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More Than operates in an extremely tough market where consumers can choose between nearly 400 providers. There is a perception of very limited product differentiation and with low customer engagement, price often dictates who people insure with. The sector spends over £200m a year on media, battling it out to create switchers in order to acquire new customers; it then relies on retention and cross selling to drive profitability.

More Than's challenge for 2006 was to deliver 12 per cent more sales than the previous year with a 10 percent reduction in marketing spend. This was never going to be easy but with a focus on three clear objectives it delivered over 20 per cent growth in sales and a 20 per cent reduction in the overall cost per sale.

Direct marketing underpins More Than's entire business model and the clever use of all aspects of the discipline have driven this outstanding success in 2006.

The company's strategy involved taking a holistic approach to media planning. This resulted in shifting over £5m worth of spend from brand response based media. Through tighter media targeting it also strengthened its brand scores with value perception up 5 per cent, quality up 10 per cent, familiarity up 34 per cent and spontaneous awareness up 3 per cent - and all of this with a 35 per cent reduction in awareness spend.

It then set about delivering the brand philosophy. 2006 marked the first year since launch that it ventured away from 'Lucky the dog'. In a bid to put the More back into More Than the company developed the 'We do more' campaign to show how it goes
above and beyond in its products and services. This was delivered in an integrated approach with every piece of direct communications evidencing unique 'price plus' propositions which competitors could not make. More Than also used direct channels to deliver product innovation, for example 'doing more’ for young drivers by offering them a 40 per cent discount on motor policies by signing them to revolutionary DriveTime product which uses satellite tracking technology.

The company then implemented the smarter use of data to monitor and appraise performance on a daily basis, allowing the team to react much more quickly to the testing it put in place. Direct marketing testing was key to achieving and beating the targets it had set. The company then tailored creative messages for its door drop activity to the areas it was in - something that is rarely seen in what has become a blanket coverage media for most insurance marketers. By the year end More Than had improved conversion by 23 per cent.

On top of this the company undertook three major initiatives in 2006 to harness the value it could achieve from current customers, reviewed the Web journey, refreshed call centre scripts - which led to a four fold increase in email capture - and offered its Smartsave reward programme to its most valuable customers increasing their retention by 1.5 per cent.

The strategy of shifting spend from awareness to direct media has proved a huge success. This is not about an isolated campaign or direct marketing as a support channel - the ROI on our direct marketing is critical to our business. We truly are a direct brand.