Merkle and Compare the Market turned 50 million fragmented customer contacts into 38 million identifiable people, creating a unified data foundation for AI-powered personalisation at scale. The resulting AutoSergei service shifted direct channels from 18% to 28% of revenue on launched products, generated more than £27 million in incremental revenue in nine months, and achieved more with 25% fewer communications.
Compare the Market built its success on one of the UK’s most recognisable brands, but customer expectations were changing. Research found that a third of consumers considered comparing products too much effort, creating a new challenge: could the business bring the convenience and personality of its brand into the customer experience?
Working with Merkle, Compare the Market transformed AutoSergei from an advertising concept into an AI-powered, personalised customer service. The transformation went deeper than customer communications. In nine months, the joint Merkle and Compare the Market team redesigned how customer data was structured, analysed, and activated, creating the foundations for a more experience-led business.
Creating a Single View of the Customer
The starting point was no single source of customer truth; the existing campaign management platform lacked agility, and the business had limited visibility into which segmentation criteria were driving results.
Merkle and Compare the Market created a simplified customer data platform, turning 50 million abstract contacts into 38 million identifiable people. Data held across Redshift and cloud infrastructure was consolidated into a single Actionable Customer View, reducing 2,545 variables to 350.
AI was used to create a customer diary capable of forecasting individual renewal requirements across 10 products. Algorithms cleaned incomplete and spam enquiry data, analysed simulated quotes, and combined this with sales information to determine product priorities and conversion potential.
The result was the ability to identify which products to offer individual customers, and when, with reported accuracy of 99.9%.
“A well-executed approach to improving collaboration and data accessibility. Strong delivery focus…aligned to enabling existing models.” – Judges’ comments
Personalisation at Scale
The new data foundation was matched by a fundamental simplification of customer communications. Instead of hundreds of rigid journeys, AutoSergei could adapt content, imagery, pricing, and messaging dynamically across email, app, SMS, and web push.
Key outcomes:
- Direct channels increased from 18% to 28% of revenue on launched products.
- More than £27 million incremental revenue generated within nine months of launch.
- CRM’s revenue contribution increased by 33% in the first three months, reaching a peak improvement of 55% within nine months.
- Communications reduced by 25%, even with expansion across additional channels.
- CRM technology costs reduced by £1 million, equivalent to 25% of total spend.
- App contribution to revenue increased by 75%.
- AI-powered personalisation delivered a 44% uplift in clicks for car renewals and 31% higher conversion, generating an additional £2.5 million in car insurance revenue.
- SQL coding reduced by 92%, while communication orchestration complexity fell by 64%.
Behind those results was significant operational simplification. The team reduced 576 communications templates to 165 dynamic templates supported by 28 centralised modules. For car insurance alone, two journeys and 38 templates became one journey and 14 templates, while associated scripting fell from 750 lines of code to four.
From Brand Character to Customer Experience
AutoSergei demonstrates how better use of data can change customer experience and organisational ways of working. Compare the Market moved from high-volume, rigid communications towards fewer, more relevant interactions driven by real-time customer insight.
AI technologies dynamically optimised copy, imagery, and pricing, while the Customer Diary determined what customers should receive and when. The result brought together areas that had been disconnected.
By simplifying its data, automating complex processes, and applying AI to millions of individual customer decisions, Merkle and Compare the Market have shown how new ways of working with data can simultaneously improve customer relevance, reduce operational complexity, and deliver measurable commercial growth.
