How is CDP being used to cut customer acquisition costs in financial industry?

4 min readJan 4, 2021

“The insurance industry has the highest customer acquisition costs of any industry. It costs seven to nine times more for an insurance agency to attract a new customer than to retain one,” says Lynn Thomas, president of 21st Century Management Consulting.

A financial firm cannot afford to not have a digital customer acquisition strategy when the cost of acquiring customers is high as ever and the traditional firms are facing competition from the fintechs and insurtechs that are digitally customer-centric, agile, intelligently deploying automation and leveraging the ecosystem by open architecture.

Financial services firms globally are seeking answers for ways to increase operational efficiency, leverage data and analytics to improve customer experience, and optimize marketing/advertising spend.

CDP is a packaged software solution that employs a unified, persistent and analytically driven view of individual customers based on data from interactions across multiple data sources (CRM, clickstream, transactions, third-party, etc.), and is already benefitting firms around the FS industry.

Let’s see what a typical customer journey would look like for someone who doesn’t have any existing relationship with a financial services organization.

User Persona

Marcy is a teacher from California. She has recently changed job from University A to University B. University B has partnership with the financial organization to offer 401k. Marcy is exploring options of Rollover and additional investment opportunities. She does not have any existing relationship with the financial organization.

Step 1: Awareness & Discovery

Customer Perspective

1 | Marcy searches for “Rollover 401k options” on Google on his mobile. Clicks on an Ad by the financial organization and lands on the organization’s website. Browses rollover info, investments & IRAs

CDP Perspective

1 | CDP receives browsing data in real-time and creates an unknown customer profile capturing Mobile device ID

Step 2: Research

Customer Perspective

2 | Marcy visits the financial organization ‘s website on her Laptop and reads about Rollover option. Clicks on “Rollover” as new customer and fills up the form, but does not submit

CDP Perspective

2 | CDP captures browsing data, maps Laptop device with Marcy’s profile. Detects abandoned application, triggers an email with IRA Specialist contact details

Step 3: Seeking Advice or Consultation

Customer Perspective

3 | Marcy opens the email on her mobile.

Marcy calls IRA specialist to discuss her options of rolling over 401k from her previous employer to the financial organization

CDP Perspective

3 | CDP identifies the mobile device ID and stitches the historical browsing data of mobile with Marcy’s profile.

The IRA specialist identifies Marcy using her email address and CDP provides all of Marcy’s profile & past activities to the IRA specialist, who is able to provide personalized consultation

Step 4: Customer Acquisition

Customer Perspective

4 | Marcy rolls over her 401k from previous employer to the financial organization in the form of an IRA and Opens a new 401k with her current employer

CDP Perspective

4 | CDP captures all of the current Marcy’s current relationships with the financial organization and creates segments based on her behavioral, financial and demographic profile

Step 5: Beyond Purchase

Customer Perspective

5 | Browse customized Cross Sell offers

CDP Perspective

5 | CDP receives summarized activities in Marcy’s accounts as well as data from 3rd parties using which additional cross-sell opportunities are found and activated.

Ways By Which a CDP Can Help Brands in Customer Acquisition

1. Identity Resolution

Brands can unify data across various online and offline channels to identify any user (including the anonymous ones) across all channels and devices. This would enable them to find the users wherever they are and target them with personalized messages to drive new customer acquisition.

2. Personalized Experiences

The single identity of any user can then be used to precisely target them with contextual offers and right messages depending on their interaction with the brand.

As per “The Future of Insurance Customer Acquisition” by Capgemini, 38% of customers are willing to share additional data for personalized services.

3. Cross-Channel User Strategy and Cross-Device Strategy

The brand can orchestrate, activate and measure experiences across all customer touchpoints to reach their users at their ease and the preferred channel for business.

According to Capgemini’s “The Future of Insurance Customer Acquisition”, 75% of customers are willing to switch insurers is seamless policy serving is not available across channels.