Firm profiting by showing clients path to online sales

MANAGING GROWTH: Adam DeGraide, CEO and founder at Astonish, says that when companies grow, they have to be careful to not only serve clients, but support employees as well. / COURTESY ASTONISH
MANAGING GROWTH: Adam DeGraide, CEO and founder at Astonish, says that when companies grow, they have to be careful to not only serve clients, but support employees as well. / COURTESY ASTONISH

Since its founding in 2006, Astonish Results LLC in Warwick has grown rapidly while many other Rhode Island companies have had to take a step back during the recession. This summer, Astonish was ranked the 267th-fastest-growing company in the United States by Inc. Magazine, second among Rhode Island companies to only Alex and Ani. What’s as surprising as the trajectory of Astonish’s growth – from 45 employees at the end of 2010 to 100 this year – is that the company jumped into an entirely new primary market in 2008 and 2009, just as the recession was taking hold.
Originally serving the mortgage industry, Astonish’s mission is now to “change the way insurance is bought and sold in America” by giving local, independent insurance agencies a presence on the Internet, where they have lost ground in recent years to larger national companies.
Astonish CEO and founder Adam DeGraide discusses that mission and the rapid change happening in insurance.

PBN: Did you know in 2008 that the mortgage industry and real estate were heading for serious trouble?
DEGRAIDE: It was pretty obvious. We got to the point where we were generating so many opportunities for mortgage brokers, so many leads, but they had no lenders to lend money. So it was a chronic problem: no matter how many people were looking to get mortgages and get financed, they just couldn’t place the notes anywhere. We continued to serve that industry through the end of 2009, but switched into the local insurance space because one of our successful mortgage customers referred us to an agency outside of Malden, Mass., called Paul Murphy, and that’s when we built and installed our first digital-marketing system into the insurance space.

PBN: Why was insurance such a good match for you guys?
DEGRAIDE: When we look at the local insurance channel, we were able to help them change from being something that was a commodity to having to market themselves online. So we would help them with websites and [search-engine optimization] and social media so they could build their brand. The yellow pages at that time were obsolete, even though they didn’t realize it in that industry, so most of their ads and volume were based on the traditional media, which had gone the way of the dodo bird. So we started to get them online to where the people actually were – instead of people’s fingers doing the walking on the yellow pages, they were walking on Google. We gave them a presence on the Internet to attract customers and gave them email, marketing tools and a social media strategy. … We have [customer-relationship management] software that automates 90 percent of the activities their agents and employees used to have to do manually.

PBN: How are the independent agencies doing now?
DEGRAIDE: It depends on who you talk to – our customers are doing fantastic. I think nationally they are shrinking in numbers and in some cases with revenue going flat or shrinking. It primarily stems from the fact that their retention rate has fallen from the digital age. Before, when you had a policy with a local agent, there was no way to shop other than to physically pick up the phone, look in the yellow pages and start calling other people. But the advent of the Internet changed everything to where … the customer can research any type of policy, from personal lines down to commercial lines and even life insurance and financial services. That really opened up a major problem for the local distribution channel.

PBN: How much is social media actually driving sales now?
DEGRAIDE: It depends on what kind of policies you are trying to sell, but we have agencies selling personal line and commercial lines though Facebook. LinkedIn is a huge tool for commercial-line insurance and then you have Twitter and YouTube. Some of it is branding, but it is literally driving traffic. Whereas before we lived on the Internet and goofed around on search engines, now we are not only goofing around on search engines, but we are goofing around within these applications. Facebook is not only a website, it is the fourth-largest country in the world. It has states and towns and villages and associations. It is the greatest form of target marketing and advertising you can have and it is where the consumers are congregating. … We have customers that can write dozens of policies from their Facebook strategy. … You have to realize what people are using each site for and match that with what you are broadcasting.

PBN: What are your biggest challenges and opportunities?
DEGRAIDE: The biggest challenge that any company has when you grow is not only supporting your employees internally, but serving clients at an effective rate. … The greatest opportunity for us is that in this industry, in particular, it is really a blue ocean for us because there are more than 100,000 local agencies across the country. Such a small percentage of those have gotten on the road to serving the modern consumer.

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PBN: Do you have any interest in expanding beyond insurance?
DEGRAIDE: You have to remember insurance is comprised of not just the local distribution footprint, but financial services and the group-benefit firms and life-insurance and health-insurance segment. Currently, 95 percent of Astonish’s customer base is personal line and commercial lines – property and casualty – but there are also health and life benefits and financial-service firms that we also serve and those are even bigger markets. •Byline = INTERVIEW
Adam DeGraide
POSITION: CEO and founder of Astonish Results
BACKGROUND: Born in Connecticut and raised in Rhode Island, Adam DeGraide cut his teeth in the digital marketing world at BZ Marketing, which served the automotive industry and was purchased by ADP Inc. in 2006. That’s when he founded Astonish, a Warwick marketing firm first serving the mortgage industry and now independent insurance agencies.
EDUCATION: Scituate High School, 1989
FIRST JOB: Busboy at a restaurant in Smithfield
RESIDENCE: Naples, Fla.
AGE: 40

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