Target Practice for American Insurance Giant

With 3.8 million transactions a year bringing in between $3.8 and $4.3 billion in premiums, Seabury and Smith ranks as the world's largest association insurance program manager and marketer.

Now the company is to use Exchange Applications new VALEX software to improve their direct marketing operation - currently reaching out to millions of members of affinity groups and professional organisations.

The software will be used to target members of one the United States' largest affinity groups, with more than 30 million members.

Seabury and Smith's director of marketing information systems Scott Mueller said the new software would allow the company to produce highly targeted marketing campaigns aimed at specific customers.

"Today, most affinity organisations practice mass marketing, where the same offer is sent out to millions of members," Mueller told CRM News.

"We're taking a different approach - using our clients' own data to create highly targeted campaigns with various offers that are much more relevant to members lives, and having metrics in place to measure lift in response and ROI."

The first stage of the new campaign will see Seabury and Smith building a data warehouse of information taken from the company's existing systems.

The firm will then employ the VALEX software to identify new and existing customers for its range of insurance products and services.

The new technology will enable the company to fine tune its campaign according to demographic variables including the geographic location, age and income of prospective customers.

With Seabury and Smith's massive data warehouse expected to approach a terabyte of data within the year, Mr Mueller said VALEX had been identified as the only system capable of handling and analysing the huge amounts of information.

A wholly-owned subsidiary of Marsh and Maclennan Companies, Inc, Seabury and Smith is a leading provider of insurance program and underwriting management in the United States and Canada.

The company is also the largest insurance underwriting manager of professional indemnity and directors' and officers' liability in the United Kingdom