Each year, millions of Americans seek auto insurance policies, and continued growth in the auto insurance industry is projected. The global auto insurance market size was valued at $739.30 billion in 2019, and is projected to reach $1.06 trillion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 8.5% from 2020 to 2027. As the auto insurance industry continues to grow and the market becomes more and more competitive, many auto insurance agents have turned to lead generation campaigns to acquire and engage new prospects. The best practices highlighted below will help ensure lead generation campaigns geared toward auto insurance prospects are set up for success.
PREPARATION IS ESSENTIAL
Careful preparation is essential for any successful lead generation campaign. Developing and following through on a well-thought out plan can be the roadmap to success, resulting in a growing, engaged auto insurance prospect base.
- Determine what success looks like: Identify KPIs (key performance indicators) that will be tracked and measured throughout the campaign. When working with third parties, be clear about campaign goals and how success will be measured up front. Key KPIs for auto insurance campaigns include contact rate, quote rate, closing rate, cost per policy, and item count. Since most large carriers give leads at least three months to fully mature, tracking progress toward conversion throughout the sales cycle is critical.
- Prepare your infrastructure: Make sure you have a plan in place for outreach and nurturing, and determine how to effectively track lead status, ideally by leveraging a CRM. If you choose to work with a seasoned lead provider, setting up an auto insurance lead generation campaign can usually be completed over a quick phone call, so it is crucial at have all infrastructure elements in place up front. Some auto insurance lead providers, like ZipQuote, give agents the option to post-date campaigns, streamlining the setup and launch processes.
DEVELOP A ROBUST OUTREACH STRATEGY
In order to maximize yield from auto insurance lead generation campaigns, insurance agents need to be strategic with their outreach plans.
- Timely follow up is essential: With many agents vying for attention from the same pool of consumers, following up with interested prospects as close to real time as possible is crucial. The first call, email or communication should occur within minutes of the lead being received. Act quickly, as it is likely prospects are shopping around. Be realistic about your capacity for prompt follow up, and set caps with third-party publishers as needed to keep lead flow in check to ensure immediate outreach. Consider accepting live call transfers in addition to online leads — since these inbound calls have a 100% contact rate, they tend to have a shorter sales cycle compared to standard data leads.
- Don’t rely solely on phone calls: Establish a robust outreach workflow that includes more than calling. A well-planned email cadence can be highly effective for auto insurance lead generation campaigns. A waterfall approach with a welcome email, follow ups and more personalized content tends to perform better than one-size-fits-all “canned” messaging. SMS can also be a useful tool to engage consumers and set appointments. Having a multi-channel approach helps successful agents to communicate with auto insurance shoppers the way they prefer to communicate.
PRIORITIZE OPTIMIZATION
As with any marketing campaign, monitoring results and making adjustments based on outcomes is essential for auto insurance lead generation campaigns, as incremental improvements over time drive growth and profitability.
- Test and iterate creative: Test various headlines, copy and images to determine what creative mix is resonating best with your target audience. Iterate to improve creative performance throughout the campaign lifecycle.
- Share data with lead providers: Empower your partners to optimize by providing them with outcome data as closely to real time as possible, enabling them to make adjustments to quickly and effectively improve campaign performance.
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This article was originally published on the ZipQuote website. Powered by DMS Insurance, ZipQuote helps insurance agents convert digital prospecting efforts into written policies with consistent and reliable digital performance advertising. Deploying proprietary consumer-behavior modeling, predictive analytics and advertising technology, ZipQuote engages consumers at the peak of their insurance buying intent.
