Insurance Leads
Buying Insurance Leads from lead companies and service providers generating insurance leads on the internet is the most critical step for your business as the process is very subjective, time consuming and error prone. It will make or break your insurance agency. The internet lead generation landscape is constantly changing and more players get on aboard every month. As the barrier to the entry for lead generation business is almost nothing, companies can spring up overnight. Hence identifying good lead companies, especially in the insurance business, is a like chasing a moving target. Unless you are vigilant, do your research, constantly monitoring the landscape and evaulating the quality of leads delivered, you will be in for a great shock.
Insurance Lead Companies
For the above reasons, it is very difficult to create a list of lead companies who provide insurance leads. New companies propup overnight and grab market share too! Also differentiating companies as good or bad is almost impossible, as the quality of internet leads will be as varied as the internet it self. What is working for one agency may not work for another agency. What is working one day may not work for another day for the same agency. The industry is growing at break neck speed, and the rules of the game are changing every day. Also, leads from some vendors may be of good quality for a specific vertical, whereas the same vendor’s lead quality may be poor for other verticals.
There are so many parameters and variables in determining the quality of lead. See posts on Lead Quality for more discussions on the same.
Here are some known lead companies providing internet generated leads in the insurance industry. Notice that this list is not in any particular order. Also, note that the vendors might have more than one website and operate in multiple names. Obviously, they use hundreds of websites for accepting lead signup (quote requests) from consumers. As insurance agents / agencies, look for the link for Agent Resources on their web sites.
- InsureMe / Agent Insider
- NetQuote
- InsuranceLeads.Com
- InsuranceAgents.Com (formerly InsuranceLeadz.Com)
- AllWebLeads
- QuoteScout (owned by Quote Exchange)
- ProspectZone (owned by Norvax)
- Leadbot (owned by Norvax)
- ZipSearch
Choosing a Lead Company
Primarily, do your research on the lead companies before investing big money. And keep re-evaulating the suppliers (in terms of lead quality and conversion rate) on a regular basis, as things change quickly. There are several criteria used to assess the lead company. And not many of these are not objective. Here is a sample:
- What is their history? Researching on the internet should provide enough information on this area, if they are established.
- How are they generating leads? You can request information from the vendors. Also, you search online and track the links. Visting their signup / landing pages and complete an application to see how it works.
- Are they using Incentivized sign-up methods? If so, probably you should stay away from those leads.
- How many time their Leads are sold? The leads may be sold on exclusive or shared basis. But take “exclusive leads” with a pinch of salt. The consumers themselves can submit on multiple vendors’ sites! Also, even if a vendor sells it to one party, the buyer might sell in to multiple agents. They might not disclose this to anyone!
- What are their delivery processes? Are they really delivering the leads in close to real-time? Or hanging on with the lead info, until they get a better price from some other agency?
- Are they selling Aged Leads? If a lead provider sells aged /old leads, beware of them. (1) You might get an aged lead as a new lead. (2) When you are in the process of converting the leads, your prospect might land up in somebody else’s call center and interrupt your sales process, even after weeks.
- Price of the Insurance Lead. All the above variables affect the price. Hence price cannot be a single deciding factor. Use the price in the right context in your decision making process.
- Do they integrate their lead delivery with your Lead Management Systems’ lead capture interface? We deal with many lead companies and providers. Though they proclaim that they are cutting edge in technology, many have no clue about interfaces. Or they don’t want to provide the feature, for whatever reason. Intefacing with your lead management system (LMS) should not take more than a few hours. If they talk about days, either they don’t know what they are talking and they are hesitant to do. Though things are improving in this sphere, it is no where near expectations. If you use the LMS provided them by your lead vendor, you are stuck. You cannot switch vendors and import leads from other sources. Make sure that you are using third party LMS systems.
- Test, Test, Test. Do not take anything for granted in the internet world! Every lead providers gives you some free leads to start with. This will help you to test out their processes and intefaces, not necessarily their lead quality. Initial test leads may be of good quality.
- Measure, Monitor and Improve. As I keep reiterating, measure and monitor constantly. Use the reports provided by your lead tracking and management system, to keep track of the quality of leads and conversion rates.
Whether you are dealing in health leads, life insurance leads, automobile leads, home owners leads or any other category of insurance services, all the above factors are to be taken into consideration.
Refer to other posts for more information on lead quality, insurance lead buying processes and lead companies on this blog.
