The wild west of mobile in insurance is getting tamed.  Mobile is no longer just a fun experiment—it’s now a crucial element in the customer and agent experience. We first published our mobile insurance metrics report in August of 2013.  At the time, we were struck by how dependent insurers were on a single metric to prove their mobile success:  Application downloads. 

With 15 more months of mobile development chops under their belts, in November, we decided to take a look at how much more sophisticated mobile insurance strategists had become in their mobile performance measurement strategies.  The answer?  Unlike other industries where mobile metrics have grown up, insurers remain stuck in mobile adolescence.  How do we know? Because topping the mobile insurance metrics list in 2014 are web traffic and app downloads.  Fewer insurers are tracking metrics that measure real business outcomes like conversions and mobile revenue transactions.

We know that digital insurance and business technology teams, processes, and budgets are under pressure when it comes to creating comprehensive strategies for addressing digital technologies like mobile, social and smart products.  In Forrester’s 2014 Global Business And Technology Services survey, 85% of global insurers said that creating these kinds of digital strategies were important or very important to their firms, versus 68% in all other industries.  But if it’s just so important to their businesses, why haven’t insurers done a better job getting their performance measurement strategies up to the task?  Even though the industry is flush with cash now, continued investments are going to be stymied unless digital insurance teams can prove mobile’s business value to executive leadership.

In Forrester’s 2014 update of the mobile metrics that matter, we examine that factors behind the lagging performance measurement strategies and what digital insurance teams need to do.   For more information on the mobile insurance measurement challenge, download the full report here. Questions or comments? Feel free to ask them here or directly via email.