Homeserve

Homeserve GB are part of Homeserve plc, the UK's leading provider of domestic assistance insurance.

Their core products include plumbing and drains cover, electrical wiring cover and gas central heating cover. These are sold through the brands of water, energy and insurance companies.

The challenge

Homeserve GB are one of the UK’s leading direct marketing organisations, mailing over 70 million pieces and telemarketing over 4 million individuals a year. With membership growing at over 20% per annum, they need to choose partners who can accomodate such rapid growth and are future proofed.

Homeserve wanted a partner to help them make targeted selections from their affinity partners’ databases and provide additional contacts to mail. They considered a number of suppliers of name and address data and chose CACI because of their flexible approach to structuring the agreement, good overall support in terms of using the lifestyle data and most importantly, the strong predictive power of the data in tests.

The solution

CACI provided Homeserve with its entire Consumer Register, including old records from previous Electoral Rolls. This file of 49m records was tagged with a selected number of key LifestylesUK and ACORN variables to enhance the lifestyle information on each individual and identify homeowners.

Homeserve use CACI's LifestylesUK and ACORN data to build a number of models, which are applied to their affinity partners' databases to select targeted prospects for mailing campaigns. By comparing their partner billing data to the Consumer Register, Homeserve can also identify additional prospects on the CACI database. These individuals can then be included in the final mailing file.

The results and benefits

CACI's Consumer Register is one of the most comprehensive and accurate prospect files available. This means that Homeserve achieve high match rates when appending data to their partner databases, giving them access to a larger target audience. In addition, LifestylesUK’s consistent propensity scores make it particularly effective for modelling purposes.

Homeserve now hold a wide range of datasets in house which gives them far greater flexibility in terms of the models they can build and a much clearer understanding of their better performing segments. By mailing the top 30% of their models, Homeserve achieved a lift of 15% in the direct marketing response rate. When they updated the data model on fresher customer data and using the latest CACI data, they achieved a further 15% lift, giving them a total increase of 30% against a random sample. The improvement in response rate equated to a 23% improvement in the cost of aquisition compared with basic random selections.

Homeserve continue to build on their advanced knowledge of the CACI data, and are currently looking to expand their applications with region specific models.

Patrick O’Donnell, Data Analysis Manager from Homeserve GB comments,

“By modelling CACI’s geo-demographic and lifestyle datasets onto our prospect files, we have developed a solid understanding of our highest performing segments, and have been able to improve the targeting of our campaigns. This has led to a 30% increase in response rate and a 23% improvement in the cost of acquisition.”

Visit the Homeserve website