Nearly a third of new signups were reaching a dead end in Gabi’s insurance-shopping experience. The initial goal was to fail more gracefully. The eventual solution materially changed acquisition economics.
During 2021, digital customer-acquisition costs rose sharply. Gabi was still pursuing aggressive growth, but roughly 28% of new signups entered the product only to hit a dead end because the company could not effectively serve their insurance needs.
That meant the business was paying increasingly high acquisition costs for users it could not monetize, while those users left without receiving meaningful value.
As Growth Product Manager, I proposed creating a better way to “fail gracefully.” I partnered with the data team to define the segments Gabi could not effectively serve and identify the earliest point in the journey when we had enough information to classify them reliably.
Leadership then connected that customer-experience problem to a business-model question: could we monetize the traffic by connecting those users with providers better able to serve them?
I evaluated the reputational risk of redirecting customers, researched monetization approaches, and helped shape an alternative experience that was clearly differentiated from Gabi’s core comparison product.
We built a simple marketplace integration that fetched bids for predefined customer segments, primarily from carriers with the right risk appetite and, in some cases, other marketplaces.
After launch, I monitored monetization performance as cohorts matured and watched support channels and social chatter for signs that the experience was harming customer trust or Gabi’s reputation.
We saw no observable increase in complaints or reputational issues associated with the new experience.
The new channel generated high tens of thousands of dollars in incremental revenue. It offset more than 10% of total marketing spend in month one and grew to more than 35% by month four.
Internal measurement indicated an approximately 35% improvement in blended CAC, which helped the company continue pursuing aggressive growth targets.
I work with early-stage teams that need senior product leadership without a full-time hire.