For ACKO, TV & traditional media will remain key in the near future: Ashish Mishra

ACKO Insurance is one of India’s leading digital insurance policy providers with its entire operations offered through the digital platform. Founded in 2016 by Varun Dua and Ruchi Deepak, ACKO’s entire process is designed to provide better customer experience.

ACKO executes primarily through a digital platform with no offline hassles – zero paperwork from purchase, claims to renewals. ACKO’s innovative products and smart technology offerings make it stand out. The company uses a direct-to-consumer approach for distributing traditional products, allowing for favourable risk selection and exceptional underwriting. ACKO also offers innovative and bite-sized insurance products such as rider insurance, mobile and appliance protection, ticket cancellation, etc., in partnership with 18+ leading players in the internet ecosystem such as Ola, Oyo, redBus, Zomato, HDB Financial Services and Urban Company.

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In our latest column – MARKETING MINDSAshish Mishra, Executive Vice President - Marketing, ACKO, speaks about how they are simplifying the insurance process, the emphasis on offering an intuitive digital journey to the customers, using TV & traditional media to create large scale awareness for the brand and more.

As a digital insurance company what is the kind of differentiation you bring in your products to nudge your customers for auto insurance? Insurance is still a low involvement category, so how are you driving growth for your company?

The Traditional Insurance category has been designed in a way that it appears too complicated to customers. At ACKO, we have always focused on simplifying the whole insurance category. We are obsessed with customer satisfaction. And we make sure that we deliver the same standard or better than what our customers are used to getting from brands like Amazon. It’s important to understand that the core of our business strategy rests on the usage of tech and data to be able to provide better products that are attractively priced to our customers. That’s where the true differentiation lies. This is core to how we go about doing things. I have been part of meetings where the teams are debating at length if we should add a new feature that will increase the customer’s journey by just one more step. So, we have focused on fixing all three aspects of the journey – buying an insurance policy, renewing your insurance and the claim process. The whole experience is delivered through an intuitive digital journey that makes the customer feel that they are making an informed decision and are not overwhelmed while making this decision delivering strong customer satisfaction in the process. No wonder our app is rated 4.5 stars and above.

What has been the audience profile for your auto insurance? What kind of communication strategy have you been using to raise awareness of Acko in the market?

As you would expect with any insurance player, our profile is fairly mass. The Demographic majority of our customers is between 25 and 45 years and live in more than 600 cities across India. What differentiates ACKO customers slightly is that they are typically “App first”, which means that they would like to order products and services through an app or a website rather than walk into a branch or speak to someone. They are also curious, love to try new technologies, or at least explore the market to see if they can get a great deal. We are still a relatively young brand. Hence, our communication strategy is focused on talking about the key benefits of an ACKO insurance, that is, Zero Commission insurance delivered through a seamless digital experience (a truly zero paperwork process) and our ability to process claims faster. In some cases, we are able to process the claim and send the money across to the customer on the same day, which is unheard of in this industry. Our current campaign with Arshad Warsi, which is doing really well, is focused on encouraging customers to download the app and discover the ACKO experience. As we are growing, our media has also started to go pan India. We are heavy on mass media as it is the fastest way to raise awareness. There is some interesting work happening in terms of tie-ups and sponsorships that will hopefully help bring the brand ACKO in pop culture. Watch this space.

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With the second pandemic wave there has been a deep slip in the sale of automobile brands. How has it impacted your performance overall for both new insurance and renewals? In the last one year have you seen any major shift in people buying insurance online, especially after the pandemic? If so, how has it helped your company to garner some market share?

We have noticed that given the pandemic, more customers are moving to digital to complete their insurance needs. And this has a reflection on our business too. Last two months have been the best in the history of ACKO in terms of business.

IPL 2021 was cancelled mid-way. You were associated with a few franchisee teams. Has it impacted you as IPL was a great platform to engage with your audience? How are you making up for this move?

There are very few properties like IPL that provide you with access to such a large audience. But, I believe it was the right thing to do to cancel it during the middle of the big second wave. It also forced us to quickly pivot our media from being focused on IPL to other genres across TV and OTT platforms. We are seeing great results coming out of this move.

Digital has transformed every sector. How much emphasis do you give to digital in your overall media strategy? Where does mass media stand for you in today’s scenario?

For us, TV and traditional mass media will remain key in the near future. A large bulk of our media money will be allocated to them. I count Digital TV or OTT in the same bucket. Truly digital advertising (performance and display) will make up around 25% of our budget. This strategy is designed because the brand is in a growth phase and we are looking for large scale awareness.

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