Last week we attended Vertafore’s Accelerate user conference, presented by NetVu, in Cincinnati. While we’ve attended many digital marketing, digital commerce, and insurance events across North America, this was the first Insurance event for us in the United States, and our first Vertafore event.

We exhibited at the event with our partner Act-On Software, our partner in delivering market-leading digital marketing solutions for the Finance and Insurance market.

Here’s what we learned.

The Strategy Gap is Pervasive

Just like their Canadian counterparts, the Brokers, Agencies, and MGAs we met in Cincinnati are looking for Digital Strategy support. Many have tried various digital tactics and technologies, and in some cases have made some headway. But the prevailing feedback from Vertafore users is that they are looking for help pulling it all together – into a single cohesive digital strategy.

In fact, this theme was echoed in several conversations with Vertafore team members who recognized the significant opportunity for their customers who are taking a strategic approach.

Why the gap in strategy? Until recently, many businesses have taken a conservative approach to digital solutions. For most firms, building out a complete digital team, along with the supporting marketing technology, is a significant investment in money and time, and has many unknowns. However, we heard that for many the timing is right to develop their plans.

Goose Digital has a Digital Roadmap solution for Insurance Providers. This cost-effective engagement helps Brokers, Agencies, and MGAs map out a 12-18 plan (with budget) to roll out a strategic digital plan.

One Solution for Personal and Commercial Insurance

We heard several times about the surge in Commercial Insurance products that is taking hold. Many Brokers or Agencies that traditionally were highly focused on Personal Lines, are now developing strategies for their Commercial Lines. And those who were always a mix of both, are seeing the demand increase on the Commercial side of things, furthering their revenue and margin opportunity.

Many Vertafore users also learned that digital marketing solutions in Commercial Insurance have significant upside opportunities. For a number of reasons, Commercial Insurance has benefited from significant growth in digital via strong Lead Targeting, Lead Nurturing, and Cross Sell opportunities – all of which are powered by Act-On’s Marketing Automation Platform.

As such, it is very important the Marketing Automation Solution can support all Product Lines efficiently and effectively. One size fits all does not work anymore.

Vertafore Partner Community is Strong

We were very impressed with Vertafore’s approach to partnering in the market. From top down, the entire company is very focused on developing a strong ecosystem of partners, ranging from Technology to Service partners. This is very exciting for Vertafore’s users.

Vertafore is really driving the “community” message, but what’s more visible is the feeling you get from talking to their team. We met people who had only been with Vertafore 5 months as well as senior executives with 10 years of tenure – the “partner community message” was pervasive across the board.

We also learned about Vertafore’s latest cloud based integration support for AMS360 using Restful APIs.

In fact, Act-On plans to integrate with Vertafore’s AMS360 product to bring best-in-class Marketing Automation Technology to their users. This would be a first for Vertafore AMS360 and would power up modern marketing campaigns across the entire customer journey of all insurance products.

Goose Digital also has plans to become a Vertafore Orange Services partner later this year.

What’s Next?

We’ll definitely be back next year and look forward to developing the Vertafore partnership.

In the meantime, if you’re interested in learning more about our solutions in the insurance market, please head over to goosedigital.com/insurance.