Assignment 3 - Final Project Business Plan PDF

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Final Project Business Plan...

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New York Life 51 Madison Ave New York, NY 10010

Business Plan

Prepared by Emma Smith: May 31, 2020 843-822-3696 [email protected]

Table of Contents Executive Summary ………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 1 Statement of Purpose …………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 2 Business Description ………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 2 Products and Services ……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 3 Market Analysis ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 3 Competition ………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 3 SWOT Analysis ………………………………………………………………………………………….. 3 Marketing Strategy ……………………………………………………………………………………………… 4 Operations ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 6 Financial Forecast …………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 6 Research Cited………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 8

Executive Summary This digital marketing plan offers an economical, effective, and simple improvement to New York Life’s online advertising and interaction with consumers. As stated in the New York Life mission statement, “we are in the business of helping people…”. The goal of this initiative is to increase insurance and annuity sales by appealing to the millennium generation through higher levels of brand engagement and building customer loyalty. After conducting a SWOT analysis, it is evident that New York Life has huge opportunities for growth in terms of marketing products digitally.

The plan is simple:

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Campaign Slogan: “For YOUR Life” o This slogan places the importance on the customer and builds trust

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Create a change-management team to lead the marketing team in this initiative

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Implement campaign throughout all marketing channels (website, paid advertisements, social media, etc.)

The plan lays out these steps in greater detail and suggests the responsibilities for the marketing team to implement the campaign. The proposed channels of communication are already used by New York Life, so fortunately, many of these extremely effective marketing tools are free and easy to tweak.

This plan will improve New York Life credibility and communication with the target market (millennials), as well as increase its ability to help more customers.

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Statement of Purpose As a mutual life insurance company, New York Life emphasizes the value placed on the customers’ interests over the company’s. The goal of this business plan is to discuss the impact of a new digital marketing campaign that will build a better brand for New York Life. This marketing campaign will create higher levels of brand-engagement and customer loyalty, as well as increase insurance and annuity sales.

Business Descript Description ion Mission Statement: “We are in the business of helping people set and achieve their financial goals, helping our clients build, protect and preserve their assets, and helping our associates secure their financial future.”

New York Life Insurance Company is a Fortune 100 company founded in 1845. It is the largest mutual life insurance company in the United States and one of the largest life insurers in the world. New York Life is headquartered in New York City and offers life insurance, retirement income, investments and long-term care insurance (newyorklife.com). New York Life’s marketing team is headed by Michelle Bottomley. She was appointed as Chief Marketing Officer in 2018. In the past two years, New York Life has seen great growth in the digital marketing department and continues to seek further growth as a digital presence. In 2019, New York Life reported a record total dividend payout of $1.8 billion. Below is a chart that shows 2018 and 2019 Financial Highlights (in millions) 2019 Surplus and Asset Valuation Reserve $26,965 $11,521 Policy Owner Benefits and Dividends Individual Life Insurance in Force $1,061,108 $628,546 Assets Under Management Insurance Sales* $1,326 $13,232 Annuity Sales Operating Earnings $2,393 *notice the decrease in insurance sales from 2018 to 2019

2018 $24,814 $11,103 $1,029,308 $572,285 $1,358 $14,169 $2,316

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Products and Services New York Life offers a variety of products and services for the everyday customer, such as life insurance (term, whole, universal, and variable universal), long-term care, premier services, retirement planning, and investment options. New York Life provides personal guidance, flexible options, and convenient ways to pay when it comes to choosing the right service for you.

Market Analys Analysis is Competition New York Life’s main competitors are as follows: AIG, AON, Allianz, AXA Group, Delphi Financial Group, MetLife, and Allstate. SWOT Analysis

Strengths: As a leading company in the financial services industry, New York Life has many strengths that help it thrive in the marketplace. Based on Fern Fort University research, some of the strengths of New York Life are outlined below. New York Life has a very successful track record of product innovation. They are not necessarily a pioneer in the industry, but when implementing new products, have found great success. New York Life holds a leading position in most major markets. Since 1854, the company has shown strong financials and consistent revenue growth. Another strength of the company is its wide distribution channel, providing a lot of opportunity for growth. Weaknesses: Research emphasizes the lack of marketing for products. Even though sales of products are still relatively consistent and successful, the marketing could better highlight the unique selling proposition of each product. New York Life has also experienced relatively limited success outside of their core business. I am labeling this as a weakness because compared to some of their competitors in the field,

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they are getting left behind when it comes to moving to other product segments. They are also lacking global services and operations compared to most of their competitors. And finally, although New York Life is spending above the industry average on research and development, they have had difficulty competing with other leading firms in terms of innovation and growth. Opportunities: According to research, New York Life has huge opportunities to improve digitalization and communicative technologies in terms of marketing products and establishing a brand. Furthermore, New York Life has the opportunity to better harness the power of social media. In terms of human geography, the US is seeing an aging population trend, so more people are looking for life insurance and financial services in general. Another massive opportunity for the company would be expansion globally. Improved digitalization and communication would be a great start to this expansion. Threats: New York Life has intense competition. Due to the huge customer base and relatively consistent profitability, the industry has seen an increase in financial services companies. As mentioned earlier, New York Life also struggles developing completely new or innovative products. They instead develop their products in response to the market. Another threat that New York Life experiences is changing government regulations and financial crises. These threats are unpredictable but with preparation, can be better managed.

Marketin Marketing g Strat Strategy egy In 2016, New York Life initiated a marketing campaign centered around the slogan “Be Good at Life.” This campaign was focused on inspiring people to take control of their finances and redefine the role that life insurance plays in people’s lives (newyorklife.com). The campaign proved to be a great success, seen in the increase of insurance and annuity sales from 2016 (campaign implementation) to 2017.

Insurance Sales Annuity Sales *in millions

2017 $1,315* $13,809

2016 $1,231 $12,837

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Brand:

“For YOUR Life” I am proposing a new marketing campaign. The campaign will be centered around the slogan “For YOUR Life”. This campaign is going to take a slightly different approach than the 2016 one. “For YOUR Life” is inspired by a quote from Michelle Bottomley (CMO) in a 2019 interview. She says “we have this enormous opportunity to spotlight our brand and the caring, human guidance we deliver, as well as the fact that we are a mutual life insurance company, which means we have no shareholders and are fully aligned with our customers’ interests” (forbes.com). The new slogan is meant to showcase the purpose and mission of New York Life: to help people. “For YOUR Life” should inspire customers to choose New York Life because they feel that the company will work in their best interest. This appeal to emotion is attention grabbing and meaningful. It will also educate the customers on the fact that New York Life is a mutual life insurance company and therefore, has no investors to impress. Most importantly, the slogan “For YOUR Life” should instill trust and build credibility. Target Market:

The new slogan “For YOUR Life” is targeted at the millennial population who haven’t made their finances and insurance policies a priority yet. Research shows that the biggest financial regret of adults in America today is not starting to save for retirement early enough. The “For YOUR Life” campaign places the importance and urgency on the customer. Possible customers should read this slogan and feel like New York Life wants to help them, not make more money off of them. Marketing Channels:

It’s extremely important to carry branding throughout all marketing channels to communicate a consistent message. There are different marketing channels that the “For YOUR Life” campaign should be implemented in. The New York Life website is already well-organized and easy to navigate. The branding is consistent with the rest of its marketing channels. The new slogan should be large, attention grabbing, and located on the home page. Information within each tab on the website should tie back into the slogan somehow. When it comes 5

to social media, the slogan should be carried throughout all messages posted, even if it is just an underlying message. For example, if New York Life tweets something about their new insurance products, they should make sure to hashtag #forYOURlife and say something in the message about working to help their customers. Paid advertising is also critical and slightly easier to implement. By creating strong ads that use the slogan “For YOUR Life”, customers are likely to see New York Life show up in a variety of places. Online advertising is critical in today’s business environment as almost all customer-ad interactions occur online now (impigertech.com). And finally, emails must also be consistent with the new campaign. The message could be a header for all emails or part of the signature. The slogan “For YOUR Life” should be present on all emails and the content should be consistent with that message.

Operatio Operations ns This new marketing strategy is going to take time and a plan of action to put in place. It’s important to note that no new hires will need to be made to enact this new initiative. However, the rebranding process is going to require retraining throughout the marketing team. In order for the “For YOUR Life” campaign to be successful, the entire team needs to be on the same page when it comes to the message we want to send to our customers and future customers. I propose that we have applicants from the marketing team form a temporary changemanagement team to help lead the way into this new campaign. This will delegate the work and oversight to different levels within New York Life. The team will be in charge of implementing new communication and engagement strategies within all marketing channels. A change-management team will help employees align with this new marketing strategy in an organized and smooth transition.

Financial Forecast In order to predict the financial implications of this digital marketing plan, first we need to look at the costs. If we assume that the marketing team is capable of implementing these changes across the digital marketing board (like they did in 2016), we should not anticipate new hires being necessary to implement the “For YOUR Life” campaign. However, if a change-management team is created, the employees who are selected to lead should be compensated accordingly. After researching the methods of compensation for similar situations in other companies, I would advise putting a bonus plan in place to incentivize employees to meet company-set goals in a timely manner. 6

After having a financial analyst estimate the costs based off the extra bonus-plan as well as minor updates to software, advertising, etc., the cost is forecasted to be around $10 million. This cost is heavily outweighed by the increased revenue predicted to come from this campaign. If the success of the “For YOUR Life” campaign is similar to the “Be Good at Life” campaign, it is safe to estimate at least a $1056 million increase in revenue. This profit proves that this entire proposal will be extremely low risk to implement and shows a big possibility for a huge return.

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Research AMA Handbook of Business Communication https://drive.google.com/file/d/11w_0NGaUF6-s2jmmy7EVrDpFuzeDv-Hn/view Business Writing in the Digital Age by Natalie Canavor https://www.newyorklife.com/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucerogers/2019/07/02/cmo-michelle-bottomley-drivesconsumer-centricity-at-new-york-life/#4c1efa502444 https://www.ascendbusinessgrowth.com/blog/example-of-monthly-inbound-marketing-plan http://fernfortuniversity.com/term-papers/swot/1433/61-new-york-life-insurance.php https://www.impigertech.com/resources/blogs/digital-marketing-for-financial-services https://www.newyorklife.com/newsroom/financial-advice-survey-life-insurance-awarenessmonth-planning https://www.newyorklife.com/newsroom/2016/new-york-life-launches-new-campaign-inspiringconsumers-to-be-go https://www.newyorklife.com/assets/newsroom/docs/pdfs/New_York_Life_2019_financia_%20r esults_fact_sheet_FINAL.pdf

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