For agents, insurance lead generation isn’t just a good idea—it’s a way to grow your business, reach goals, and make more money. This thorough guide walks you step-by-step through the major components of insurance lead generation, everything from understanding the basics of how agent leads are generated to measuring your results through metrics, so you can be more systematic in your approach to finding them, handling them, and closing them.
Table Of Contents:
Chapter 1: An Introduction To Insurance Lead Generation
Chapter 2: Identifying Ways To Generate Leads
Chapter 3: What Lead Generation Sources Are Best For You?
Chapter 4: What To Do Once You’ve Decided To Hire A Third Party To Help Generate New Leads
Chapter 5: Misconceptions About Using Internet Lead Generation Companies
Chapter 6: Tracking Leads Using Metrics
A lead is a person who has expressed an interest in your product or service, and thus a potential opportunity for a customer. Leads can be generated in every industry, from insurance to education to sales.
In our industry, insurance leads are very generally defined as prospects who have requested quotes for insurance products. For a prospect to be a true lead, you must have a certain amount of information about them, including their name, how they can be contacted, and a reason for contacting them (for example, to get a quote for coverage of a vehicle).
In the most general sense, there are two types of insurance leads: cold leads and warm leads. What’s the difference? A “cold lead” is a random contact (think picking a name out of the phone book), whereas a “warm lead” is someone who has expressed interest in an insurance product you are selling. The key here is that warm leads have expressed some intent or interest in an insurance product, and they are looking for something in the realm of what you are selling. These types of leads are clearly the most desirable.
Some agents may not be able to generate enough of their own leads or opportunities to hit their quotas or scale their businesses. Purchasing leads is a reliable way to supplement other types of business generation—this is where leads can make a significant difference. Ultimately, all types of leads, including internet leads, can help agents bind new business when traditional efforts aren’t sufficient or when they want to grow their businesses.
There are generally two types of agents:
Insurance lead generation is a huge topic: There are a ton of ways insurance agents can generate leads. Here are seven insurance lead-generation tactics, and the pros and cons of each one.
Examples of this type of lead gen include mailers, billboards, yellow pages advertising, and physical signage.
With this option, you generate your own leads in-house using the internet and your background knowledge of search engines.
This is a basic “must do!” for agents. All agents should have, at minimum, a basic website for their agency with products they offer and contact information. Many people purchasing insurance can’t bridge a trust and legitimacy gap unless they see their agent’s website, so this method is well worth the effort.
There are two main ways to get more leads through your website: increase the number of people finding your website, and increase the percentage of website visitors contacting your agents.
To help more people find your site, look into using SEO techniques to bring your website to the top of search engine listings. With the help of an SEO expert you can focus on a specific geographic area, so anyone searching the internet for local insurance agents will come across your site. You can also boost the number of people visiting your site by sharing the link on social media, or by asking partners like real estate agents to share it with their clients.
To turn these visitors into leads, your website should drive people toward setting up a call with your agents. Here are some ways you can encourage site visitors to get in touch:
Many agents successfully use Facebook or Twitter to generate insurance leads, particularly for outreach within their community. Depending on your budget and expertise, this could be a simple business page that encourages people to get in touch, or a series of paid ads that target people who are researching insurance.
This insurance lead generator involves calling numbers from a list of leads with the intention of giving a sales pitch, but without having had any prior contact with the individuals you’re calling.
Cross selling means maximizing your existing book of business. For example, if I sell you an auto policy and then call you six months later to see if you want to bundle it with a different type of policy, that’s cross-selling. It helps agents retain business because it’s harder for customers to get rid of many policies vs. getting rid of just one policy.
Hiring a marketing partner or lead-generation company to refer you leads is another option for agents looking to grow their book of business. These types of companies are typically called “internet lead vendors,” as the leads are sourced—you guessed it—online.
There are generally two types of internet lead companies: those who source all or most of their own leads (that’s what we do at EverQuote) and aggregators, who resell leads they purchase from other sites, including lead generators. Because these two are significantly different, let’s break out the pros and cons of each separately.
True “generators” source all (or most) of their own leads "organically" by driving traffic to their websites through advertising and search engine marketing (i.e., targeted ads that display up when a consumer searches for insurance related queries.)
If you’re exploring ways to generate, you’re probably doing some (and maybe even all) of the above.
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this. To find out what will work best, you’re going to have to do the following:
Earlier, we mentioned some of the pros and cons of working with lead generators (like EverQuote) vs. lead aggregators. Here’s what it comes down to: No matter which option you choose (and you can even choose both), you must be comfortable with the investment you’re making—and pay attention to the ROI each lead source gives you. When you purchase low-cost leads you spend less, but you may end up doing more work with little return.
If you’re considering paying for leads from an insurance lead vendor, there are three red flags to be aware of when conducting your search. These red flags are typically signs that the insurance lead vendor you’re considering could ultimately waste your time, turn you off from insurance leads, or waste your money—maybe even all three. Here are three reasons to be wary of a lead vendor:
You’ll save yourself a great deal of time and money simply by knowing what kind of company you’ll be working with when you buy insurance leads. But do you know the difference between a lead aggregator and a true quality-focused lead vendor?
Lead aggregators:
How can you recognize a lead aggregator? All you need to do is ask. Or, better yet, ask a sales rep if they can show you exactly where every lead comes from. If they can't give you a straight answer, it's a good sign you've found an aggregator.
On the other hand, lead quality-focused lead vendors like EverQuote deliver leads in real-time and know literally where every lead came from and exactly when the consumer submitted their form. EverQuote gets leads when consumers are actively seeking quotes—consumers’ intent is to buy insurance and they want to be contacted by insurance agents. EverQuote has a vast pool of its own originally sourced leads and can show you exactly where a lead originated (i.e., Did the consumer come to us from Google? Did they come to us from Facebook?) as well as the exact time they filled out a form (which is seconds before it’s delivered to you – the agent).
Leads that come from quality-obsessed lead vendors like EverQuote are consumers looking for insurance right then and there—they’re typically actively shopping, up for renewal, or need a new product.
Do you want to talk to a lead who has been contacted by a bunch of other agents already? Nope.
What about a lead looking for coverage a month ago? Nope.
If you buy leads from a company that recycles lead information, that’s exactly what will happen. To find out if the company you’re buying leads from does this, ask the following questions:
If you asked most companies who recycle leads it’s unlikely they could give you legitimate answers to even half these questions. This means the leads you buy can’t be sourced, aren’t real time, and may not be intentful.
When I talk to agents who are shopping around for insurance lead vendors, I never discourage them from talking to other companies and seeing what’s out there—the truth is, companies that can’t honestly answer the questions above just don’t compare to companies that can (like EverQuote).
If you received a form like that, do you think you’d fill it out because you wanted to go to Aruba for free—or because you wanted to buy insurance?
Companies that incentivize potential contacts with free giveaways or trips are far more likely to get “leads” who aren’t looking for insurance, which means they’re collecting lead information using methods that are disingenuous to their purpose.
As you may have guessed, that’s not good for you, the insurance agent. These leads aren’t intentful, because the vast majority aren’t actively seeking coverage. Once again, purchasing a list with these incentivized leads can be a waste of your money and your time.
Growing a book of business isn’t about the work you can do in one month. To be successful, you want to make sure you’re finding quality prospects who will increase your book of business on all items across the board. With qualified leads from a high-quality, high-intent vendor like EverQuote, you may see a slightly higher cost upfront, but the leads you purchase should be adding up to more, and better, opportunities to sell. Essentially, you’re likely trading a higher upfront cost for less time spent chasing down and qualifying cold leads, plus a lower back-end cost and increased ROI.
If you have time to go through the haystack to find the needle (for example, agencies with large outbound call center operations), low-cost leads are a fine option—but keep this in mind: When you waste time, you waste money. With leads from EverQuote, you’ll likely find more opportunities, thus maximizing your investment.
At EverQuote, lead quality is at the forefront of everything we do. Every lead we give you we have the ability to show you exactly when and where that lead comes from. We don’t sell aged leads, we don’t recycle lead information, and we don’t incentivize leads to fill out our forms.
Now that you know the different methods for generating leads and you’ve considered which options are best for your company, you need to make sure your business is ready to handle the incoming leads. Before you commit to any method or company, do these three things:
After you’ve done these three things, you’re likely ready to explore a partnership with a firm that provides lead opportunities via the internet, like EverQuote. When you partner with EverQuote, you have the opportunity to experience our onboarding process, where you’ll learn about sales best practices, what works and what doesn’t when talking with internet leads, and more.
Driving business only through referrals, word-of-mouth, and/or direct mail may be working now, but soon you’ll hit a point (if you haven’t already) where increasing that offline activity will no longer be as beneficial. Then, where will you go to find that new consumer?
The internet is where. In the past 10 years, insurance shoppers have moved online. According to this study from JD Power, it’s where 74% of insurance shopping starts (although 80% of those policies are still closed offline).
If you’re not buying or trying to generate online leads, you’ll miss 3/4 of your consumer base.
Maybe what’s holding you back is hearing horror stories about lead vendors; or maybe you yourself have had a bad experience. Misconceptions abound in our industry—but a few of the most prevalent rumors out there, like the ones named below, are simply not true.
Not true! While it is true that many lead generation companies are aggregators, who can resell data eight to ten times to different agents, there are high-quality lead vendors out there: EverQuote.
We source the majority of our own leads and establish personal relationships with the agents who purchase them from us. In fact, we know every step of a lead's history, from the moment the prospect's information was submitted, to the moment it was delivered to the agent moments after the form was submitted.
Unfortunately, if you pick just any lead company to work with, you might pick an aggregator—which means you may be the eighth, ninth, or tenth agent calling a prospect—and you’re in an uphill battle from the outset.
So while most leads aren’t original, you can rest assured that, when you work with EverQuote, you will get high-quality, high-intent leads.
“I can’t contact prospects and the close rate is terrible!” Sound familiar? For most producers and agents, the biggest pain point with online leads is the contact rate. Agents have an office full of people waiting to work, but the amount of work that can be done depends on the quality of the leads. Aged leads have an extremely low close rate.
Since we’re here to dispel misconceptions, let me tell you, this is false, too—not every company gives you old information. EverQuote’s leads are much higher quality than others. For example, every autolead has 40+ associated data points we can track back to exactly when a consumer filled out a form.
We also know what source brought in the customer, the time and date they submitted their information, and their IP address. With most leads the typical questions have already been answered with fresh data.
While the common experience is that lead gen companies are full of salespeople who are out to sell data—and the service is spotty at best—that’s not true for every company.
At EverQuote, we consider ourselves an online insurance marketplace (the nation's largest online insurance marketplace, in fact!). The majority of our employees are data scientists and engineers, and what’s most important to us is identifying the best way to use data to connect consumers and agents.
We dig into consumer behavior to gather data, and use the data we get to improve both the consumer experience and the insurance agency experience.
When you’re choosing between insurance lead vendors, look for each company’s understanding of your consumer base, and how that understanding fits with your agency and carrier—it doesn't hurt if your carrier works with or approves of the lead company either (like EverQuote!). We’ve done this to help specific agents grow their business; in fact, our company recently moved toward dedicated customer support reps for our agency partners.
We know training your team is important; to help you do that we’ll often assign you channel-specific team members for additional support.
If you’ve said this at some point, it’s probably because of one or both of the following: where you got the leads and how you worked them.
Where you bought your leads matters. Were they aged leads, or cheap leads? When it comes to lead quality, you very often get what you pay for.
Also, if you feel like you’ve been burned by using internet leads, evaluate how your agency handles its online leads. Internet leads must be treated differently from inbound leads. Producers who have never worked with internet leads will, in many cases, fail to utilize them correctly.
At EverQuote, we help you and your producers implement best practices for properly working online leads. We also help you set expectations for training, know when to receive leads and where to target them, and more, based on your carrier and agency profile.
You’ve got your processes rolling. You’ve identified the insurance leads that you think will be best for you. You have leads coming in, and you’re working them. Now, the one thing left to do is track your success with leads using the right metrics to make sure what you’re doing is actually working.
Metrics can help you understand if your lead generation strategy is making you money or costing you.
Too often, we see agents who are partnering with companies and are satisfied that they’re closing deals. But because they’re not tracking their metrics, an important point goes unnoticed: They’re spending too much for nominal return. For example, making $30 off a policy that cost you $200 (because you purchased 20 agent leads at $10 each) is not a good investment. If you can track the amount you spend per lead (along with how much you spend per quote and per bind), you can follow the numbers and see if your lead-generation tactics make sense, or, in this example, if they don’t make sense because there’s no return on investment.
At minimum, you should track the following key performance indicators (KPIs):
Having all this data at your fingertips makes it easy for you to understand where you can spend more money, and where you need to adjust your tactics.
Now that the leads are rolling in, what next? To make your work on insurance lead generation worthwhile, you need to have a process in place for how to convert those leads into customers.
The key to following up with leads effectively is setting the right cadence for your email and phone contact. Always reach out on the first day you receive the lead, making two to three calls and sending an email to make sure you get through. If you use direct mail, drop a postcard in the mail when you first receive the lead as an alternative way to make contact.
If you don’t get to speak with the lead on the first day, continue reaching out to them with calls and emails spaced out through a 90-day sales cycle. Plan to make a minimum of six calls to any unresponsive leads over the 90 days.
An important part of a cadence is making sure you’re not constantly calling and emailing the prospect every day. If you do, you’re likely to come up against consumer fatigue, particularly as they may be hearing from several other agents at the same time. If this is their experience, chances are they’ll say no to everyone, just to get some peace and quiet. Allowing a cooling off period between each time you reach out gives the prospect some space so they’re not overwhelmed.
Following up with an insurance sales lead isn’t always a quick process. But don’t give up! People submit their information because they’re interested in insurance, and many agents find that they convert some of their best leads after 45-60 days.
The quick wins are great, but the leads that take a bit longer to work can end up being even more valuable. Taking the time to build a relationship with the consumer can lead to higher premiums or customers you’ll end up retaining year after year.
If you speak with a lead who takes up insurance with another agency or just isn’t interested at that time, this isn’t a dead end. Make a note to follow up with these leads in six to 12 months to see if they’re still happy with their provider, or to offer a competitive price if they switch to work with you instead.
EverQuote’s Lead Connection Service (LCS) gives agencies all the benefits of a best-in-class telemarketing team—without the need to hire additional staff. With LCS, EverQuote’s highly trained telemarketers take over the most time-consuming activity in an insurance office: dialing leads.
LCS allows agents to continue to buy generated leads as they normally do. However, instead of immediately working a lead, the agent gets a warm transfer from Everquote. When an agent buys a lead, it goes to them and to the EverQuote call center. The call center dials the lead, confirming the shopper’s identity and that they want to speak to an agent about a quote now. Once confirmed, EverQuote then transfers the consumer to the agent. You can learn more about how LCS works in this video.
See how lead generation can work for you—contact us today!
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