Whether you are a small insurance broker or a large insurance company, insurance leads are hard to come by and can be expensive to generate.
We have well over a hundred insurance customers who are successfully generating leads using text message marketing at a fraction of the cost of almost any other method.
I thought I’d put together a quick ‘How to Generate Insurance Leads‘ article so that hopefully other companies can benefit from this approach as well.
Insurance Lead Generation – a summary of how
This is no ‘magic bullet’. In fact, it’s very simple. You are harnessing the awesome power of text messaging to fish for leads. It’s simple, straightforward direct marketing.
As in any direct marketing you need, a) a good list, b) a good proposition, c) a great delivery route (that’s the SMS sending bit) and d) a great response channel (that’s the replying to the SMS bit).
Step 1 – The List
There are strict rules on sending out SMS. The list of numbers MUST be 3rd party opted in. In other words, must have explicitly agreed to receive texts from third parties.
There is no 1 magic list of all UK mobile numbers but rather a collection of lists built by companies who have run promotions and gained 3rd party opt in permission in the process. They in turn rent these out through a data broker. When brought together the total universe size is around 14 million 3rd party opted in mobile numbers – so quite a few to go at!
You can buy lists based on the usual types of demographics and geographics – age, gender, post code, interests, etc. In general, the more selection criteria you add, the more expensive the list.
Over the years, we have worked with most of the mobile number data brokers and we have settled on the best. Contact Sara at DMRI on 0114 281 5760 or at sara@dmri.co.uk to discuss your needs. If you say you’re a Text Marketer customer, she’ll give you a 15-25% discount depending on the list you’re buying.
Expect to pay anything from £90 to £140 per thousand records depending on your requirements. We’ll come on to ROI later.
Step 2 – The Offer/Message
Remember, we only have 160 characters in a text message so you’re offer has to be punchy, relevant, to the point and easy to respond to.
It rather depends on what arm of insurance you’re in and what your company specialises in as to what you’re going to say but let’s look at some winning examples;
1. We’ll review & reduce the cost of your pension – for free. Reply YES today to get a free review. Only 100 free places left.
2. Hi George. I can reduce your overall insurance costs. I’m doing this for 100 people in Dudley. Reply YES if you’d like to be one.
3. Sam, my insurance brokerage saves the average Dudley motorist 23% on their car insurance. Reply YES if you’d like me to review yours free.
4. Dudley home insurance sale on this week! To reduce your home insurance bill now, reply YES now and I’ll give you a call. No commitments.
5. Insurance is dull. Let us do the boring stuff. We’ll get you best deals for house, car and contents insurance. Call Oakey Insurance on 012345 45678.
6. Reduce the cost of your insurance and have more money to spend on the fun stuff. Call Birchwood Insurance today and put more money in your back pocket. Call us on 012345 6789 or reply SAVE to this text.
7. Paul, I’m a friendly local insurance broker who’s dedicated to reducing insurance costs. Can I reduce yours? Reply YES and we’ll have a quick, free review.
You can see how there are a few killer points in most of these winning messages.
1. Personalisation – using the person’s name (using our merge to SMS feature). You’ll get the name with the list you buy.
2. Locality – make the person feel local. You can merge the town name in too for larger campaigns.
3. What do you get? – all offer something a person can get NOW & for free, just by replying yes.
4. Time expiry/Restricted offer – only 100 places left or only available this week – create a sense of urgency.
Step 3 – Sending out the Text Message & getting Lead replies
Here’s the easy bit! We’re a text messaging company.
You don’t have to use us of course but you may have seen that we keep lower costs for SMS broadcasting. We publish a competitor price comparison chart on our prices page so you can see what all the other companies charge. Have a look around of course but hopefully you’ll use us when you see other peoples prices.
All you need to do is open a free SMS account with us (use Promo Code INSURE when you do and we’ll put 50 free credits in your account so you can test it). When you open an account you’ll get the basic instructions. But, seriously, it’s a case of copy and pasting in the mobile numbers, writing the message and hitting send – it really is that simple!
Included in your text account is a free virtual reply number. What this means is people can reply to your messages – hopefully YES (some will undoubtedly be less ‘clean’)! All these text responses will be automatically routed to the email address you used when you sign up – so that’s where all the leads come in.
Costs & ROI on Insurance Lead Generation by SMS
So, will it work for you is the million dollar question?
Without fail, all of our current insurance customers did tests first, on our recommendation, to see. To my knowledge, to date, it has a 100% success rate.
Let’s look at what a test of 5,000 would cost;
Buy the list (avg £100/’000) = £500
Send the SMS (3.7p per text) = £185 (we don’t have any set up for monthly costs, just a pay as you go service)
Total = £685
Response rate to SMS campaign.
A tougher question because it depends on your proposition, offer, etc. But we can assume an average of 10%. So, 500 leads.
Return on Investment. Simply multiply 500 x your normal conversion rate x your average income per customer.
E.g. car insurance might be 500 x 24% x £47 = income of £5,640, profit of £4,955 plus ongoing renewals and cross sell potential – not bad from a lead generation spend of £685.
Start an Insurance Lead Generation SMS campaign today
- Speak to Sara at DMRI 0114 281 5760 or at sara@dmri.co.uk to discuss your list needs
- Open a free SMS account with us (use Promo Code INSURE when you do and we’ll put 50 free credits in your account so you can test it)
- Watch your email inbox for all those lovely leads