Pacific Life Insurance Company - Financial Products & Services Marketing Campaign of the Year

Company: Pacific Life Insurance Company
Company Description: Pacific Life has helped clients achieve their life goals for more than 150 years through strength, performance, and trust. When challenges arise, clients have confidence that Pacific Life has their best interest at heart. Our innovative solutions for retirement and life insurance protection have helped generations of families and businesses continue filling their tomorrow with moments that matter.
Nomination Category: Marketing Campaign Categories - Industry
Nomination Sub Category: Marketing Campaign of the Year - Financial Products & Services

Nomination Title: Protected Investment Benefit

Specify the date on which this campaign or program was launched: September 9, 2019

Our Protected Investment Benefit campaign is a three-part marketing campaign designed to inform financial professionals about the benefits and value Pacific Life’s Protected Investment Benefit rider can provide clients who may be hesitant to invest.

Financial professionals may find it challenging to provide retirement solutions to risk-averse clients during times of market volatility. We engaged and connected with those financial professionals by tailoring the campaign sections to specific segmented audiences while maintaining the core story of unlimited growth potential with protection from the downside.

For Part One, our four campaign goals were to retain existing financial professionals who had previously sold a similar past product, offer a unique opportunity to financial professionals in New York who did not previously have access to sell these type of products, promote Protected Investment Benefit as a direct competitor against structured variable annuities (VAs), and provide resources for both financial professionals and their clients. These goals broke our audience into three segments: existing producers, New York financial professionals, and financial professionals who currently sell structured VAs.

Marketing collateral for use by financial professionals and end consumers were developed through June 2019, prior to the product’s launch. Between June and September 2019, our Creative Services and Digital teams created webpages, email journeys, social/digital/print ads, blog posts, videos, sales ideas, direct mailers, presentations, and a press release.

For Part Two in 2020, our goals were to further drive product awareness, generate leads, and support the sales team with new and updated resources. Our new segments included current producers, ex-producers, and non-producing prospects. In July 2020, we created targeted email journeys and repurposed existing messaging to focus on the ongoing pandemic/market volatility and managing clients’ emotions. We set the new email journey to begin mid-September, and new content and updated social and digital ads to run through the remainder of 2020.

For Part One, we launched our direct mail and email campaigns on 9/9/2019, and sales teams were given resources for use with financial professionals and end consumers. Financial professionals who did not engage with emails were served targeted ads on social media.

Emails and social ads led to a landing page, where financial professionals would be prompted for a form submission. Success metrics included page visits, asset downloads, lead generation, and email/social engagement.

Segmenting our audience increased engagement throughout the email journey. Our New York segment surpassed our goal of a 2% click-through rate. Overall, we saw a 5% conversion-to-lead in the structured VA audience and a 20% conversion-to-lead in our New York audience.

For Part Two, the new email journey began 9/22/2020. Subject lines, calls-to-action, opening phrases, and the landing page were slightly altered based on audience segment. Success metrics included landing page/website visits and lead generation.

September 2020 saw record Protected Investment Benefit sales since the initial product launch, and October 2020 had the highest landing page visit rate. The new email journey also saw a higher open- and click-through-rate than 2019 emails. Emails accounted for 50% of all leads throughout the campaign. 50 new producers accounted for almost 11% of new sales in November, and new producers accounted for 23% of overall Protected Investment Benefit sales in 2020.

Our provided marketing materials illustrate a fundamental understanding and appeal to our audiences’ needs and desires for their clients.

For Part One, each of our segments were given materials that highlight what they want most in retirement products. From design to copy to animation, we created full experiences that drew attention to what they needed: new solutions to their current limitations and the benefits for clients who need this product most.

For Part Two, the new email journeys and upgraded landing page were the hallmarks of the campaign. By tailoring our content to our financial professional segments’ needs and interests, we drove measurably higher engagement, lead conversion, and sales during a considerably challenging year.