Customer Story
Challenge: Quickly communicate critical safety information to thousands of customers during emergency situations
Solution: Integrate Sinch Engage’s HubSpot SMS integration for rapid mass communications, alleviating costly and timely custom development effort
Results: Contacted all 33,000 customers within 3 hours of weather warning with full tracking capabilities
“The time it took from getting the government storm warning to contacting all our customers was just three hours altogether. That's really, really amazing. Sinch Engage is a cost-effective solution that combines ease of integration with traceability, and it has worked really great for us.“
When severe weather threatens homeowners and businesses, every minute counts. For Lokal Forsikring, a mutual insurance company serving 33,000 customers across Denmark, the ability to rapidly communicate critical safety information can make the difference between property damage and protection.
As CIO Claes Wolff explains, Lokal Forsikring operates differently from traditional insurance companies. “We are a mutual insurance company, meaning it’s owned by our customers. We do not have any stakeholders as such.” With approximately 100 employees and annual revenue of 65 million euros, the company focuses on providing personalized service to its customer-owners throughout Denmark.
But like many mid-sized companies, Lokal Forsikring faced a familiar challenge: how do you implement and keep up with modern digital communication solutions without the extensive development resources of larger competitors?
“We are not first movers on any platforms because we do not have the muscle to do that,” Claes said. “We are lagging a bit behind with digital solutions, so when we decide to implement, ease of integration and cost-effectiveness are critical.”
Lokal Forsikring’s communication challenges became clear during previous emergency situations. When the company needed to contact approximately 8,000 customers about an incident, they relied on a custom-developed solution created by hired consultants.
“It was more or less time consuming and expensive compared to modern solutions,” Claes recalled. “That was lessons learned.”
The company knew they needed a better approach, especially as they implemented HubSpot as their new CRM system in January 2025. As part of this digital transformation, they needed reliable email and SMS capabilities that could integrate seamlessly with their new platform.
“Within the HubSpot implementation, we also needed customer interaction capabilities,” Claes explained. “We did a search for who could help us with integrations, email and SMS, and Sinch Engage was among the most recommended.”
The decision to choose Sinch Engage (formerly MessageMedia) came down to three key factors that aligned perfectly with Lokal Forsikring’s needs as an organization:
Ease of integration: “The implementation was very, very easy, no hassle. It was completely out-of-the-box,” Claes said. “One of the really good things is that it’s very flexible and tight integration with HubSpot.”
Speed of implementation: “Cost-wise, it was important that we should not invest or spend too much time and resources on development costs. The integration went really fast – everything went into place very fast without any problems.”
Operational simplicity: For a company without extensive developer resources, the plug-and-play nature of Sinch Engage was essential. “We do not have that many developers, so for us it was important to have this integration as smooth as possible and as fast as possible.”
The true test of Lokal Forsikring’s new communication system came just weeks after implementation, when Denmark faced severe weather warnings for heavy rains and flooding.
“A couple of weeks ago, we had heavy rains and flooding, so we needed to reach out to our customers – all 33,000 customers – to warn them about protecting their basements, checking drains, and taking preventive measures,” Claes explained.
Their ability to respond was faster, easier, and more seamless than ever before:
The comprehensive tracking capabilities were especially valuable, as it provided them with visibility into real-time customer engagement that they didn’t have before.
“We could track every click on the SMS. We could see exactly how many customers read the SMS, how many customers used the link to get more information on what to do. Everything was traceable, trackable.”
For Lokal Forsikring, Sinch Engage delivered exactly what they needed: a reliable, integrated communication solution that could scale from routine customer communications to emergency mass notifications. The platform’s seamless HubSpot integration eliminated development complexity while providing the tracking and automation capabilities essential for modern customer engagement.
As Claes puts it: “That synchronization took maybe one hour, and from there to send all the SMS within one hour. So from the storm warning sent out by the government to contacting our customers – three hours altogether. That’s really amazing.”
Learn more about Sinch Engage’s powerful integration that enables HubSpot SMS, MMS, RCS, and WhatsApp.
For other leaders considering similar solutions, Claes offers clear guidance based on Lokal Forsikring’s experience:
“I would emphasize the ease of integration. That is really the number one for me – ease of integration and ‘fire and forget’ functionality where everything is traceable, everything is trackable.”
His key recommendations include:
“The tight integration with HubSpot is by far one of the highlights of using Sinch Engage and a big reason why it’s been very valuable to us – the ease of use and the ease of integration,” Claes emphasized.
Sinch Engage’s HubSpot SMS integration allows Lokal Forsikring to maintain consistent customer communications across all touchpoints – even for very urgent and time-sensitive alerts and messages – while both saving development time and operational effort.
