Flora is not your typical name for an insurance company. In fact, there’s precious little about Flora that you could describe as ‘typical’. That’s all down to an enthusiastic team whose goal is to make insurance products more accessible, once and for all.
We spoke to Digital Marketer Maëlysse Marchal about how Flora dusted off the classic insurance formula and thus won – and continues to win – the trust of young tenants across Belgium.
Your Trustpilot reviews are positively glowing. What makes Flora so unique?
Our app is certainly a big part of that. We’ve made it as user-friendly as possible to allow users to sort out everything themselves, from amending contracts to reporting damage. Because everything is digital, our customers aren’t overwhelmed by unnecessary paperwork, and our customer service team can offer far more efficient support.
What’s more, we’ve worked hard to express our terms and conditions and legally required captions as clearly as possible. For those complex terms that we couldn’t replace, we created an index on our website. So we’re doing all we can to make insurance products truly accessible. And if the reviews are anything to go by, this is greatly appreciated.
Talking of reviews, feedback is very important to you. Can you tell us how you work with it?
We receive most questions via our app’s chat function. Generally these are about small technical issues or things that are unclear. We run through them during our meetings to see what we can adjust. But often, they are also questions that directly relate to our offering or our approach. And of course, these are pure gold for us.
Take our co-tenant insurance, for example. This product was created because early adopters were asking for it en masse. And that makes perfect sense, because the standard suburban home is no longer the norm for young people these days.
Equally, when we first started we were asked if, alongside PayPal and credit card payments, we could accept payment by direct debit. So we implemented that too. So as you can see, feedback is enormously important for our product development.
Blue Lines translated the app into English for you. What was the biggest challenge with that?
That’s right. Well, an app translation needs to be incredibly consistent. What you definitely don’t want is for the ‘Next’ button to suddenly appear as ‘Continue’ on a different screen. For us, and above all for you, this was the biggest challenge.
That’s why our briefing was so exacting. (laughs) But thanks to your experience with this type of translation and the use of a translation memory, we’ve actually never had to pick you up on that. We’ve been able to completely trust your expertise, which is hugely reassuring – because at the end of the day, a project like this is a massive undertaking.
For the content we write for you, the emphasis lies firmly on the correct tone of voice. Why is that so important?
Well, Belgians are very loyal customers. They don’t change their hairdresser in a hurry, let alone their insurer. As a new player in the market, we therefore chiefly need to target people purchasing tenant insurance for the first time. That’s why we wanted a tone of voice that truly appeals to young people.
This is essential, because for example, we’re one of the first companies in our sector to be truly active on TikTok, with an influencer strategy and all the bells and whistles. On TikTok, dull language is a definite no-no. In French, we use the familiar ‘tu’ in our communications, which is quite the statement for an insurance company.
The point is that we absolutely want to avoid sounding pedantic. Our content has to be more than just attractively presented information. No one gets excited about buying insurance, so we have to throw the kitchen sink at getting our target audience involved in our story.
Making and translating content in a multilingual country like Belgium continues to be a challenge. How do you tackle that?
Flora was founded by people from Ethias and NRB, both large companies with a strong presence in the Liège region. So the content that’s created for Flora is often written in French first. Right from the off, we were aware that crafting translations that hit the spot required something far more refined than run-of-the-mill texts. The Dutch-language versions had to truly resonate with Flemish youth culture.
And that’s precisely why we chose to collaborate with Blue Lines. You are deeply immersed in the content of the texts you translate, and you have the confidence to tweak them to make them more relevant to their end readers. This is especially important for blog posts and social media, which require a certain entertainment factor, because humour, quips and references are highly culturally specific.
This is also an ongoing challenge for us. The translations of our SEA campaigns are a good example of this. These were written in French and then carefully translated for the Flemish market, but the results failed to materialise. A month or two later, we asked you to write new Dutch SEA copy from scratch. Despite the same elements being present, we immediately saw a huge difference in the number of clicks and conversions. So sometimes we need the courage to go back to the drawing board.
Is there any other feedback you’d like to give to Blue Lines?
I’ve got nothing but praise for you. In particular, I love working with dedicated translators and copywriters who grow with us and have made our tone of voice entirely their own. Your people are truly committed, and we notice that in the quality you deliver time and time again.