Spot Pet Insurance cuts SMS acquisition costs in half with Twilio

Challenge

Spot Pet Insurance wanted to reach pet parents with the right information at the right moment, without leaning on email alone or overspending to bring in each new customer.

Solution

Spot Pet Insurance paired Twilio SMS with Segment to build data-driven pre- and post-purchase journeys that lifted conversion, cut SMS acquisition costs in half, and gave customers transparency at every step.

Owning a pet is one of life's greatest joys. Paying for unexpected veterinary bills is not. For many families, a trip to the clinic means making a hard financial decision at the worst possible moment.

Spot Pet Insurance helps make those moments more manageable. Their mission is to deliver health and happiness to pets and pet parents. Fulfilling it depends on meeting customers respectfully and reliably during a very difficult time. When a pet faces a medical emergency, pet parents need information they can trust at every step of the claims journey.

For years, email was the company's best friend for delivering that reassurance. But today, some pet parents prefer text.

"SMS gives us the power to communicate with people in real time and give them visibility through every step of the process, whether they’ve just quoted or already have a policy" says Sydney Hubbard, CRM Manager at Spot Pet Insurance. To date, the Spot plans have covered more than 1 million pets and over $530 million in eligible vet bills.

Communicating at that scale can be challenging, especially in a regulated industry where every message must be timely and compliant. Spot Pet Insurance needed a way to reach the right customer, on the right channel, at the right moment, backed by data it could trust.

To simplify the pet insurance process, Spot leveraged Twilio SMS and Twilio Segment to build pre and post-purchase journeys that use unified data to personalize outreach, backed by regular testing to prove what works.

At first, the company leaned on email to stay in touch and tracked customer behavior in Google Analytics. The team could see activity, but could not act on it with much precision. On the measurement side, the reports Spot shared with its affiliate partners—a top source of new quote requesters—stayed high-level, so it was hard to tell which partners sent the best leads. On the customer side, email was the only way to send someone the saved quote they needed to come back and buy. "We were not segmenting at all based on customer demographics, and we weren't texting," says Chris Holland, VP of Data at Spot Pet Insurance.

Spot Pet Insurance needed two things: a faster, more personalized way to reach pet parents, and a data foundation that knows who to contact and when.

Spot Pet Insurance adopted Twilio Segment as a single source of truth for customer data. Segment gave the team far more control over how it collected, combined, and acted on its data. It also let the team run more detailed analysis and share more granular reports with its affiliate partners so Spot could finally see which partners and campaigns drove the best leads and shift its marketing budget toward what worked.

With clean data in place, Spot brought SMS into the mix, which quickly became a core conversion channel. Since many people request a quote before they have a pet, Spot began texting customers a saved link to their quote in addition to email.

Down the road, that link regenerates the price at current rates and pulls up the customer's preferences, so they don't have to fill out the form again. "A decent amount of people come to get a quote before they even have the pet they are considering. This way, their quote is accessible to them when they are ready to add a dog or cat to the family," says Hubbard.

After customers purchase insurance, Spot uses SMS to handle time-sensitive issues like lapsed payments. A customer whose card is expired can tap a link, update payment details in the member center, and re-activate coverage in minutes. "We can get that information to them by text, in case they miss the email," Hubbard explains.

The team also uses Segment for lead scoring and audience creation. "Segment lets us take everything from our data warehouse, combine it with Segment data, and use it as a routing point, so we reach the hottest leads and get the right message to the right people," says Angel Croce, Lead Product Analyst at Spot Pet Insurance.

Together, SMS and Segment sharpened every customer touchpoint and started to move the numbers that matter most to the business.

By testing shorter messages and learning how Twilio and Segment work together, the Spot team trimmed spend without giving up performance. SMS acquisition cost fell from about $30 to about $15, a 50% reduction, and SMS consent became a core part of every quoting channel.

Across the board, SMS-consented leads convert at a higher rate than leads without it. For one affiliate partner, after adding SMS consent, Spot doubled their send rate and significantly improved recovery rate. 

The Segment investment paid off on the data side too. Tighter control over its data gave Spot a better view of which marketing spend performed well. "When we switched to Segment, we got a lot more control and flexibility over how we use our data and it gave us a lot more insight into our marketing spend, which helped us make our budget much more efficient," says Holland. "The work we did with Segment data was a huge part of our 50% marketing efficiency gains from 2022 to 2024."

Just as important, the numbers point back to the mission. Faster, clearer communication means more pet parents understand their coverage, submit their claims, and feel the peace of mind Spot Pet Insurance provides.

Spot plans to bring more of the pet insurance journey into its communications. The next frontier is branded, real-time SMS updates that tell pet parents exactly where their reimbursement stands. 

As new channels and tools arrive, Spot Pet Insurance will keep testing Twilio products and rolling out those that win best-in-show. According to Hubbard, it all comes back to the company's mission. "We're building towards a future where pet insurance is simple and customizable at the same time, so that pet families can get the coverage that their pets need for a healthier and longer life together," she says.

Spot Pet Insurance and Twilio know every quote requester is a pet parent in potential peril. Together, they're working to make the pet insurance journey more convenient, efficient, and transparent, so those difficult moments are easier to manage.