Generating Medical Insurance Prospects During Open Enrollment Best Practices

Each year millions of Americans have the opportunity to make changes to their health insurance policies during the six-week open enrollment period from November 1 through December 15. As the only time each year when consumers can make policy updates or switches without a major qualifying life event, health insurance carriers must move quickly to attract prospects during a short timeframe.

The best practices highlighted below will help ensure your lead generation campaigns designed for open enrollment are set up for success.

PREPARATION IS ESSENTIAL

Careful preparation is essential for any successful lead generation campaign, but in order to generate significant lead volume quickly, all elements of the campaign should be set up to handle an accelerated pace.

• Determine what channels work best for your campaign: Channels that produce high-intent, motivated users perform well for accelerated lead generation campaigns. Email, search, social and native advertising campaigns, when priced correctly, can be key components of successful short-term lead generation campaigns.
• Identify key publishers and networks to partner with: Review metrics of publishers you’re currently working with to determine which will fit best into an accelerated lead generation campaign. Publishers with strong CPAs (cost-per-acquisition) and short conversion timelines make good candidates for campaign inclusion. Consider working with an ad network to amplify your reach quickly —  some ad network campaigns can be up and running in as little as one day.

FOCUS ON CREATIVE THAT CONVERTS — QUICKLY

The right messaging and creative is crucial for any lead generation campaign, but when the timing is accelerated, every impression, open and click counts.

• Know your audience: Determine who your target audience is, and develop creative that speaks to them. Use images that match your target demographics, enabling prospects to engage with relevant creative that is more likely to result in conversions.
• Create a sense of urgency: Be sure to use language that incites users to take action quickly. Using dates or countdowns when deadlines are approaching can encourage prospects to make moves.

BE AGGRESSIVE, BUT REALISTIC

Although the supply of consumers looking to make changes to their health insurance can be abundant during an open enrollment-focused campaign, the competition is also fierce, as many health insurance carriers are attempting to reach prospects at scale and convert them into new customers at the same time. In order to compete, advertisers need to be aggressive but also know their limits to make sure their goals are feasible.

• Timely follow-up is crucial: With many advertisers vying for attention from the same pool of prospects, following up with interested hand-raisers as close to real-time is essential. Make sure your call center is appropriately staffed to handle increased call volume, and consider extending call center hours. Make sure you have a robust plan in place for leads that come in during off hours, potentially incorporating automated nurturing emails or SMS messages to keep leads warm until call center agents can reach them.
• Understand that pricing may change: As competition heats up from other advertisers, lead and advertising prices may fluctuate. With publishers able to provide a steady flow of leads that convert, consider implementing tiered pricing initiatives, potentially based on demographics, geographics or dayparting criteria.

REVIEW, OPTIMIZE, ITERATE

As with any lead generation campaign, monitoring results and making adjustments based on outcomes is essential, but data must be disseminated more quickly during campaigns focused on a short window.

• Test and iterate creative: Test different subject lines, headlines and images to determine what creative is working best to generate prospects quickly. Iterate to improve creative performance throughout the campaign lifecycle.
• Share data with partners: Empower publishers to optimize by providing them with outcome data as closely to real time as possible, ideally daily, enabling them to make adjustments to quickly and effectively improve campaign performance.

LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW DIGITAL MEDIA SOLUTIONS^® CAN HELP YOU BUILD A SUCCESSFUL LEAD GENERATION CAMPAIGN AND SCALE CUSTOMER ACQUISITION: 

New to lead generation as a whole? Check out our Lead Generation Campaign Best Practices for more information on initial lead generation campaign creation.