Live Transfer Leads For Insurance Agents - Really The Best Leads?

How Consumer-Initiated Inbound Calls Work

EverQuote’s consumer-initiated live transfer leads vastly simplify the insurance sales process by eliminating the crucial variable of whether or not the prospect will answer the phone when you call. When you choose EverQuote’s CIC program, here’s what happens:

First, you’ll tell us the type(s) of prospects you want to reach – your ideal customer based on whether they are current homeowners, their driving record, risk profile, age, and the zip codes you’d like to target. We’ll ask you for all these preferences and more when we set up your CIC program account.

Somewhere within your specified service region, a potential customer places a call requesting a quote for insurance.

EverQuote answers the call from our U.S.-based, T.C.P.A-compliant call center and qualifies each prospect, checking their information and matching them to the parameters you’ve provided.

If the customer sounds like a great match for your agency, we dial out to you with the potential customer on the phone in real time (this is why it’s often called a “live” transfer). When you answer, you’ll have the opportunity to immediately start helping the customer find the perfect insurance policy for their needs.

Once you receive a call with a live prospect, it’s best practice to spend the first 120 seconds asking the shopper some qualifying questions. That way, you can decide quickly whether to keep or reject the lead.

Normal internet data leads have no guarantee that an agent or producer will be able to actually reach the prospect on the other end of the phone.

However, with consumer-initiated live transfer insurance leads, we can guarantee your contact rate because the customer is the one who picked up the phone and dialed!

You don’t have to do any lead outreach at all outside of your usual follow-up process, and you’ll enter every conversation with the confidence that you have a highly motivated potential buyer already on the line.

Benefits of Consumer-Initiated Inbound Calls

1. EverQuote’s consumer-initiated inbound calls have a 100 percent contact rate.

With EverQuote’s consumer-initiated live transfers, we guarantee you’ll have a chance to speak to every single prospect with whom we connect you.

There’s no wasting time with calling and emailing lists of leads you may never hear from again. Every single call you receive is the equivalent of a person walking into your office and sitting down across from you. They’re interested and ready to talk.

And because you can optimize your account with a range of filters (such as the hours you want to receive calls, the call volume you can handle, and your ideal customer demographic among other things) you are in control of the number and type of prospects you reach.

You can always edit your preferences if your circumstances change; you’re never locked into a particular time slot or volume of inbound calls. Our Customer Success Managers will be happy to assist if you need help finding the perfect balance for your agency.

2. Your bind rate is statistically significantly higher with CICs.

Since these prospects have taken the initiative to make a phone call to speak to an agent, your opportunity to convert them into policyholders is much higher than with regular internet leads who have simply filled out an online form at some point.

Overall, agents see average bind rates between 20–30% with EverQuote’s consumer-initiated inbound calls, compared to a best-case scenario of 10% with other lead types.

After all, put yourself in your customers’ shoes: When you want to buy a car (for example) would you rather fill out a form and get hundreds of dealers spamming your inbox for the next six months, or would you rather place a call directly and speak to a human being right off the bat—someone who can listen to your needs and help you find exactly what you want?

By opting to receive CICs, you’re giving your prospects a direct line to you. They get to cut through the usual hassle and speak right to you, the agent who can help them tailor a policy to fit their exact needs.

3. Even if your initial call doesn’t lead to a sale, each prospect is valuable for follow-ups.

With internet data leads, a customer fills out a form saying they’re interested in learning more about an insurance policy, and then a call center reaches out to those prospects at a later date. The problem is, anything could happen in that time.

Perhaps that customer purchased a policy shortly after filling out the form.

Maybe they’ve been hounded by so many agents that they’re no longer in the mood to shop.

Or they could have simply forgotten about it and moved on to other important tasks—meaning they won’t be in the mood to discuss a policy when the call center reaches out later.

This can make determining a prospect’s intent difficult. Are they not answering the phone because they don’t want to buy a policy, or are they just busy cooking dinner?

With consumer-initiated calls, the key is in the name. The consumer has initiated the call, presumably because they’re ready to buy insurance right now.

But even with an impressive 30% bind rate, 70% of those calls may not lead to a sale right away. That’s okay! Your initial qualifying questions will help determine each prospect’s value for follow-up.

Since your conversation with each prospect is 100% guaranteed, you will have the opportunity to gauge who should be highest priority on your follow-up list and who you should check on in six months to a year.

4. You’re free to schedule prospect calls for when you want (or need) them most.

You completely control your account settings, which means you decide the frequency with which you receive live transfers. You can build a custom schedule that fits the needs of your agency, and even pause calls when necessary.

Similarly, you can scale up the number of calls you receive if you know your agency is prone to slow months. Extending your working hours, expanding your target region, and accepting a higher volume of calls (if possible) are all great ways to boost your income when other pipelines slow down.

For best results, we recommend starting off with fairly relaxed filters. You’ll make back your investment more quickly if you accept a higher volume of calls. As you progress and your pipeline fills up, you can always narrow your preferences and try to target your ideal customers more tightly—which should drive your bind rates even higher because you’ll be fielding calls from your ideal customer matches.

What about pricing?

Exact pricing for CICs will vary based on the services you purchase.

For the sake of transparency: Live transfer leads are more expensive than traditional internet leads.

This is because you are guaranteed an opportunity to have a conversation with live transfer leads. They also require much less effort on your part than standard internet leads.

But the good news is that live transfer leads are far more profitable than traditional internet leads. Your higher up-front payment will translate to a significantly higher bind rate, and therefore a higher return on your investment.

For this reason, choosing consumer-initiated live transfer leads is the best option when you want to immediately connect with prospects on the phone—and when you want leads that close at a higher rate.

Learn More About EverQuote’s Consumer-Initiated Live Transfer Leads

We’d love to walk you through our live transfer leads service and explain how it could help grow your insurance agency.
Simply submit your info and then choose a time to meet on our calendar, and a member of the EverQuote sales team will be in touch with you soon.