Blue Insurance is an online insurance intermediary that focuses on delivering insurance products through IT and digital marketing strategies. We spoke to Ian Kennedy, Head of Marketing, to learn how he and Blue Insurance have found success using reviews.
Blue Insurance was founded in 2003 and initially focused on travel insurance for the Travel Trade in Ireland. Since then, Blue Insurance has expanded and now offers its customers 9 unique products under 20 different domains: car, home, travel, pet, gadget, car hire excess, motor breakdown, wedding, and bicycle.
With over 350,000 customers worldwide, Blue Insurance is considered as a passionate, reliable, and trustworthy company.
Blue Insurance Announced as One of Ireland’s Best Managed Companies
Why Trustpilot?
Blue Insurance started using the Trustpilot platform back in August 2012. The business was looking for a way to let consumers know how good their product and service were by sharing their customers’ positive experiences. As insurance is a highly competitive market in Ireland and in the UK, Blue Insurance decided that they had to find a way to stand out from the competition. That’s when their customer-centric strategy launched.
Ian Kennedy, Head of Marketing at Blue Insurance, explains:
“We wanted to introduce customer testimonials & customer reviews on our websites as we recognised the introduction of these comments as a valuable source of reference. Rather than posting our own content which other businesses had done, we wanted to add something which would be an independent verification of service and product. So we decided to look closer at Trustpilot.”
Since then, online reviews have transformed the way they communicate, and have helped Blue Insurance build trust and transparency online.
Key Achievements:
18% CTR
24% Conversion Rate
Over 900 Positive Reviews8.5 TrustScore
How Blue Insurance uses reviews to drive customer engagement
When consumers perform online research, they make sure they’re always getting the best value for their money. Today, more and more people spend time researching, comparing, and looking for reviews or recommendations.
In a world where 88% of online shoppers incorporate reviews into their purchase decision, it’s become necessary for businesses to adopt customer-centric strategies. That’s why Blue Insurance chose to put their customers first by adopting online reviews.
To drive customer engagement, it’s important for brands to fully understand their audience and their customers’ needs and expectations. Customer engagement is about delivering what was promised, exceeding expectations, and making customers feel proud of being part of a brand community.
Today, as part of their customer engagement strategy, Blue Insurance has chosen to share a selection of reviews on a weekly basis through their social channels.
100,000 unique views. That’s our social target that Trustpilot reviews help us achieve every month.
-- Ian Kennedy
Sharing people’s positive experiences as well as their TrustScore helps reinforce Blue Insurance's brand image and online reputation.
Our TrustScore has assisted us in building trust and confidence with both new and existing customers. With the help of Trustpilot, we improve our customer retention rate each year.
Beyond reputation, Blue Insurance’s collected reviews have given the company a way to stand out both in organic and paid search results.
The company has acquired Google Seller Ratings, review stars that show up on paid search results. This benefit, powered by Trustpilot reviews, helped Blue Insurance boost their online visibility and clickability on Google. Since then, Blue Insurance’s click-through rate has skyrocketed to 18%.
Blue Insurance tries to implement as much transparency as possible throughout the customer journey with the help of Trustpilot’s on-site widgets - called TrustBoxes. These widgets automatically display reviews in real-time so site visitors know exactly what consumers are saying about Blue Insurance.
On-site third-party validation helps build trusted relationships between brands and customers at a crucial point of the journey, resulting in better conversion rates. With the extra confidence that third-party validation gives to shoppers, Blue Insurance has earned a 24% conversation rate.
In addition to these marketing tactics, the insurance company also includes Trustpilot reviews in most of their banners, newsletters, or email templates, resulting in better marketing performance overall.
Reading about other customers’ experiences gives the Blue Insurance team more confidence and passion that is reinvested in the company.
Online reviews also play a major role in building trusted relationships between customers and businesses. Being able to reply and interact with customers via Trustpilot not only helps gain new customers, but also retains existing ones because Blue Insurance is making the effort to nurture these relationships.
Today, 95% of unhappy customers return to your business if their issue’s been resolved quickly and efficiently.
Receiving positive customer feedback adds value to the business’s products and services. It also drives motivation and competition within the team, and helps improve the customer journey at all touchpoints. Indeed, new insights help identify areas of the business that need to be worked on.
Thanks to its customer-centric approach, Blue Insurance has improved its customer engagement strategy in 4 of the 6 big steps of the customer journey:
Awareness: Reviews help build positive online PR and drive new business amongst prospective customers
Consideration: Customers research competitors as part of their decision to purchase. Online reviews influence that decision
Retention and repeat: Reviews encourage brands to create a positive bond with existing customers by reassuring them and building trusted relationships.
Advocacy and referral: Reviews encourage existing customers to become brand advocates, share their experience and refer a product or service to a wider audience.
“Trustpilot forms part of our overall marketing strategy for the business and is integrated throughout different processes. The platform has helped to give us an edge over competitors for many years, and our stellar customer review performance has assisted us with winning new business year on year.”
Moving forward, Blue Insurance would like to continue using Trustpilot as a bank of customer stories through testimonial videos in order to facilitate the ability to share customer feedback, and therefore spread the word to a wider audience.
Want to learn how customer reviews can help your business increase its search performance? Request a demo below.
