Comparison site gets smart to beat that competition

beatthatQuote.com is one of the increasing numbers of financial services comparison sites that have blossomed in the last few years.

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As a relatively new entrant, it has had to adopt a smarter business model to differentiate it from the competition - and has in the process developed smart web marketing tools.

It supports thousands of financial services suppliers, delivering products from credit cards to insurance, mortgages to loans and banking. This month it is on course for approximately one million unique visits through its site.

The company's founder and managing director John Paleomylites explained the launch team was drawn from the data security sector in 2005 and was looking at how the web could be used to collect quality data from customers. It had seen how the banking sector had automated some interactions with customers over the web and decided it was likely the trend would cross over into some forms of retailing.

When they entered the market, established brands had already proved that price comparison services in the financial sector were viable - so Paleomylites and his team looked for a way to compete.

Paleomylites said: "The issue for us was how we could acquire data cheaper and sell it for more."

beatthatQuote.com's first innovation was in data management. Paleomylites can slice the site data he gets with fine granularity, in terms of products or marketing campaigns, down to the productivity of search term bids.

He knows whether the amount he invests in a product marketing campaign has brought in a good enough return to be worth carrying on. Up until this year, beatthatQuote.com has spent a minimal amount on brand awareness in the market, so bidding for key search terms has been a key touchpoint to the customer.

All of the data is updated automatically to the management system. The only manual intervention is when a campaign is terminated.

The company has seen fast growth since its inception. In 2005-2006, it accrued revenues of around £1.5m. This grew to £7.8m, with a profit of £600,000 in the following year. This year revenues should be in at £15m and the company is expected to grow that to £35m to £40m next financial year.

beatthatQuote.com extended its channel late last year through offering white label services to other web organisations. The diversification of many well-known brands, such as Tesco and Orange has created a rich market of third parties for beatthatQuote.com to support.

The company began offering 'white label' services, where beatthatQuote.com runs the comparison functionality but it retains all of the design and branding features of the rest of the customer's site, in September last year. The customer gets between 50 per cent and 75 per cent of any visitor conversion revenue. The company has around 20 white label partners so far.

Paleomylites argues a short-term view of visitor data predominates among big website owners. They recognise a value in their visitors, but Paleomylites says they hand over ownership of them too readily and the real value is in the life-time relationship with the visitor.

beathatQuote.com is now implementing profiling technology that builds up a view of the customer. As customers search for products, they input details into the system, which can be used to fine-tune cross-selling opportunities.

The company also uses the services of other data providers, when permitted, such as Experian and lifestyle data company Caci.

From there, the company uses a set of business rules to determine what other products in its portfolio should be suggested to any one customer. Finally Paleomylites hopes to be able to use the same profiling procedure to automatically determine which this cross-sell attempt should be made through: email, direct mail or pop-up window.

Paleomylites said: "Website owners have to show a return on investment. Any website with high volumes of traffic will seek to monetise it. Financial services are a profitable way of doing that."