One way to assure profitable growth is to increase the likelihood that a senior will positively respond to the company’s offer.  The key questions product and marketing managers have are:

• What is my customer composition?
• What have key segments purchased?
• How are these segments described?
• Where can we find prospects that are like our current customers? Who are our targets, what describes them, and where are they located?

If these questions can be answered, the return on effort of both product development and future marketing activity will be improved.

It is possible to answer these questions by increasing the value of senior customer data. Using data linking techniques custom developed for each client we can enhance customer data with additional consumer information.  We can then analyze the enhanced database and report actionable results based on where our best prospects are located and what their most likely interests are. 

For example, one output of the analysis is the identification of a Core group of seniors that has a high overall population and is most likely to be your company’s customers.  Through our process, we can add lifestyle and healthcare specific information.  The result is a profile of prospects most like current customers. 

Other groups are also be identified, then subdivided to provide precise analysis of priority based on demographics, psychographics, and buyer-graphics. 

Understanding current customers allows companies to find more people like them, to address their concerns with targeted product development, and to more efficiently use marketing resources.

Action Standards

• If analysis identifies segments that favor your company products, obtain prospect lists for those segments and intensify marketing for them.
• If segments and profiles identify differences by geographic region, adjust the product and marketing mix accordingly.
• If segments and profiles identify service/product preferences, take steps to emphasize those features in marketing and sales activity.
• Incorporate findings into 2007-08 product designs.

by Richard Hamer

The Way to Ask a Loyalty Question: “On a scale from 0 to 10, with 0 being very unlikely and 10 being very likely, how likely are you to refer your health/drug insurance to a friend or colleague?”

Senior consumers are currently showing some lack of vigor in their shopping habits for senior health insurance and drug coverage. Infrequent need to purchase and high switching costs (the effort required and potential risk of switching) define the health insurance competition.

For companies that want to grow a Medicare business, the loyalty of customers is important. We offer the Net Promoter metric for loyalty as an alternative to measures of retention or satisfaction. These metrics are often too complex to influence action and are difficult to link to growth or profit.Net Promoter was developed by Frederick Reichheld of Bain and Company, by matching survey responses to actual subsequent customer behavior. He found that the Net Promoter survey question was most closely related to future customer retention and referral behavior across a variety of industries.The Net Promoter loyalty question asks a survey respondent to consider the likelihood of a concrete action – that being, making a recommendation to a friend. Because of this, it performs better than questions about loyalty or satisfaction in the abstract such as “how satisfied are you?” or “do you think company x deserves your loyalty?”