a regional property and casualty insurer

A leading regional property and casualty insurer had ambitious goals for its direct-to-consumer auto business and was competing against national brands that had spent decades, and billions, building awareness and acquisition engines.

Marketing had historically chased quote volume through lower-funnel tactics. Those programs produced leads, but the leads were getting worse and more expensive. Marketing and underwriting objectives were not aligned, which made growth, customer quality and profitability impossible to balance at the same time.

Media planning, testing and measurement ran as a collection of activities rather than a system. The question was how to hold acquisition volume while improving customer quality and spending less.

Coologee worked as an extension of the marketing organization, acting as fractional CMO, consulting partner and hands-on media and measurement team. The engagement opened with an audit of the whole direct operation: media, targeting, martech, measurement, process, segmentation and historical performance.

• Replaced volume-first marketing with a quality-first growth framework
• Restructured paid search and acquisition programs
• Shifted spend away from expensive lead purchase
• Built targeting and suppression aligned to underwriting
• Introduced continuous optimization in place of month-to-month testing
• Designed tagging and measurement by channel, audience, creative and message
• Built personas and journey frameworks tying media to decisions

The organization stopped buying growth and started reallocating toward what was working.

• Marketing spend reduced by roughly 50% while quote volume held comparable
• Acquisition shifted from volume-based to quality-based, aligned with underwriting and profitability goals
• First comprehensive measurement framework evaluating source, audience, creative and campaign
• Visibility into cost per sale, so investment decisions ran on business outcomes rather than media metrics
• A scalable operating model connecting product, brand, execution and acquisition

By March 2022 the business had shown that disciplined targeting could preserve production without the spend. Marketing was no longer graded on quotes generated. It was graded on customer quality, acquisition efficiency and profitability.