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Socotra: A Modern Approach Animates the Insurance Industry

Socotra is the first insurance core platform that’s truly modern.

When we say “core platform,” we’re referring to policy administration – rating, underwriting and all the workflows that happen on the backend.

When we say “modern,” we mean that it’s truly cloud-based, with open APIs and a microservices architecture.

And it offers the same capabilities and connectivity that people expect from Twilio, AWS, Square and Stripe.

The insurance industry is going through a renaissance of sorts – new products and features are coming to market quickly due to new data sources and technologies to operationalize them.

The industry is ready for a modern solution to serve the need in policy administration, which is the heart of every insurer.

And that’s Socotra’s mission.

Challenge

 

Socotra wanted to animate the insurance industry with a 21st-century app makeover. The company recognized that the sector needed an ecosystem of modern technology partners that enabled insurers to quickly and easily integrate third-party apps into their core system.

That’s where Socotra comes in. Socotra developed the App Marketplace to empower insurers to instantly connect to multiple software and data apps that improve every aspect of the insurance value chain, including data providers and platforms, rating, document management, payment processing, claims user interfaces, customer communications, eSignatures,and third-party app publishers.

Being born on the cloud, the platform is improved continuously: upgrades are automatic and free, without downtime or service interruptions. The flexible data model enables insurers to create nearly any type of insurance product with minimal effort.

That means that in 90 days, companies can build an entire insurance product and launch it.

 

While that may seem like a long time, it can take some of the larger providers, up to two years to do the same.

Socotra planned to debut its App Marketplace at InsurTech’s biggest conference: InsureTech Connect (ITC) in Las Vegas.

​But they needed a way to stand out from the bigger, more established players. They needed to ensure the insurance sector understood why Socotra’s App Marketplace was an industry game changer and show how much progress had been made over the past year.

A successful ITC Vegas 2022 event was essential…and it better not be boring.

That’s where Bospar came in.

Strategy

 

In the six months leading up to the event, Bospar implemented an integrated marketing campaign – with nearly every channel in play.

To keep Socotra top of mind in the media, we took a rolling thunder approach, building out Socotra’s analyst program, conducting a breakthrough study on the economic value of speed-to-market, and producing a constant cadence of releases – all aimed to create a crescendo at ITC.​ Ahead of the conference, we drafted and pitched five press releases and embargo pitched a sixth, earning 46 pieces of coverage in the insurance trades – our target media. ​

It began in May with the announcement of Socotra’s acquisition of Avolanta, a startup with the only unified portal purpose-built for the insurance industry. While reporters were excited about the M&A news, we teased that this was just the beginning: wait until ITC!

We promoted that “wait until ITC” messaging with every news nugget we could devise. Every client win shout-out and associated press release sent to reporters was a tease. Ditto when we packaged a momentum announcement of smaller client wins.

We collaborated with Socotra’s entire marketing team to generate both attendee and media interest in the app marketplace and ensure events and the booth at ITC were well-attended.

To get the results we wanted, we knew it was key that media, analysts and ITC attendees understood why Socotra’s App Marketplace was unlike any other in the industry. If we made it too complicated, we might lose a lot of the insurers, especially the smaller managing general agents (MGAs).

So, we positioned the launch of Socotra’s App Marketplace as tantamount to the launch of the Apple App Store for the insurance industry.

Campaign Results

32 Total Media Placements
32 M Total UVM
9 Business Press Interviews

Success

 

Coverage

Bospar secured 117 pieces of earned coverage for 2022, like The Wall Street Journal (Marc Vartabedian), Newsbreak (Omar Faridi), Austin Inno (Brent Wistrom) and Insurance Journal (Elizabeth Blosfield), garnering over 91.7M impressions.

Socotra brand recognition is also on the rise. Its domain authority increased by 6%. Monthly visitors to its website increased by 92%.

 

Business Impact

Bospar secured meetings with half of the official ITC media list of journalists and analysts.

Following ITC, Socotra had over 500 hot leads for new business thanks to Bospar’s efforts – an increase of 81%.

Since PR signed on with Socotra, the company has onboarded 30 partners into its App Marketplace, from Siemens’ Mendix to Stripe.

“Bospar jumped at the opportunity to tell our story and quickly got to work. The team is incredibly responsive and demonstrates excellent teamwork. Campaign coordination is phenomenal, with each team member executing on their specialty and everyone coming together to ensure results. We were immediately impressed with their proactivity, knowledge of the space, and creative ideas for making an industry splash at the biggest InsurTech conference of the year. We wanted to put our stake in the ground at InsureTech Connect and show the progress we’d made since the App Markeplace’s debut in 2021 – such as onboarding 30 new partners – and Bospar pulled out all the stops to make that happen. We see the agency as an extension of our team, and the time we spend brainstorming and building on each other’s ideas is invaluable. We look forward to continuing to grow our SOV in 2023.”

— George Ravich, Socotra CMO

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