What Matters Most: Championing Consumer Trust in the Insurance Industry

SPAM. BAIT & SWITCH. CONFUSING. GARBAGE.

These were the most frequently used words in response to our 2018 survey question: 

"How do you feel about shopping for insurance?"

You didn't need to spend much time analyzing the data in order to see the pain-points jump right out at you. The problem in our space came through loud and clear: people don't trust us. Not necessarily because we've done something wrong, but because we’re born from a space that has some significant legacy issues. Decades of loud, sensational marketing and lead generation practices riddled with false promises had made a mark on the insurance industry, leaving consumers with a bad taste. And admittedly, we at The Zebra were a part of that problem. We fell into the trap of lead generation, hooked on a model of selling consumer data and motivating users to click as many ads as possible. This was not even close to capturing the essence of our original vision "Insurance in Black & White" from when we founded the company in 2012. While our model helped us score the traction necessary to keep the lights on, we knew it was time for a change, and for The Zebra to become a part of the solution. We began a multi-year, multi-million dollar project to completely disassemble and rebuild our products and user experience from the ground-up. Fortunately, our 2017 Series B gave us the resources and financial runway to take bigger leaps of faith, and to begin building a better solution for consumers. We started with ourselves, knowing that whatever we build would only have a chance for success if an internal transformation took place first and foremost. I created what I dubbed "The Honest Campaign" - an internal marketing campaign to break old habits and champion a new way of thinking, helping our team realize what it might take to begin rebuilding toward our original vision.

Since then we’ve eliminated spammy data leads from our platform and disengaged with any point of distribution that wouldn’t honor our new rules around the privacy of our consumer’s data. We also decided to take things a step further by removing the phone number field from our product - a simple question that would often create angst for our users. Imagine that, now you can shop for insurance without having to worry about your phone blowing up! So simple in theory, yet quite difficult in practice. We made a concerted effort to reduce redundancy, an issue that is particularly difficult in the data-rich world of insurance. These changes to our experience were also changes to our core model at the time. They essentially eliminated some of our largest sources of revenue, slashing product monetization and making it nearly impossible for us to compete in the marketplace. However, we trusted that these would be short-term implications and chose to hold stedfast as an agent of change within the industry and on behalf of consumers. 

Our trend lines began to reverse toward a more favorable direction. It didn’t happen overnight, but the consumer-first approach eventually began to show some promise. The more we told our story - and the more people saw it to be true - the more we started earning consumer’s trust. We began to see signals and new trends surface in the data. Our rate of return users improved by 18%, and our carrier partners benefited with a 30% boost in policy conversion. Things really started to hum as we entered 2019, with each subsequent month bringing more scale and greater consumer demand than the last. Our growth was unprecedented across the board… and by the end of 2019, we had a business that was 300% larger than it was a year prior. The best part: half of it was driven by organic traffic.

There are a few key lessons here:

• The startup journey is not a 1:1 linear path. Sometimes you have to join the practice before you can change the practice.
• Creating the ideal consumer experience often conflicts with short-term revenue goals. But we must think about the longer-term KPIs - and measure those metrics that are often more difficult to quantify yet equally as important. Don’t forget about good ol’ word-of-mouth, which still remains the very best kind of advertising one could ask for...
• Stand for something that matters - even if it seems small to start. Build trust and do the right thing. Tell your story.
• While we're a solid 8 years into our journey, it very much feels like we're just getting started. Sustainable change takes time.