Insurance Lead Glossary
Autoresponder
Autoresponders are email messages that insurance leads websites automatically send to an agent’s inbox when a shopper makes an online request, such as a quote or a return call. At the same time, a separate email message is sent to the prospect or shopper confirming that their request was received and is being acted on. Autoresponders are also standard, pre-composed messages.
Conversion
A conversion takes place when a prospect takes a positive action with regard to buying a policy. This action can be a request for a quote, a return call, or for a personal visit to make a decision to buy or not. The best conversion is when a prospect actually buys a policy – at which point he is converted from a prospect to a customer
Conversion rate
Conversion rate is computed by getting the number of prospects who respond to a marketing campaign and dividing it by the total number of prospects that the campaign targeted. It takes the form of a ratio or percentage, so if your campaign targeted 200 people and 20 responded, your conversion rate is 20/200 or 10%.
The conversion rate is a reliable guide to test how effective your marketing campaign went.
CRM software
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It’s a software program that helps an agent increase his productivity when he uses CRM to manage his database of prospects and clients. A prospect’s status with regard to doing business changes all the time. If your database is large and you’re updating it manually, it takes a lot of time to keep track of each one to see who’s ready for closing or who needs a little more time. CRM greatly minimizes the time spent updating your database.
Exclusive leads
A lead is key information about a shopper who’s looking for insurance. An exclusive lead is the same type of information that’s sold to a single agent only.
Filters
Filters are a set of criteria used when an agent wants to receive leads that fit a certain demographic. The agent chooses the specified criteria himself – which can be based on state, zip code, number of family members, insurability, and so on. Filters can be very useful for an agent if he wants to market to prospects who fit a certain profile. Of course, the more filters used the greater the cost for each lead.
Group Health Leads
A Group health lead is information about a prospect that’s looking to insure his employees or members of an organization.
Incentivized leads
Sometimes, a prospect gives insurance information not because he’s looking for insurance, but because he wants to avail of a special discount or a gift item. Such information is called an Incentivized lead. This type of lead makes for a very poor investment because they’re not looking for insurance in the first place. They usually come cheap but it’s still a poor decision if you buy them.
Individual Health Leads
An Individual health lead is information about a shopper who wants insurance for himself or for family members.
Internet lead
As the name suggests, an Internet lead is information about a shopper that was provided over the Internet. If such information was given through the website of a reputable company, and gathered by means of a series of survey questionnaires designed specifically to bring out a prospect’s real interest in getting insurance, that information is called a Quality internet lead.
Lead generation
Lead generation is the method used to gather prospects systematically. Traditional lead generation include direct mail campaigns, print, radio, or TV advertising, and networking. More recent lead generation methods are conducted online. They include email campaigns, use of search engines, and creating websites. Lead generation is a key activity for all businesses.
Lead management
Lead management refers to the system that an insurance company applies to maximize its ROI from purchased leads. Good lead management makes use of strategies such as tracking email marketing and other campaigns, consolidating lead data such as names, addresses, and quotes in one location to facilitate access, and using the right type of lead management software.
Life Leads
A Life lead is a prospect who’s interested in getting life insurance.
Offline Marketing
Offline marketing involve traditional methods of creating awareness of your business in the market. Examples are radio and print advertising, telemarketing, and television ads. It’s difficult to measure how effective such campaigns go and costs involved can be quite substantial.
Online Marketing
Online marketing techniques such as buying internet leads, website creation, email campaigns, search engine optimization, and pay-per-click ads are much easier to measure effectively. Online marketing can be designed to acquire prospects based on specific demographics, such as state, age, or policy types. They provide much higher returns on investment than offline marketing.
PPC
PPC stands for pay-per-click. It’s a kind of online advertising that makes use of ads placed on the results of search engines. Ad placements are bid on and the best places can be quite costly, but they do generate a lot of web traffic.
Quote Engine
Quote engines are software programs used to make quick quotes from different carriers, usually within a minute from the time a prospect asks for comparisons.
ROI
ROI stands for return on investment. A successful investment is usually measured by a high ROI.
SEO
SEO stands for search engine optimization. A search engine ranks the results of a search by using keywords and phrases (such as insurance quotes or insurance policy) found on different web pages. SEO doesn’t just count these keywords, they use a system based on the website’s original written content. Results vary widely and professional SEO work can be costly.
Shared leads
A Shared lead is insurance information from a shopper that’s sold to more than one agent. A shared lead is a good investment if it’s sold less than 5 times, since the chance of closing the prospect is quite good. Think twice if it’s more than five because the rate of success falls steeply from that point on.
Uninsurable Leads
Uninsurable leads are high risk individuals that carriers will not insure, usually because of a prior medical condition. But they make a good income source for resourceful agents who can get business by enrolling them in discount medical programs.