Looking at your LinkedIn profiles, both of you bring a wealth of experience to financial services industry. I'm interested to dive into that a little bit and understand how that has shaped your strategies at Wesleyan. Claire, can I come to you first?

Yeah, thank you so much, David. So I'm really privileged actually to have had a long and really varied career in financial services marketing. And I think for me, the strand, the common strand that's gone through everything that I've done has been this laser like focus on the customer.

I'm also lucky to have worked in a number of different environments. So I've worked in retail marketing.

I've worked for product manufacturers, and I've worked now in the advice business. But I've, you know, from a marketing point of view, I've done B2B, B2B and B2B2C.

Right.

So I find myself now at Wesleyan kind of being able to really implement everything that I've learnt across all of my different careers and we can talk more about you know how that's manifested itself as we go through the discussion.

Fabulous. Eve?

So I've spent a long portion of my career in mutual financial services organisations and I guess what's drawn me to those is the fact they have a real customer centricity and they can really invest for the long term benefit of their customers. The last ten years I've spent my career in mutuals that specifically focus on certain professions within the UK, which I guess has really taught me how to build differentiated brands that really draw out the benefits of those organisations for those specific professions. So I've worked in an organisation that delivered financial services for the police and the military, and now at Wesleyan for a business that delivers financial advice and financial solutions for teachers, doctors and dentists. And I think the key thing that's taught me is how you use really targeted and cost efficient marketing techniques to target those audiences really effectively.

Wesleyan stands out with its unique approach within the marketplace. How is that positioning influencing the way that you go to market and importantly, customer acquisition strategies?

Yes, so as Izz already pointed out, we are offering financial solutions to a real, you know, really important part of the market, some professions that we all know and trust doctors, dentists and teachers. And this is the first time in my entire career that we've been as targeted as we actually are today. So we really know who our customers are. We really understand them really deeply. We know where they are, we know where to find them, we know how to access them.

And so for me this whole customer centric strategy was really easy to implement at Wesleyan and that's what I did when I came in a couple of years ago, in place a marketing strategy that absolutely places those professions at the heart of everything that we do, that's customer insight led, that's data driven, that really enables us to access them in the right way, talk to them in the right way. So that's really what been doing.

And then in terms of what we offer, know, it's all about developing the right products and services to meet those customer needs. So find out what those needs are and then, you know do the insight and the research to make sure that you're always on top of what those needs are because obviously they change. Look at the professions that we're serving, know doctors, the amount of change that's been going on in the NHS over the last few years and is set to go on in the future. Dentists that world has completely changed if you think of where we were a few years ago with NHS only now, that whole thing changing and the teaching profession.

So we have to stay really aligned and true to those changes that are happening but it's really important that we have you know the right team of people to meet those needs. So we offer it through our advice channel we have two forty odd financial advisors that know even more than we do as marketeers, know, about those customer needs because they need to sit there day in day out and understand those needs. But we are utterly aligned to the people that sit in front of our customers.

I'm interested because you've got different professions, but they're so different, those Yeah.

But you, in your own words, you really understand them very deeply. How do you go, because their needs are, like you said, the dentistry industry has changed a lot over How do you keep on top of that change?

So we're continually getting customer insights. We do lots of research focus groups. If we, you know, developing new propositions we will start with the customer and ask them what it is that they need. Our route to market is we get access to these professions through professional bodies. So we work with those professional bodies. But something that we do at Wesleyan, which I think is quite unique is we have a members advisory board so that's sixteen people, four from each professional, I know I said there were only three but we split the medical profession into two so we have four doctors, four hospital doctors, four GPs, four dentists and four teachers on our members advisory board and they work alongside us to advise us on exactly what's going on in their world. And that's how we stay really true.

Almost like a board of directors on a way.

Oh, are. And it's brilliant. It's so insightful. And we don't just have them in a couple of times a year for meetings, which we do do that obviously, but they work alongside us. So if anything changes, we've got WhatsApp group, we say, right, something's just happened. Can you give us some intel on that? So it's quite informal and it absolutely works.

Eve, partnerships play a significant role in Wesleyan's strategy. How do these collaborations enhance the actual marketing efforts and customer reach?

So the two things that partnerships really give us as an organisation is it helps us build brand credibility. So a lot of the partners we work with, we are the exclusive financial advice partner for those organisations. And the reason the partners are willing to advocate us as their exclusive financial advice partner is because they know we're the specialist in the market and we really understand the financial needs of the professions. So that builds real credibility for Wesleyan. So that's one really great advantage of partnering with organisations. The other is that we use their marketing channels. So we attend their conferences, we run financial education webinars for their members, we provide content for newsletters.

So that gives us a really great way to kind of access the market and get in front of those people who may not fully understand what Wesleyan have to offer.

How long have you had these books? I don't know, but I'm guessing that trust is perhaps a key component here with the profession. It sounds like these partnerships are very strong. Have you held them for a number of years?

Yes, so some of them are long standing. So RCGP, the Royal College of General Practitioners is a Royal College that we've worked with for many years.

And not only do we work alongside them to make sure that we provide content that's relevant on financial matters to their members, but we gain an awful lot of insight from them as an organisation about what's important to their members and so we can work along side them to make sure that everything we offer is of value.

It's kind of coming back again to the point you made, like the board, your board of directors, but you've also got these partners which you're listening to and feeding back into. You're gathering a lot of insight constantly about the changing ways of the market by the sounds of it. Eve, your head of customer acquisition and management, how do you align those diverse channels like the advice and direct business to actually drive income?

There is a number of number of things we do. I think income, we see income as an outcome rather than as the starting point. So I think Claire's talked about the fact that we we start with the customer. So really putting a focus on what the customer needs are is massively important. And I think we know that customers have different needs throughout their life stages.

And at points in time, there will be a requirement for financial advice, but sometimes they might also just want to take a direct product, something like an ICER app because they know what they want.

So that's kind of always the starting point. At Wesleyan, we want to be a lifelong partner for our customers right through from when they start at university through to retirement and post retirement. So I guess meeting those needs along those journeys is the most important thing for us.

And we need to raise awareness of that so that our customers and potential customers are aware of what we have to offer. I think the other thing I'd say is it's really important that we get across our specialism so that our customers know what the benefit from talking to Wesleyan is.

As an example, we've got a really deep understanding of things like the NHS and teachers pension schemes. So we can really, I guess, deliver benefit for our customers around their retirement plans. So again, making sure they're aware of that is really important.

I think the other way we look at kind of how we drive income efficiently is looking at how we target. So we've touched a little bit on this in terms of partnerships. That's a really cost effective route to market for us as is digital marketing, using social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, brilliant for us because they target professions directly. But also when you're talking about something like retirement, you can specifically target demographics like age ranges, etcetera.

So digital marketing has also been a massive part of our kind of acquisition strategy from a Wesleyan perspective. And then I guess finally, I'd talk about measurement. So we measure everything. So we allocate a unique campaign code to all of our marketing, so to every social media post, to every piece of content that we put out through partners.

They're allocated a unique campaign code, we track that through. So from an advice business perspective, we can see what leads are generated, but then we track it to see what appointments have been delivered, whether it's gone to second appointment, whether that's gone to advice presented and right through to sales and income.

That really allows us to see what's working in the funnel.

And obviously we're stop activity that doesn't work. We can do more of the activity that does. And we're also doing a lot of AB testing in that space as well. So to make sure that we're kind of continually improving on what we've done.

So you feeding all of the different channels into one single source of truth being the CRM, are you?

Yes. So yeah, all going into CRM.

Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you. We've talked a lot about, or I've heard from the from beginning sitting chatting to you, a phrase mentioned time and time again as being very important to Wesleyan and indeed UK customer centricity. It's been absolutely pivotal from from the sounds of things for Wesleyan.

Can you maybe elaborate on that kind of transformation of how you turned that into being custom centric and also what the impact has been on the overall business?

Yeah absolutely, so it's no surprise to hear me say that it actually starts with your marketing strategy. So it's absolutely fundamental to have a marketing strategy in place. When I joined Wesleyan, I put along with Eve and the rest of my leadership team, we pulled together a ten point marketing strategy with all the things that you would expect around being, you know, data driven, around being customer centric, around the use of digital, etc. A number of different aspects to that.

We put that in place with the customer absolutely at the heart of that. So that was the first thing but you know obviously the strategy you have to bring that to life. Eve's already talked about some, you know many of the ways that we are absolutely putting the customer at the heart of everything we do from a campaign perspective and I already alluded to the fact that you know we're always evolving our propositions to make sure that they're still meeting our customer needs and we leave the point about being insight driven is absolutely fundamental to everything that we do. So we don't just guess and say oh well we think that the doctors might like an enhancement to this product or proposition.

We go out and we absolutely make sure that that is the case.

But for me the point about being customer centric, you can do all of those things but if you don't change the culture within the organisation then nothing really is going to change.

And obviously we are a mutual.

The fact of being a mutual is, you know, everything that we do is to to is to pay back to our members. We don't have shareholders. So you'd think, yes, of course, we're customer centric. However, I'm we're still on a journey to to to kind of make it really clear that you have to start with the customer and end with the customer and place the customer absolutely and fundamentally at the heart of everything that you do.

So to enable that to happen when I joined, something I've done in my previous two companies, was to put in place a Customer Committee. So that sounds like another boring board doesn't it? But actually it's been really fundamental to enable us to change the culture within the organisation. So the Customer Committee is probably a small number of people that are the most able to influence customer change in the organisation.

We come together once a month and we're there to basically unblock things on behalf the customer.

We've got lots of metrics you've heard Eve talk about you know our measures we are very metric driven so that enables us to really measure what we're doing for our customers but we get together once a month and we bring live examples to the table of good customer experience, bad customer experience as you would imagine.

Being the voice of the customer within the We are the voice within business.

Yeah, and it doesn't just happen once a month, but hopefully that then permeates throughout the organisation because we communicate regularly what we're doing at customer committee.

Great, great when there's good feedback. It must be quite challenging sometimes for the business to hear when it's presumably some of the most valuable stuff is when it's not great feedback.

Oh yeah, I mean we review trust Pilot reviews every month and you know there's nothing better than to hear a really great Trust Pilot review, everyone wants to hear that right.

But for me the most rewarding actually is when you review the bad Trust Pilot because then you've got something to fix.

Because a catalyst for change.

It's such a simple thing, isn't it? Customer committee. Of course, everyone's probably like, well, why don't you do that? That sounds like common sense. But as you say, that feedback directly into the business and then asking the business to change, that's proper transformation. How did that go down in the wider business and to start embedding that so that the business starts to value it an asset?

Do you know what, everybody is absolutely behind it. However, you know, in every organisation that I've worked in, and I'm sure most organisations out there, you know, it's really easy to say start with customer when, you know, for most of your history you've actually been really focused on your own processes or what the business needs are, know, just being really candid about it, you know, that happens.

But the difference at Wesleyan and I think through the cultural change that we've made through the customer committee, through the members advisory board, so having the voice of the customer in the room that way. I think the way that we're slowly starting to evolve that culture is through demonstrating the benefits that you get when you do start with the customer in mind. So I can give you an example, you asked for an example. So one of the things that Yves talked about was the fact that we have a big opportunity in the retirement arena with you know doctors, dentists and teachers.

Mentioned we are absolutely specialist in their pensions particularly for doctors and teachers.

So that's something that we really you know want to shout about and we want to do more of.

So we've evolved our retirement proposition to really target, you know, our doctors, dentists and teachers in their retirement and to give them the content that they may not be able to, you know, easily access, bring it all together into one place, into Retirement Club. Okay. That's gone super, super well. But that's absolutely being customer centric.

And that's all through just the discipline of listening and asking the right Absolutely.

And we had the content in lots of different places, but we actually thought, you know what, we could pull this together into something, you know, really great. So we have a retirement hub now. So if you sign up to be a member of our retirement club, you'll get content pushed to you.

We've got a hub where you can access information, you get a, you know, a free appointment with one of our advisors, etcetera.

So that's a really good example of really understanding customer need and then developing a proposition to help to meet that need.

Fantastic. Clare, that's fascinating.

Retirement Hub, great name by the way, Hub, love that.

Can you can you can you I know specifically that you've you've picked up a couple of awards for this and the come to the FS Forum Effectiveness Awards, which are very hard to win. So I'm really I'm really keen to dive in to this in a in a bit more What can you tell us about it?

Well, first of all, you're absolutely right, David. We are hugely proud to have won three awards the last two Congratulations!

Of the Financial Services Forum Awards, which you say are much coveted in the industry because they are absolutely about marketing effectiveness.

And you know the ones that we've won in the last three years, we've won an award for Best Innovation in Customer Journey for our Next Steps programme for dental and medical students and so that was brilliant. Then most recently we've won two awards. One was for the best use of social media, most effective use of social media and the other one was the most effective use of a small budget.

You know both of those really important to win. But it's not so much about you know the award win, it's the route that we've taken to kind of get there. Because what we've done is we've shown that we are able to meet the unique challenges of our doctors, dentists and teachers and we can absolutely measure how we do that. So if I hand to Eve, she can walk through of campaigns that we've done that I think really nicely demonstrates that.

Yeah, no problem. So I'll talk a little bit about the retirement e guide, which is actually the one we won the social media and small budget awards for. It's a really great example of how we have created content and turned it into kind of a multi channel campaign.

So what was really important in producing the content about retirement for doctors, dentists and teachers was it was really bespoke for them. So it really talked to their profession and the unique circumstances that surround their retirement and their pensions. So we actually created three versions of the guide, one for each of the professions.

And the content was really insight led, so we worked with our members advisory board, we got feedback from our specialist financial advisors, we did some research around what are the things that are going to be most important to people when thinking about retirement. And what we did is we created content around an A to Z. So we had all the letters of the alphabet and we created content around each of those letters. So E for early retirement, for example, L for information around the lifetime allowance.

And then what we did is we created a multichannel campaign around that. So we sent emails out to our own database. We created content for partners on all the different subjects within the guide. But probably the most successful thing we did was the social media campaign.

So we ran, we had over one hundred paid social media ads that went out all around the A to Z content that was contained in the Across Facebook and Facebook and LinkedIn.

And LinkedIn, yeah.

Yeah. And really, I guess targeted the different audiences with content that was relevant to them. The other thing that we did around social media, which really amplified the message, was we provided all the posts to our specialist financial advisers. So at the click of a button, they could post these into their contacts on LinkedIn, for example. That got us access to another one hundred and thirty thousand customers. Wow.

So that was a really successful way of increasing our reach for the company.

I bet the advisors love that as well. Always want stuff to post, don't Yes. You're kind of helping them, helping you as well. That's brilliant.

It was a six month campaign initially.

We actually had two thousand five hundred downloads of the e guide in that six month period and nine hundred requests for financial advice appointments. So a huge success in terms of engaging the audience.

That sounds like a high number. To give some context, what would that number be like without that campaign of impact?

Yeah, I mean, it significantly increased on our normal campaign. Obviously differs depending on the subject. There's a very big interest in retirement and how people plan for retirement. But yeah, one of our most successful campaigns ever.

Eve, those numbers sound phenomenal. I'm interested to know, were you planning on that level of success? What were you expecting when you started to put the campaign together?

So we spent around forty thousand pounds on the campaign. So around ten thousand to create the content for the guides and then around thirty thousand on paid social media and activity through our partners. And what we wanted to return was effectively double of what we'd invested.

Okay, so eighty ks.

Yeah, we got a significantly higher return than that. So we actually returned around two hundred and fifty thousand in the first six months of the campaign.

That's fantastic.

That's proper effectiveness right there for you, isn't Yeah, and I guess what's even more interesting than that is those guides have really continued to drive leads in for us day in, day out.

So the content has been massively valuable for the people consuming it. And we've driven leads off the back of that and continue to do so.

The content itself, the 8Z guide, is that what you'd call evergreen content?

Yeah, it's content that's been developed specifically for our audiences. We continually review it to make sure that it's up to date, that it reflects any changes in pension schemes for example. So yeah, we're constantly reviewing it, constantly reviewing the activity that drives people to it and just making sure that it's always going to be relevant.

Congratulations again. I mean, that sounds absolutely fantastic. So good to hear about a campaign that's actually, you know, driving proper income back into the business. You must have people banging on your door saying, can we have one of these please? Are you rolling it out in any other areas?

Yeah, so we're developing new e guides as we speak. So we've actually got one in development that brings to life value added content around our commercial proposition. That is everything we offer to support GP practice owners and dental practice owners. So we do all sorts of things to support them in terms of commercial investments, in terms of insurances that support their businesses. So we're currently pulling all that together in one place as we speak.

Superb. Watch this space.

Watch this space.

Brilliant. Brilliant.

So collectively, question for both of you then is it's great, great to hear the story. It's I can't wait to go back and download all of these guys. Have a good look at best practice.

But based on your collective experience, what what do you think, I guess, key lessons, best practices would you share with your peers?

It's not going be any surprise to you that I'm going to say it's really absolutely about putting the customer at the heart of everything that you do, not just talking about Clearly very close to your heart.

Yeah, but creating that cultural change to enable that to happen, that for me is is a fundamental one. And the one that we haven't actually talked about yet, although sitting next to her even being so proud of everything that that she and the team has done, one of the most fundamental things for me is to build a high performing marketing team. Because if you don't have the right people, and that was a fundamental part of our marketing strategy that we put in place, to get the right people into the right roles, give them the development, make it fun as well because we spend a lot of time at work and that's absolutely been one of the fundamentals to our success. You have to really focus on your people. Eve's been brilliant at that in terms of developing the people within her team as well and it's something that goes right the way through our marketing organisation. Think it's fundamentally important.

Yeah, that's great to hear. Eve, what would your advice be?

I think probably two things targeting, you know, how do you create a marketing strategy that is as cost efficient as possible?

Digital marketing, as I've mentioned, has been massively important to us as have partnerships as a route to market. And we are in a privileged position of being able to target specific professions within the UK, but I think part of that is continual measurement. So I've talked about the use of campaign codes so that you can track every piece of activity. We put a real laser light focus on that.

And, you know, in combination with real customer insights and, you know, what actually happens as a result, we have, you know, I guess a great way of developing a marketing strategy that works.

It must give the C suite a lot of confidence that you are a) being prudent with your with your marketing spend, but showing and and selling yourself from from from what you've said, there was a clearly defined target. Right. We're to put forty ks into this campaign. We're going to try and get eighty ks back is, you know, we know everyone knows exactly what the objective was.

You then go and smash that. That must give the business then confidence to go, great, proven it. Presumably, let's, you know, let's continue or let's try hence the developing this into other areas. So that's absolutely fantastic.

Continuous improvement as well to be honest. Eve with her team, they are brilliant at measuring everything that we do and if it's not hitting our benchmarks then you know as you mentioned earlier, killing it and trying something else. There's no harm to try something and fail. We very much have that culture, don't we Eve, where it's better to try something and fail because you might succeed. That's what we continually really do. Don't don't be afraid to do that.

That's how you learn and grow. It's good. It's good that you've created that environment where you're trusting the team and you're trusting your team and they know that they can try these things. Yeah.

Yeah, that's fabulous. It's been an absolute masterclass in best practice marketing. Thank you so much for coming down and sharing the story. I wish you all the success and many more FS Forum effectiveness awards in the future.

Thank you for listening today to The Growth Engine. If you enjoyed this episode and like to hear more, please do subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from and follow us on LinkedIn for regular updates or on www.hubagency.co.uk Thank you and see you next time.