Apia Wins Most Recommended Property Insurance Brand for the Fourth Time in a row

Brisbane consulting firm Engaged Marketing today released findings from their annual Consumer Recommendation and Loyalty Study for the property insurance sector announcing the property insurers most likely to impress their customers. Apia maintained its winning streak within the property insurance sector once again with a Net Promoter Score of 13 per cent, crowning them the Australian property insurance loyalty leader four years running. Second place went to Suncorp with a score of 3 per cent.

Engaged Marketing CEO Christopher Roberts said that Net Promoter Score is widely recognised by the world's leading organisations because it is one of the most accurate measures of customer advocacy. It's a higher measure than mere satisfaction, and importantly is a proven predictor of business growth.

"This year's research shows 22 per cent of home insurance sales are primarily sourced via recommendations from peers, making word of mouth a critical marketing channel in this category" 

It seems that Australian property insurers in general may have a lot to learn from their US counterparts in terms of providing great customer experiences. The Australian NPS category average was a disappointing -13 per cent compared to the impressive category average of +41 per cent achieved by the US.

A company's Net Promoter Score, or NPS, is based on customers' likelihood to recommend the company's product or service.

 "In these times if you want to drive growth via loyalty and recommendation it is not enough to aim for mere customer satisfaction, you need to develop experiences and propositions that are worthy of recommendation,"  Mr Roberts said.

And just in case you thought the importance of word of mouth had lost its edge, according to the Engaged Marketing study, recommendations from friends or family still has the greatest influence on purchase decisions by a mile with a staggering 51.9% of consumers choosing word of mouth as the greatest influence on their purchase decision in comparison to other marketing mediums. 

"There has never been a more critical time to go back to basics and focus on the customer as opposed to the more common and much less effective strategy of cost-cutting. The continued strong utilisation of social media injects an additional element of urgency," he said.

In the study 2,422 property insurance policy owners were invited to rate their experiences. Results identified consumer likelihood to recommend a brand to others. Ten of the biggest property insurers in Australia were assessed in the innovative survey, including the loyalty leader Apia as well as AAMI, Allianz, Budget Direct, CGU, GIO, NRMA, RACQ, RACV and Suncorp. 

Engaged Marketing is an insight driven business consultancy focused on helping businesses grow by developing fresh customer, marketing, and organisational strategies. Engaged Marketing is an official Net Promoter® Loyalty Partner. The complete 2013 Property Insurance Consumer Recommendation and Loyalty Study is available from Engaged Marketing.

Net Promoter, NPS and Net Promoter Score are registered trademarks of Satmetrix Systems Inc., Bain & Company and Fred Reichheld.