MoneySuperMarket is a fascinating brand because the comparison website’s positioning is all about engendering a feeling in its customers – ‘Get Money Calm’, in case you haven’t seen the recent ad campaign, featuring, amongst other things, a goat in a hot spa.
“There’s definitely an opportunity for a trusted brand, an independent trusted brand like MoneySuperMarket, to play a more meaningful role in our customer’s lives,” says Marketing Director Lloyd Page.
It’s clear as we talk that this positioning is a very effective way of concentrating a marketer’s mind when dealing with the details of the customer experience.
Admittedly, when Page first speaks of “a personalisation at scale strategy, utilising rich data… to speak to customers in a more relevant way”, one could be forgiven a modicum of scepticism. But when he talks about what personalisation actually means, a complex proposition for many marketers, he makes it sound simple.
“If you are delivering something useful in your CX, that for me is an indication of where we want to take our service in being much more proactive for our customers.” – He refers to the text messaging and alerts service that MoneySuperMarket offers for car tax and MOT reminders as a simple example.
Page also refers to Credit Monitor, the personalised credit score proposition that is the focus of the current campaign. The service helps customers to monitor and then switch various financial products like credit cards or loans and get better deals. It’s “landing well with customers”, says the Marketing Director, because once they’ve accessed the service they understand how they can improve their credit score, thanks to three-monthly updates via email telling them how to do so.
“The first stage is trying to help customers by understanding their credit score with personalised tips. We can give them a clear summary of credit accounts and balances to track spending, then as we build on our data capability and tailor the content – we hope to provide products that we know they are likely to be eligible for.”
The value of enabling customers like this is clear to see, with Page revealing that customers who engage with Credit Monitor show six times the engagement rate of customers who don’t.
Useful personalisation is getting results
“Hopefully we are one of those brands where the customers derive real value out of the products and services we deliver for them,” says Page.
He’s also well aware of what he calls continued optimisation – “When you come to MoneySuperMarket or if you receive an email from us, it should be increasingly ever more tailored to how best we can help you.”
“We are adapting our messaging and the content we present people with, whether it’s editorial or relevant offers.”
Achieving this element of personalisation alongside useful services is a powerful combination. Page says “Engagement click-through has increased from 20% during 2016-2018 to 39% in 2019 with CRM revenue also up 30% this year, indicating that customers are reacting positively.”
He adds that 95% of campaigns are now personalised.
It’s pretty clear the path the brand is on, with energy monitoring allowing MoneySuperMarket customers to beat energy price hikes and stay ahead of the energy price cap, and a ‘comparison to completion’ mortgage service complete with both mortgage and overpayment calculators, as well as plenty of advice and guidance. It’s worth noting that Page says 25% of mortgage search traffic in the UK currently lands on the Moneysupermarket Group sites (including MoneySavingExpert.com), and with Nationwide becoming the first of the big six lenders to join MoneySuperMarket’s tool in May of this year, followed recently by Santander, mortgage comparison is clearly going to change the market.
Brand to comms to CX
One of the phrases that Marketing Director Lloyd Page repeats is “we’ll do the heavy lifting”, acknowledging that the brand is there to “tackle the inertia that people have” and to play a role in “helping customers and households save money”.
He continues, “’Get Money Calm’ is rooted in the insight that customers feel a lot of anxiety. We’ve got a great opportunity. If our brand platform is linked from our comms to customer experience, customers will afford us the trust and responsibility to deliver on that.”
Indeed, marketers could do well to remember that everything they do should ultimately be influenced by their brand positioning. Otherwise, getting lost in the weeds of personalisation is a very real prospect.