Liverpool Victoria

Attitudinal and Lifestage segmentation

Liverpool Victoria is the UK's largest friendly society managing over £8 billion on behalf of it's members and customers. The Society is a mutual, owned by its members, and offers savings, investments, loans and insurance products largely to a family audience, via direct and partnership channels.

The challenge

In 2005 Liverpool Victoria undertook a huge strategic refocusing exercise to align the business more closely to the customer. They had an overall requirement to identify a core market for their business going forward in order to focus on the areas of most potential for future growth. A clear understanding of this core market would form the basis for both a strategic review of the business and more tactical direct marketing. They particularly wanted to understand which customer group:

	Could potentially deliver best value to the business
	Had the best fit with the values of the business such as mutuality and trust

Any segmentation project had to be applied not only to the Liverpool Victoria customer and enquirer base but also to the overall market.

The solution

CACI’s solution was to develop both a market and customer segmentation to help the business understand where the best potential lay in the future. The project included the segmentation of three major bases:

The UK Financial Services Market – in order to understand the market as a whole and therefore be able to estimate market potential and not be limited by constraints of the current customer base.

Existing Liverpool Victoria customers – it was vital that the same segmentation could be applied to actual customers in order to inform all types of marketing activity from proposition development to messaging and campaign selections.

The Liverpool Victoria prospect and enquirer pool – as a highly active mailer it was necessary to apply the segmentation to the Liverpool Victoria prospect pool.

The project involved the creation of a lifestage and an attitudinal segmentation. CACI worked closely with the Liverpool Victoria team to establish the business values and then used this to conduct bespoke research to a representative sample. A range of demographic variables were collected during the research to allow the segments to be bridged onto the three base files.

Five segments were created from the attitudinal data and then further profiled using demographic and lifestyle data.

Four lifestage segments were also created since financial purchasing behaviour is largely driven by lifestage.

The two segmentations were then combined into a matrix of lifestage by attitudes and CACI worked with Liverpool Victoria’s data planners to focus on a relevant core market for the business. Finally this was then overlaid with ‘value to business’ which took into account current product holdings of existing customers in each segment and the potential value of those customers.

Pen portraits were created for the segments using CACI’s Ocean database.

The results and benefits

Liverpool Victoria has a far greater understanding of both its current position in the market place and where it wants to go. The clear descriptions of the core market allow focussed proposition development. The segments have also allowed better understanding of responsiveness to previous campaigns and informed selection and targeting for future direct marketing activity.

"CACI’s approach to the work has been thorough and actionable ensuring that our business needs and issues were understood upfront so that the segmentation is relevant and pragmatic.”

- Mike Trevett Customer Database Manager Liverpool Victoria

To find out more about our work either call 020 7602 6000 or e-mail info@caci.co.uk