Case study
Four content managers, a single domain and 1.729 policies
Online multi-line insurance comparison platform · 21-month measured conversion funnel through to signed policy
Almost all digital marketing reports end where the important part begins: the submitted form. What happens next — whether someone rang, whether a quote was provided, whether anything was signed — tends to fall into a grey area between the agency and the sales team.
Not in this project. Over a period of twenty-one months, the entire funnel was tracked: website session, analytics conversion, quotation, incoming call, quote issued and policy signed. Month by month and line of business by line of business.
The documented result is 1.729 policies between September 2015 and May 2017. Let’s begin:
1.729
documented signed policies
50,8 → 88,4
policies per month in the main line of business
4 → 1
content managers under one domain
30,2%
sustained commercial effectiveness
1. The starting point: four sites that Google treated as four
The client was an insurance comparison site covering four sectors — health, life, funeral and home insurance — built on four separate content management systems. Three of these had previously been hosted on their own, separate domains.
Direct quote from the final report: ‘The domain’s organic ranking is complex as it comprises four integrated CMSs. Each must be treated differently, although for Google it must appear as a single site with a single domain.’ It’s clear that this cannot be resolved with a redirect and a bit of wishful thinking.
Let me explain 🙂 unifying four sites under one umbrella isn’t just a matter of moving folders. It involves de-indexing what was previously indexed at another address and earning that ranking back, knowing that for weeks there will be no traffic where there used to be.
The baseline, measured over the twelve months prior to scaling up in the healthcare sector:
- Average advertising spend of €5.515 per month.
- 5.136 sessions and 1.422 quotes per month.
- 50,8 policies per month and a sales conversion rate of 30,23 per cent of quotes issued.
- In terms of search engine rankings, as at 24 January 2017 and with the domains still separate: 204 searches in the Top 10 for the health sector and 70 for the life insurance sector.
- The home insurance sector did not exist. It was launched from scratch in January 2017.
2. What we did
Four fronts, twenty-one months:
- Domain consolidation: three independent sites plus a new line of business under a single domain, with controlled de-indexing and re-indexing of each line of business to its final URLs.
- Scaling up the managed investment: the health sector rose from around €5.500 to around €20.000 per month; the life sector, from €2.900 to €10.000; the home sector started at €5.000 from its launch.
- Measurement of the entire sales funnel, cross-referencing web sessions daily with quotations, calls, quotes and policies closed by the sales team. Monthly reports by line of business.
- Content and technical audit: around sixty articles for the health insurance sector, static articles on funeral cover, a technical audit by each content manager, and an analysis of advertising by four direct competitors.
3. The results
| Health insurance sector (monthly average) | Sep 15 – Aug 16 | Sep 16 – May 17 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Advertising spend | €5.515 | €18.556 | Dashboard |
| Sessions | 5.136 | 10.681 | Analytics · measured |
| Pricing | 1.422 | 3.595 | CRM · medido |
| Quotations issued | 176,1 | 301,4 | CRM · medido |
| Policies signed | 50,8 | 88,4 | CRM · medido |
| Sales effectiveness | 30,23% | 30,21% | CRM · medido |
Monthly averages for the two periods. Sales effectiveness is the percentage of quotations issued that result in a policy. The figures are taken from the joint marketing and sales team dashboard.
| Other lines of business | Before | After | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Life · policies/month | 11,6 | 23 | CRM · medido |
| Life · sessions/month | January 2017 | Final Report | Analytics · measured |
| Home · policies/month | 0 (did not exist) | 22,4 | CRM · medido |
| Household · sales effectiveness | — | 41,2% | CRM · medido |
| Ranked queries | — | 2.309 | GSC · measured |
| Top 10 queries | 274 (2 domains) | 268 (single domain) | GSC · measured |
| Views | 16.733 | 87.850 | GSC · measured |
Comparison of the 7-day window from 24/01/2017 with separate domains versus that of 07/06/2017 with a single domain. Impressions have increased fivefold with a virtually identical Top 10 ranking: the unified site appears much more frequently, still in mid-table positions.
The home insurance sector deserves a separate mention because it started literally from scratch, with no previous domain or historical data. This is why it best isolates the effect of the work: in April 2017, it achieved a conversion rate of 56 per cent, and that month’s report states it quite plainly: ‘90 per cent of policies taken out come from AdWords’.
4. How to interpret these figures
Multiplying monthly policy numbers by 1.74 sounds better without the second half of the sentence, so here’s the second half: investment grew by the same proportion and conversion rate remained stable at 30.2 per cent.
In other words, this is a case of scaling whilst keeping the sales funnel under control. And maintaining conversion rates whilst tripling volume is no small feat: typically, when scaling up, lead quality tends to decline and the sales team starts closing only half as many deals. That didn’t happen here, and that’s exactly what was being monitored every week.
The other thing worth mentioning is the dip. Consolidating domains causes a delay in indexing for a few weeks — in this particular sector, until the end of March — and this needs to be factored in before you start. I’d advise you to be wary of any domain merger that doesn’t take this into account: there’s always a dip, and what sets a well-managed project apart is that it was anticipated.
To sum up: how far should your report go?
Basically, as far as your turnover goes. If your monthly report ends with ‘leads generated’ and your business ends with ‘contracts signed’, there’s a section of the funnel that nobody’s looking at – and that’s exactly where the money is being lost.
Here are three suggestions. Firstly, sit down with the sales team and agree on a single shared spreadsheet: what comes in via the website and what comes out as signed contracts, with the same dates. Secondly, measure sales effectiveness as a standalone metric, because that’s what tells you whether the problem lies with marketing or with closing deals. And thirdly, if you’re going to merge domains, budget for the dip: two or three months of lost indexing isn’t a failure – it’s the price you pay.
Remember, at the end of the day, it’s all about following the lead right through to the signature 😉
