Chief Marketing Officer at The Hartford

Kelly Trella is the head of marketing and communications for Middle & Large Commercial and Global Specialty at The Hartford. In this position, she oversees the internal and external marketing, communication and customer experience practices for both business units, which include standard property & casualty products as well as specialty offerings through both retail and wholesale channels. She leads a team responsible for driving results through marketing campaigns aimed at distribution partners and customers, engaging employees with internal communications, and informing business strategy through voice of customer insights and research.

“It’s amusing to think that when I started marketing 25 years ago, we didn’t have access to platforms like LinkedIn to use as a marketing tool.”

Prior to joining The Hartford, Kelly spent five years with ING Financial Services, working on marketing campaigns across term life insurance and individual and worksite retirement services before leading distribution marketing and communications for the broker/dealer, ING Financial Advisers, LLC. She has previously worked as a writer and marketing manager at advertising agencies and small marketing firms.

1. As the CMO and VP, could you provide an overview of your role and responsibilities within the company?

As the Chief Marketing Officer for Middle & Large Commercial and Global Specialty at The Hartford, I have accountability fortheinternal employee communications, external marketingand customer experience(“CX”) measures for both those businesses. Our organizations focus on providing best-in-class property & casualty insurance solutions and service for midsize, large and specialty businesses, and we sell our products through independent agents and brokers to customers across the globe. My team has auniquechallenge of marketing to both our distribution partners and the customers who ultimately buy our products, so understanding the needs of our agents/brokers and highly specialized clients across a range of industries and geographies is critical. We take an integrated approach to marketing, communications and customer experience while partnering very closely with business strategy, product, service and underwriting teams.

2. What are some of the challenges that CMOs need to address in the domain of digital marketing and technology, ranging from recovery to resilience and reinvention?

It’s amusing to think that when I started marketing 25 years ago, we didn’t have access to platforms like LinkedIn to use as a marketing tool. Even the ability to send an email blast to a large audience was nowhere near as mature a model as it is today. Moreover, most marketers were not necessarily measuring experiences as much as we were marketing tactics.Now, we’re able to do a much better job of meeting our partners and customers where they are – and where they want us to be – but that’s not without challenges. Customer experience isthe name of the game in the marketing world as we seek to understand more about what customers want and need – and use those insights to drive business strategy. In terms of marketing tactics, social media means we can instantly put messaging in front of our audiences and know whether its resonating based on engagement metrics, but platforms can quickly become saturated,so creative approaches need to constantly evolve to capture attention and cut through clutter. Email capabilities enable much better targeting today which creates opportunity for marketers, but email domain spam filters and regulatory privacy laws create new challenges as we seek to avoid phishing or other cyber scams on the rise. Optimizing the use of data and martech systems can help ensure we reach the right people, with the right message, at the right time.

3. In the last 10 years, the rapid growth of marketing technology suppliers has brought exciting new ways to connect with customers and grow brands. While some businesses thrive in this new context, others struggle to see the value in technology. Your views on this?

We’re currently in a world where the pace of change is faster than it’s ever been.I don’t see that slowing down given the constant technological advances happening every single day. Adaptability is critical. As marketers and communicators, it’s our job to not only lean into advances in technology but to help those around us understand them. Using the P&C insurance world as an example, it’s all about understanding risk and creating ways to help with risk mitigation. We’re striving to have agents and brokers choose our products over other options available for their clients. And those agents and brokers have an obligation to help their customers choose coverages that will protect them if a worst-case scenario happens to their business. For me and my marketing team, that means it’s not simply about selling a product based on features and benefits. It’s about helping educate our partners on all the potential risks, sharing information on how their clients might minimize potential losses and even save money in the long run by creating safer work environments. Technology, and in particular the insights given to us through data & analytics, can help us better understand how to drive improvements, not only in how we market products and services, but in how we operate and do business. AI will be another game changer in how we think about both marketing and doing business generally. That all comes with challenges for sure, but it’s also really exciting!

Technology also gives us the ability to do business more quickly and easily. In my role at The Hartford, I have the chance to be engaged directly in the evolution of our digital capabilities that ultimately lead to a differentiated experience and value proposition for our partners and customers. We’re building tools to make it easier to submit new insurance policy requests and then to access insurance account information and service. Creating better experiences is a marketer’s dream because when your partners and customers are happy, it starts to create loyalty andtheywant to do more business with you. That makes the marketing messaging come easy.

4. Would you like to give a piece of advice for the community as to how should they approach this industry?

Marketing is evolving just as quickly as every other industry. That brings both challenges and opportunities. For me, it’s about more than value proposition development and creative messaging. Customer experience is paramount. Marketers mustunderstandtarget audiences and their needs – not only the needs they know they have but the ones they aren’t even thinking about yet! Research and the gathering of voice of customer insights is critical to creating that understanding and then using that knowledge to create the best experiences, which in turn informs how we approach business strategy to capture and retain customers.