occasions lie ?andhi *ayanti, dusshehra. they also organise campaigns in relation to awareness about cancer, smoing, consumption of alcohol etc. this serves a dual purpose for the company as it portrays a very positive image of the company that they are very much concerned about their customers and are sensitive enough to address such social issues.
0ou1ube
!E?7 religare has a dedicated channel on JouTube to promote the company. it consists of various campaigns the company starts lie Knothing will happenK, KLya aapo bhi LI:# aiK and along with such campaigns the channel also showcases videos of the actual
employees of the company who tal about the ease of woring with the company, the wor environment and the 4ob satisfaction they feel. @ecently they launched a campaign called as A7othing "ill appenB on JouTube. They hired Mr. !tul Lhatri, a stand3up comedian to portray the mentality of general public in India. !tul Lhatri in these ads act ignorant about the ris life poses in daily life and in a sarcastic way highlight the importance of life insurance in order to generate awareness among people. #asically these ads are for the promotion of their product iterm which they say is for people who thin themselves to be immortals. !lso !E?7 @eligare has Irfan Lhan as their brand ambassador for targeting the television audience in particular. or television they launched a campaign nown as AHo you have L:I#B CLam Insurance :ene i #imariD. This campaign intended to increase awareness among people about buying insurance cover sufficient for them in accordance with their re1uirements.
1witter:
The company 4oined twitter in ebruary 2$$F and since then have been vibrantly active on it. The company has %'-& followers and 5+' lies. n an average the company posts almost every &3) days about various contests they conduct for their customers and to promote their products. They started the campaign Ksalary a insuranceK to motivate people to purchase insurance of their salaries to maintain the status and luuries they en4oy in their current financial state in case of any averse situations in future.
Google 3
The company is eceptionally active on google<. If we tal about how active the company is on google<, the company tries to be interactive to the general public by posing some
1uestions, asing people to share their views but it can be seen that they do not get the desired response. The page has mere &%2 followers and 2)2FF% views. They post about the events, their policy or plans and related to general facts lie tribute to Hr. !* !bdul Lalam, etc. almost every other day and they also use the google< arena for promoting their other social media avenues they are active in, lie aceboo, twitter, etc.
-in"edIn:
The company also has presence on :inedIn, where they have '2)% followers. !s the company has wider reach on :inedIn as compared to other social media avenues, the response rate to the posts by the company on :inedIn are much higher as compared to other social media handles. @ecently the company also started a new blog http=>>aegon.me>2$4::N:carrying the message Amaing
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aegonreligare.com is raned '2,2$5 in the world Camongst the &$ million domainsD. ! low3 numbered ran means that this website gets lots of visitors. This site is relatively popular among users in the India. It gets F'.-( of its traffic from the India. This site is estimated to be worthO&2+&&. This site has a good age@an C5>%$D. !egonreligare.com has +2(seo score. Thus we see that !egon @eligare uses the social media platform to a good etent to inform and interact with the eisting and prospective customers to create a better brand value.
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1witter:
#a4a4 !llian6 has a big fan following of above 2$$$$ on Twitter. There are around %5$$$ tweets on their twitter page. The speciality of their twitter handling is that they lead in the fastest reply to any en1uiry. Their average time to respond to a tweet is around three hours, with maimum 1ueries being answered in less than %5 minutes.
!vg. @eply Time
They are second most mentioned insurer on tweets in India which shows their penetration among twitter users. In order to eep the followers connected, the company has a twitter contest called the Ptwittercrossword , which is the most famous contest by any insurance company.
Ptwittercrossword from #a4a4 !llian6 is the most famous contest so far amongst Indian Insurers on twitter
#a4a4 !llian6 ?I0 also leads in the number of replies to the tweets by all insurance companies, which shows their dedication towards the customer service on social platforms.
References: ew of the reference that can be accounted for are= !egon @eligare official webpage3 http=>>www.aegonreligare.com> !egon @eligare official faceboo page3 https=>>www.faceboo.com>!E?7@eligare:ifeInsurance> !egon @eligare official twitter page3 https=>>twitter.com>aegonreligare !egon @eligare official :inedIn page !egon @eligare official youtube 0hannel https=>>en.wiipedia.org>wii>!E?7Q@eligareQ:ifeQInsurance https=>>www.policyba6aar.com #a4a4 !llian6 ?eneral Insurance 0ompany :td official website3 https=>>www.ba4a4allian6.com>0orp>general3insurance>general3insurance.4sp #a4a4 !llian6 ?eneral Insurance 0ompany :td faceboo page= https=>>www.faceboo.com>#a4a43!llian63?eneral3Insurance30ompany3:td3 &$F%+)5)F%F+$F&> #a4a4 !llian6 ?eneral Insurance 0ompany :td official twitter page=
https=>>twitter.com>#a4a4!llian6 https=>>en.wiipedia.org>wii>#a4a4Qinserv http=>>www.socialsamosa.com>2$%&>%2>social3media3strategy3review3insurance3companies>
