In the last post from our recent webinar with Nationwide, we talked about how the insurance provider was able to overcome organizational concerns about adopting social media in a highly-regulated industry. Once they achieved internal buy-in, Sue McManus, Nationwide’s VP of Direct and Customer Solutions Marketing, and Shawn Morton, Director of Mobile, Social & Emerging Media, faced a new challenge: driving real business results through UGC.

Setting measurable business goals for UGC

Once Nationwide decided to move forward with a social strategy, their first step was to identify goals for their UGC. At a high level, Shawn and Sue wanted to build trust and confidence in the Nationwide brand among current and potential policy holders. Consumers want to hear from their peers before making a purchase decision. Recognizing this, Nationwide wanted to give customers the opportunity to share their experiences, helping prospects find the information they need at the point of purchase.

At a more specific level, Nationwide needed to show real, direct business benefits from UGC. To do this, the brand aligned its social commerce efforts with three key business goals: increasing policy conversion rate, driving SEO traffic, and improving marketing effectiveness.

Meeting these goals with social commerce

Nationwide has leveraged Ratings & Reviews in a number of ways to meet their corporate goals and grow their business.

Enabling customer reviews on auto insurance. Customer reviews on insurance policies provide relevant content that consumers trust, helping them determine the right policy for their needs and take the next step towards a purchase decision.

Pushing content to customers’ social networks. Using Social Network Accelerators, Nationwide customers are invited to share reviews with their Facebook network, helping Nationwide reach new audiences and bringing traffic back to the brand site.

Driving SEO with fresh content. Enabling UGC provides the site with rich, relevant content that is continually updated, driving organic search traffic to Nationwide.com.

Improving paid search ads. Keywords pulled from customer reviews make for compelling paid search ads, bringing new traffic to the brand site by reaching customers in their own words.

Measuring the results

Nationwide segments site visitors who interact with UGC from those who don’t, and compares their behavior against the goals above.  Specifically, they look at the quote start rate, quote completion rate, and policy bind rate for both audiences, and measure the difference in performance. They also track “intent to buy” metrics, like finding an Agent’s office or contacting Nationwide directly. Additionally, they look at click-through and conversion rates for homepage ads and paid search landing pages with UGC, benchmarking the performance of both segments over time.

Spreading these results to the entire organization

The impact of UGC doesn’t end on Nationwide’s website. Since launching Ratings & Reviews, they have embraced customer oxygen across the organization, transforming the brand’s culture and the way they talk to customers.  “As much as we can bring the voice of the customer to every employee in this company,” says Sue, “the more effective we’re going to be.”

Any Nationwide employee can read customer reviews online, giving everyone from claims representatives to executives tremendous insight into how the brand is doing and what their customers value. This translates into recommendations and improvements, helping pinpoint what the brand is doing well and where they can invest more to better serve customers.

There’s also a strong motivational effect, Sue says. Many reviews praise claims reps that went out of their way to help customers. “We are in the business of putting people back to normal after something bad happens,” says Sue. “When you see that we’re doing that every day, over and over again, and you see the emotions that our customers share in a very positive light, it really helps drive and prioritize our behavior as an organization. It’s very inspirational content internally.”

Want to hear more about Nationwide’s use of social commerce?  The full webinar, “Overcoming Your Fear of User-Generated Content: A Webinar for Highly-Regulated Industries,” is available to download for free, here: