Project Background
The concept for Agency Value Accelerator originated from the desire of insurance agency owners to demonstrate increased value to their customers through providing an agency branded defensive driver course for free. This concept was envisioned as a tool to not only assist insurance agency clients with improving their driving skills and gaining a valuable discount but also as a medium to inform customers about all of the services and products available through the agency. The vision for this concept centered on making courses available for free to both existing insurance customers and prospective customers without obligation to purchase anything and to have courses accessed through a website branded to the insurance agency. The model for Agency Value Accelerator evolved into a subscription service that would feature multiple subscriber options offering either a fixed number of free courses available each month or a premium subscription option for unlimited courses.
- Client: Online Awesome Marketing LLC
- Date: February 2018
- Need: Business Solution
This concept proved an excellent fit for the NDSI to license the Defensive Driver Academy course for use by our new strategic partner, Online Awesome Marketing LLC for distribution through their subscription service Agency Value Accelerator. The new venture fit the parameters sought by the NDSI perfectly: innovative distribution models to rapidly and broadly expand the reach of our driver education content. The NDSI structured agreements with Online Awesome Marketing to ensure participation throughout the technology development process to ensure the Defensive Driver Academy course was presented to the standards required. The content licensing agreement also ensured Online Awesome Marketing the ability to have course content automatically updated whenever revisions were applied and to expand their offering to additional states as the NDSI continues to develop new state specific course options.
Challenges & Solutions
The NDSI assisted Online Awesome Marketing on a consulting basis through the development of the unique technology required to deliver their new subscription service to insurance agencies. We focused on content setup and data integrity while also assisting with design and presentation for everything associated with the Defensive Driver Academy course. While the basic concept for the Agency Value Accelerator (AVA) subscription service is simple, the development efforts required to enable the business model to function as designed presented a number of unique challenges.
Our Process
The NDSI worked closely with Online Awesome Marketing and contractor developers throughout the technology development process to ensure that all objectives were met and challenges overcome. This effort extended over a 4 month period that lead to a beta testing process followed by an initial limited launch of the AVA service targeting agents representing a single insurance company in one state in order to work through a managed process of live testing and modification to maximize the effectiveness of the new AVA subscription service.
01
Comprehensive business needs analysis and project scope definitions that were refined through multiple stages of prototyping. Emphasis was placed on maximizing the NDSI goal of innovative distribution of driver safety content in order to achieve increased student engagement.
02
AVA subscription product segmentation, evaluation and design to enable multiple options with different pricing points and number of available monthly courses ranging from 5 to unlimited. 3 product options were finalized: Base (5 free courses) + Gold (10 free courses) and Platinum (unlimited free courses)
03
Automated subscribing agency site creation systems designed, developed and tested to ensure no manual setup requirements and a new AVA subscribing insurance agency would be enabled to begin offering free courses at their own agency branded site within minutes of completing the AVA registration and payment process.
04
Extensive live testing of all technical and business processes with a "beta" group of 5 agency owners to ensure correct functionality and ability to meet all business requirements. This effort proceeded through several major revisions to systems until acceptable stability and business process support had been fully demonstrated.
Results Driven
Online Awesome Marketing launched the AVA subscription service in May of 2018 and immediately recognized significant market acceptance and success. With a deliberate strategy to limit expansion during an initial evaluation period aimed at identifying and correcting any technical problems while refining business model support systems the AVA product quickly evolved into an extremely effective tool to aid insurance agencies with customer satisfaction, retention and increased sales.
