Case Study #1: 638% more calls to multi-carrier insurance agency by helping

customers understand value of the call

Some people think that marketers can only have a positive impact if they work for a
charity or nonprofit.

However, most people reading this article live in a society where capitalism plays a
significant role — which means, customers are making choices every week, every day,
even every hour.
For those who work in marketing, you have an impact on customers and potential
customers if you help them make a well-informed choice.
An example. I interviewed Denis Mrkva, General Manager, HealthSpire. He discussed
the lengths he went to creating a call center filled with teleagents dedicated to helping
seniors and their families make the best Medicare choice. In the United States, when a
citizen turns 65-years-old, they are eligible to receive significant healthcare benefits
subsidized by the federal government. However, the choices are complex and can vary
greatly based on an individual’s specific situation — what health conditions they have,
what medications they take, even how much they travel.

“We're trying to find the right solution for the customer. And if there is no right solution
for the customer with us, we will not sell,” Mrkva told me.
“Actually, we'll recommend either stay with what you have, or maybe you should go and
call other providers that have a product because we can help them find the better
product. Even though we cannot sell to them, we can tell them there is … company X
[that] has this product, so you may want to go to this site,” he said. “It's human nature.
Our nature is to help somebody. So we need to enable people to be people in the
workplace. If you have the right people and if you make them happy and content, our
customers will be happy and content.”
However, the potential customer will not watch my interview with Mrkva. The potential
customer’s family has no idea what value Mrkva has created with the teleagent team he
has built, and what value the potential customer can receive from a phone call.
All they see is a webpage. And based on that webpage they make a choice — to call, or
not to call.

Mrkva worked with MECLABS Research Services to determine the best way to
communicate the call’s value on a landing page. (MECLABS Institute is the parent
organization of MarketingSherpa).
One of the treatments was long, to communicate the value of the call with a teleagent.

Creative Sample #1: Longer landing page treatment for insurance agency
But there was also concern that potential customers wouldn’t want to read a long
landing page, so a shorter page was tested as well.

Creative Sample #2: Shorter landing page treatment for insurance agency
The longer landing page attracted 638% more potential customers to call and speak to
tele agents than the shorter page. Why did a longer page work? It likely took a longer
landing page to communicate the value of the call with the tele agent and
reduce anxiety about the call.

In the Marketing Experiments session The Marketer as Philosopher: 3 ways to achieve

excellence in yourself and in your marketing, Flint McGlaughlin, CEO and Managing
Director, MECLABS Institute, goes deeper into Mrkva’s story and his passion for
communicating the high-quality insurance available at affordable prices to seniors
through this government program. McGlaughlin also discusses how the marketer can
escape the negative connotation of the role and embrace the power of marketing as a
force for positive change in our world.