Scottish Widows: Targeting the right audience with TV

Key Points

Scottish Widows were on a mission to get 1 million regularly using their pensions app. With only 29% of UK adults on course for a minimum retirement lifestyle. They needed to drive app downloads to unlock £100 million in life time value, Reach customers who hadn’t already downloaded and drive a cost per download at or below target across channels.

Taking 4.5 million customer records and turning them into targetable postcodes. Scottish Widows’ B2B2C relationship with workplace pension members meant customers did not transact directly with the brand, leaving limited email coverage and no marketing consent, only postal address data used for annual statements. Targeting users across Addressable inventory.

17,000 incremental app downloads, cost per download 42% below target and integration with direct mail showed 60% increase in weekly downloads when direct mail also live along with TV.

The Challenge

Scottish Widows is a brand with over 210 years of history of providing life insurance, pensions and investments to customers. In 2025, they were on a mission to get 1 million app downloads for their pensions app. The brand didn’t see the app as just a product update but an opportunity to shift pensions to a modern approach. The opportunity for Scottish Widows was clear, 28% of UK adults were not on track for a minimum retirement lifestyle, with only 1 in 29 people using a pension app weekly. Scottish Widows saw the opportunity to close that gap and get more people checking their pensions.

As a result, they tasked agency, Broadlab with a clear set of objectives. The campaign needed to drive sufficient app downloads to hit the threshold unlocking £100 million of life time value. The campaign needed to reach customers who hadn’t already downloaded the app. And finally it needed to deliver a cost-per-download at or below the target across all channels.

The TV Solution

With objectives in mind, Broadlab got to work in crafting an approach that would deliver results for Scottish Widows. Despite sitting on 4.5 million customer records, Scottish Widows faced 3 barriers blocking their usage. The first was consent. The customer database was largely made up of workplace pension members who, due to the B2B2C nature of the relationship, did not transact directly with Scottish Widows. This meant marketing consent had never been captured, and the only contact data available was postal addresses used for annual statements. No consent, no targeted digital campaigns. Second was eligibility: only customers with pension-eligible accounts could be targeted, making the pool too small. And finally was reach; only one third of customers were emailable and traditional direct mail lacked the creative cut-through to drive downloads at scale.

The insight for the campaign came in the form of postcodes. Broadlab saw it was the oldest proxy for targeting in media. While they weren’t able to use individual customer data or leverage marketing consent that didn’t exist, they could activate postcode data derived from annual statement records in a compliant manner. Addressable TV was the clear channel of choice. It would allow Scottish Widows to reach the right households without requiring direct customer consent. Along with this, addressable TV provided a high attention, emotionally resonant campaign at scale, allowing Scottish Widows to treat TV as a performance channel.

The Plan

With a solution in place, Broadlab moved to put the plan into action. Broadlab designed a closed loop addressability system around TV with 6 steps that would connect CRM data to measurable outcomes. Step 1 saw Broadlab convert CRM data into postcodes, scoring each one and tiering each postcode on the likelihood of it containing high-value, non-app customers. Step 2 followed on the work of the previous step by converting postcode data into customer data by profiling those who had already downloaded the app. Modelling was deployed for step 3, which saw the data turned into audiences reachable via addressable TV without requiring individual-level marketing consent. Step 4 put the campaign into action with buys across BVOD, SVOD and other major platforms. A call to action was added through a QR code at the end of the creative to encourage download. Step 5 focused on measurement. This saw Broadlab employ a custom postcode-level attribution model that delivered weekly updates. This was placed against areas not targeted to show incrementality. And finally, step 6 was all about optimisation. Postcodes, audiences, publishers and creatives were rotated in real time throughout the campaign period. Driving down the cost per download from week 1 to campaign end.

Flighting was considered with the best time for activation being in Q4 2025 with a small burst in Q1 2026. These periods matched with when pension decisions were made and new year finance planning in full swing. Learning from burst 1 in Q4 were applied to burst 2, this allowed the Scottish Widows to optimise the campaign right from the off with a plan that was designed to change and move with new insights.

While addressable TV formed the backbone of the campaign, it was integrated with wider media activity, namely direct mail. Direct mail was the below the line channel that could reach the 66% of customers who weren’t emailable. Data from the postcode targeting fed directly into the direct mail drops allowing the drops to take place with far greater precious. This approach saw a 60% increase when both addressable and direct mail were live simultaneously.

Results

Campaign was a great success for Scottish Widows delivering and in some cases smashing targets. TV delivered over 27,200 incremental app downloads linked directly attributed to TV with a cost per download 51% below target, with TV CPA being the most efficient channel in the mix. The consistent rotation of postcodes meant that efficiency improved by 81% across the campaign. Addressable TV proved to 33% more efficiency for younger audiences than it was with the 50+ cohorts, providing TVs role not just as an awareness channel but as a CRM powered customer acquisition engine for the future. Running direct mail alongside TV produced results far exceeding either channel in isolation, with weekly downloads up 60% and postcodes receiving both channels generating a 53% uplift over direct mail alone. And finally, the triple-channel combination of CTV, direct mail and email delivered a 14.64% download rate against a 1.61% organic baseline, a 9x lift, with every multi-channel combination outperforming every single channel without exception. This proves without doubt that TV isn’t just a brand channel or a performance channel, as we have now proven it’s value as a CRM channel. Which makes TV an ‘everything’ channel.

Databank

Sector: Financial

Brand: Scottish Widows (Lloyds Banking Group)

Campaign objectives: Increase downloads

Target Audience: Scottish Widows members without the app

Budget: < £1M

Campaign Dates: October 2025-Jan 2026

TV Usage: Spot and Sponsorship

Creative Agency: Publicis UK

Media Agency: Broadlab and Publicis UK