Using Birthdays to Market Life and FE

[goillini52]

hi..goillini52
our native language is English so we just simply wish "Have a peaceful and relaxing birthday", " Wish you a very happy Birthday".

Why thank you Alton. Happy Birthday to you too.

 

[Newby]

Back in 80s when I sold life insurance for MetLife some agents were contacting their clients just before their birthdays to get them to buy another policy before their age changed and their price went up.

Is anyone using this strategy today that would like to share?

I always used data based marketing when I was heavily marketing pre-need. We didn't have an endless supply of people to mail to like FE agents have because there is only a zip code or two that will use any particular funeral home. So we did systematic letters (prospect farming) anytime we put someone in the database. Sending a letter a month before their birthday was a standard thing to do for the prospects that had given me the old "We are going to Preplan someday" routine. It's an effective thing to do. It gets a few off the fence.

With FE and Med Sup sales I was using Send Out Cards to do systematic touches with clients as well as a few non clients that I had not given up on yet (old habits die hard. )
A lot of agents send birthday cards to their clients. I would send pre-birthday cards. The message was basically something like

Hey Bob! I noticed in my notes that you have a birthday coming up next month. Happy Birthday! But I wanted to reach out to you a little early in case you had been thinking about adding a little more coverage to your life insurance policy or checking if we can re-shop your Medicare Supplement for a lower rate. If that's something you are considering let's talk before your birthday and we can lock-in your current age and save you some more money. Call me at 123-456-7890 if you would like to discuss it. Otherwise, have a happy birthday.

I don't track numbers or percentages. But I can tell you I got calls from this letter. It generates some easy bump ups. I never had anyone react like the LostCause guy in the thread. But if you ever do it doesn't matter. Those people that think like him are not the people who will ever appreciate the agent anyway. Don't ever cater your marketing to those guys.

 

[Todd King]

Thanks for the shout back Todd.

Several comments.

Based on my own reactions to "trolling for business" from agents, when my life career pattern had gone down financially instead of up as one might have hoped forty years ago, and listening to the manager of my car repair establishment; I have concerns that Alston's business development plan may turn out to be long on cost and effort and short on return in relation to his expectations. The only way I had to express that was to try to use personal experiences. They were too long, too heated, and too unfocused to make the points and I deleted most of them. Although I had done some editing, the core of most if not all, of the posts remain in quotes.

Life Ins-I've had enough interaction with relevant people in the last 3 months to be able to leave a short handwritten set of comments for my wife about what she can expect for customer service if I have a relatively soon demise.

Med supps-interesting things there. I asked a lot of questions but those did some things for me. They took me on a trail of many supplements. But those questions along with some reading in a book DHK recommended a few days ago have helped me to see what I am doing and why I am doing it.

Contrary to my bravado to goillini52 about the stated 95 or an unstated 102-110; my age, family history and irs and ins co actuaries all gang up on me to suggest my time may be much shorter than I expect. So I am having to approach it with a staged plan. For the first stage I need to plan for a death within 10-12 years. I have two assumptions for that. One is that my death will be immediate, or relatively so, in ways that do not incur significant cost beyond what Medicare will cover. The second is, that even though they are small, that I focus all/most of cash flow and assets I have--including Medicare and Social Security-- toward the single objective of maximizing available cash flow and cash for my wife after my death. Ben Feldman talks about life insurance underwriting time. When I read that, I am going yes, yes, YES. My approach to the Med Sup is probably a bit different than most customers. Remember my objective. I am going to make a package. I am going with supplement rather than MA. I am going with an HDF plan. But I am adding a savings plan and life insurance to the extent I can afford them. I am disappearing money out of my checking account approximately (I have the same problem as the FE guys) when my social security check comes in--$100 to $125 a month. I have a $10K policy that can serve my wife as an FE policy. I am going to take most of my savings and totally prepay another $10K whole life policy (participating-remember details). That should give my wife the equivalent of 3.5 to 4.5 years (underwrite time with money I don't have) of the HDF deductible. Seems like the best choices I can make with what I have.
I'll have to figure out a modification when I get to stage II.

In regard to the policy itself, I finally decided what I really wanted was the Kansas issue age policy from Bankers Fidelity Life. When I got an agent, the carrier he had was Medico. While he was talking, because of all the asking and deferring I had already done, I decided it was time (past time according to Rick) to make a choice. I did not like my choices because my policy was in one bucket and a great agent was in the other. I finally decided to buy the agent first and the policy second. So a forum member did get the benefit of all the "trials" I inflicted upon everybody.

As science fiction character Miles Naismith Vorkosigan is fond of saying, "No plan survives first contact with the enemy intact." (or something close to that.) Hopefully I can figure out the appropriate mods from my hospital bed!

I may have missed you mentioning your particular health situation before. Well, no wonder you were taking your time and asking all those questions! My sincerest apologies to you and I hope you never see stage III my friend.

 

[Alston]

I would send pre-birthday cards. The message was basically something like

Hey Bob! I noticed in my notes that you have a birthday coming up next month. Happy Birthday! But I wanted to reach out to you a little early in case you had been thinking about adding a little more coverage to your life insurance policy or checking if we can re-shop your Medicare Supplement for a lower rate. If that's something you are considering let's talk before your birthday and we can lock-in your current age and save you some more money. Call me at 123-456-7890 if you would like to discuss it. Otherwise, have a happy birthday.

I don't track numbers or percentages. But I can tell you I got calls from this letter. It generates some easy bump ups.

That's exactly what I was looking for! Thanks!

 

[LostDollar]

That's exactly what I was looking for! Thanks!

I used to know a small business owner who I think you would have enjoyed meeting. I understand your need to do "something".

Just please consider the costs you are signing up for as you contemplate the different approaches that present themselves to you.

Please consider the drivers of the costs as you compare techniques used today and techniques used across a 50 year time span.

Final expense mailing threads talk about the current costs of mailing.
First class postage stamp:
1975 10 cents.
1982 20 cents.
1985 22 cents.
1994 29 cents.
2017 47 cents.

Final expense mailing threads talk about the area to be covered by a mailing.
Newby's pre-need example above is used over two zip codes (plus or minus). I think you are contemplating contact over an entire city or county or metropolitan area-whatever is appropriate in your situation.

Please consider the drivers of your contact structure.

For example, you mentioned a situation in which having an email address drove the contact. Use what has worked for others-YES. This again is a common theme in final expense threads. BUT dont become so focused on doing an existing philosophy/concept as well as possible that you miss a new one.

The thread title picks up on birthdays as the contact driver. walthammy presents what I consider to be some excellent alternative (and maybe less frequently used) contact drivers such as: Spouse Birthday, Wedding Anniversary and Client Birthday for Ex-Clients.

I like your Mike Tyson quote. Thought train: CIGNA DENTAL for preventive care AND unplanned life events.

(I accidentally happened on a Hungarian postage stamp which illustrates the quote, but I could not find a way to post a picture of it.)

Respectfully
"LostCause"

 

[Alston]

I had already planned on using spouse's and ex client birthdays.

I don't have wedding anniversaries in my database.

I'm snail mailing to existing (mostly health) clients only. I have 200 to 300 PIs or spouses with birthdays each month.

I'll email my list of non client website visitors (I have their birthdays in my database also) as well as my clients but only clients will get snail mail.

I hear what you are saying about costs going up, but I'm more concerned about ROI than cost. I think if I snail mail clients only, I'll do well. But you're right, I'd probably get crushed if I mailed to a cold list unless I combined a telemarketing campaign with the mailing.

 

[Newby]

That's exactly what I was looking for! Thanks!

Glad to help. And Send Out Cards does work very well for those kind of things.

 

[goillini52]

I had already planned on using spouse's and ex client birthdays.

I don't have wedding anniversaries in my database.

I'm snail mailing to existing (mostly health) clients only. I have 200 to 300 PIs or spouses with birthdays each month.

I'll email my list of non client website visitors (I have their birthdays in my database also) as well as my clients but only clients will get snail mail.

I hear what you are saying about costs going up, but I'm more concerned about ROI than cost. I think if I snail mail clients only, I'll do well. But you're right, I'd probably get crushed if I mailed to a cold list unless I combined a telemarketing campaign with the mailing.

So, how often do you contact those whose birthday is on February 29th?

 

[Alston]

So, how often do you contact those whose birthday is on February 29th?

This is a little technical, but you asked. I generally use the Unix time stamp to write code that involves time and date.

It counts the number of seconds before and after 12:00 am GMT January 1st 1970.

So if you were born before that, like me, your dob is a negative number. -315619200 is 1/1/1960.

If I write a program using the Unix time stamp to determine who has a birthday in the next x number of days, leap year wouldn't be relevant.

I could code using a human readable date. I'd just write an if/then statement to check if there is a remainder when the year is divided by by 4. And execute different code based on whether or not there is a remainder.

You asked.

 

[goillini52]

This is a little technical, but you asked. I generally use the Unix time stamp to write code that involves time and date.

It counts the number of seconds before and after 12:00 am GMT January 1st 1970.

So if you were born before that, like me, your dob is a negative number. -315619200 is 1/1/1960.

If I write a program using the Unix time stamp to determine who has a birthday in the next x number of days, leap year wouldn't be relevant.

I could code using a human readable date. I'd just write an if/then statement to check if there is a remainder when the year is divided by by 4. And execute different code based on whether or not there is a remainder.

You asked.

Sounds too complicated for me. My cousin's a leap year baby and 3 out of every 4 years, his family celebrates his birthday on March 1st.