The MoneySuperMarket Group (MONY Group) insists its “member-based propositions are central” to driving growth, as the business reports record revenue of £439.2m – up 2% from last year.
In call with investors today (17 February), marketing tactics were highlighted as a key driver for member acquisition by CFO Niall McBride, who explained the business has been using its marketing spend to bring people into the SuperSaveClub.
In the long term, the CFO sees the club as being “a positive” to drive direct traffic.
Marketing spend for the year was £183m, compared to £181.5m in 2023. The business claims its “advanced CRM and personalisation capabilities” are delivering enhanced engagement and efficiency. Marketing margin remained flat at 58%, as the brand sought to “actively balance efficiencies in direct marketing spend with increased paid search costs”.
Gross profit dipped 1% to £291m, attributed to increased pay-per-click (PPC) costs and structurally lower margins within MoneySuperMarket’s B2B business.
Estimated customer savings, marketing margin, net promoter score (NPS), active users, revenue per active user and cross-channel enquiry are they group’s KPIs, with NPS increasing from 70 to 72 at the end of December 2024 versus a year prior.
By growing numbers across our brands, we are encouraging consumer loyalty, retention and repeat purchasing.
Peter Duffy, MoneySuperMarket
MoneySuperMarket credited AI with helping to transform the approach its marketing teams take to content generation. The brand claims to have successfully deployed AI to improve conversion, “building out new user experiences” within some of its core customer journeys.
In the second half of 2024, costs of PPC escalated by 19% versus the first half, with CEO Peter Duffy explaining a strategy of encouraging customers to join the firm’s member-based propositions reduces reliance on “increasingly expensive pay-per-click marketing”.
“If you go back to four years ago when I started here, you’ll remember that a very core part of the early strategy was to make sure that we re-platformed all our martech so we could begin to rely on direct traffic more than expensive third-party media,” Duffy told investors.
The SuperSaveClub (SSC) now has more than 1 million members, who the business reports are “buying more” and have a higher average revenue per user and lower cost of acquisition compared to non-SSC customers. Members now generate 12% of group sales.
MoneySuperMarket has seen a 38% increase in SSC members coming to the firm direct for a second purchase versus non-members. According to current metrics, the brand believes every 1 million increase in SSC members could translate into a 1 percentage point improvement on gross margin.
Out of PPC, into social
According to Duffy, the strategy is to use data and strengthen the breadth of brands in order to “further advance” the customer proposition.
“By growing numbers across our brands, we are encouraging consumer loyalty, retention and repeat purchasing,” he said.
“Key to our strategy is to strengthen our breadth, as this continues to provide us with an important differentiator as different markets begin to move through their cycles at different times,” Duffy added.
Marketing spend had to be “adjusted” for the travel division, particularly for package holidays, as the market became “increasingly competitive, resulting in higher marketing costs across the sector”.
Most of the year, MoneySuperMarket reported taking action to adjust its marketing spend and manage margins in the travel business, which impacted growth. In the second half the firm began trialling a change to the marketing mix out of PPC and into social, reporting “initial good results”.
Going into 2025, McBride said adding members and “asking members to do more” will be key to “grow the revenue of the club”. MoneySuperMarket underlined that trialling first purchase rewards to support member growth will be a priority.
