Internet Lead Statistics

[treeves]

I have been using shared health insurance internet leads for about a month, using a mix of Norvax and InsureMe leads. Leads cost me around $8 a pop.

Some agents and lead company reps said that shared internet leads should be anywhere from 2-4%, and some have said 10%.

At a 10% close ratio, this is obviously profitable when using an average premium of $300 per month (usually 2 person family), new business commission of 20%, and 80% approval.

However at 2-4%, it's still technically profitable at $640 per 100 leads, although I don't want to put all that work into it just to pay the lead company. I'd like to eat too, from time to time!

Here's my dilemma. Nearly all of the leads I have been receiving have either been a single female lead looking for insurance or married but want a separate policy, or unemployed, so the premium average is only around $150 per month.

So, in my first month of selling using leads, I have purchased 119 leads, closed two (1.6%), and should be closing two before the end of next week, for a lead closing average of 3.3%. The average premium is $150, so I am making (after paying for leads) just $640.

I do have drip marketing in place, and I send an intro letter to the lead, offer a free virtual book called Health Insurance Basics that I created, and have a phone call regimen in place.

My first contact success rate (which includes the intial lead phone call and a second call later that day) is around 20%. When I am able to get a hold of the client, I am able to set up a desktop share to discuss the plans and I do ask for the business- nicely, of course.

My questions are:

• First or all, is that a normal close ratio for shared internet leads for three weeks worth of work?
• Does it normally take longer than three weeks to close a sale?
• Based on the numbers above, should I work on my close ratio, or volume?
• Is purchasing better quality leads (InsureMe offers leads with only three agent touches for $16, compared to $8 for up to nine agent leads) a better approach, or is quantity better since I am able to build up a database at least with interested people?

This is a fabulous forum. Keep up the great work. Thanks!

 

[CHUMPS FROM OXFORD]

Some quick comments...Insureme would love to sell that $16 lead to you. I seriously doubt the three agent touches, not to mention the prospect may go to another site anyway.

Sales will come from three weeks, three months and six months. So the longer you're at it, the greater chance of writing an old lead.

Hard to say about your 3.3% closing average without knowing anything about your system, website, email content etc...

 

[YouGotMyMoney]

Some agents and lead company reps said that shared internet leads should be anywhere from 2-4%, and some have said 10%.

10% close ratio on shared internet leads?

Someone is fudging the numbers or outright lying to you.

I do ask for the business- nicely, of course.

If you have done your job correctly, you have the right to ask for their business. Don't feel you need to be too meek about it.

 

[hockeyday]

I'm going to toss this out to you, early this week I went an visited with angent that has a few people working with him in his office, i was there 1.5 hours and walked out thinking totally different, they work only aged internet leads and feed them into a dialer , while i was there they closed 5 deals, no web share, I was blowen away, all of the leads said the same thing when i started looking i got so many calls i gave up, thanks for calling me back, they pay .75 per lead, would not tell me the source, thus my question below about aged leads, I'm going to try this next week, you also need to filter your leads, I would never take a share lead underage 35, along with other filters, you also need a mojo dialer to just call biz owners from a list, it works, yes you talk to alot of no but the yes is coming

 

[Alston]

• First of all, is that a normal close ratio for shared internet leads for three weeks worth of work?

Your sample size is still pretty small so your statistics may not hold up over the long run. This isn't necessarily bad. Your numbers over the long run could be better.

I have good news for you however, a good drip marketing program should be able to about double the sales you make in the first month or so. It may take about 18 months to get (most of) the other half. You may get a sale 3 years from now from leads you buy this month.

It sounds like you have the makings of a very good drip marketing program. I'd love to see your ebook if you'd care to share. I won't plagiarize you, but I may steal the concept.

Turn about is fair play, so I will share with you the following idea: I'm putting together a series of video tips/FAQs that I plan to link to in my drip marketing emails.



I'm putting the videos on my blog posts like this one: No deductible health insurance. I will put links to various blog posts in my drip marketing emails.


Regarding drip email marketing
Make sure that you make it easy for people to opt out of your email list or you will get your domain on the spam list!

You might want to occasionally use an outside vendor to email for you if your web host can't provide you with a list of emails that bounce in a usable format. It will cost you about a penny per email to use an outside vendor.

Getting the list of bounced emails is important. Continually mailing to invalid email address will get you on the spam list also.

You can get off the list if you behave and the various ISPs stop getting complaints, but getting on the list will cost you time and time is ....

If you have more than one domain, use one to send individual emails from and another to send bulk emails from. Other than using an outside vendor, this is the best practice for sending email in bulk.

A programmer can easily (in seconds) change the "from" email address so that it looks like it is coming from the other domain if you are using code on your server to email. If you are emailing from Outlook, you can do it yourself.

If it sounds like I'm speaking from experience, it is because am.

Alston <--- former spammer.

 

[CHUMPS FROM OXFORD]

Great idea. One of these days, I'll get around to doing a Major Medical Health Insurance video but I never seem to find the time. Yours are very good although I miss the little person in the corner talking!

 

[mike-]

As mentioned earlier, add filters to your leads so you will avoid the $100-150 premiums. I can't believe Insureme would charge $16 for a shared (3 agent) lead and that's w/out adding filters. Seems extremely expensive.

 

[Alston]

Great idea. One of these days, I'll get around to doing a Major Medical Health Insurance video but I never seem to find the time. Yours are very good although I miss the little person in the corner talking!

I'm testing the video of me against the cartoon character with my voice. So far me is beating me by about 20%. (The video is beating the cartoon character.)

I'm not sure if it is merely the annoyance factor. The video is set to run only after a click. The cartoon character talks automatically. I'll probably test factor that next.

The cartoon character gave me a major increase in conversions when I added to my sites a few years ago. I've often wondered if the reason was due to the fact that the rest of the site was so poorly designed. Drawing the eye away from the rest of the site may have been what increased the conversion percentage.

I think the design is better now so the character may or may not be helping. I try not to rely on my opinion when I can test, so I'll test that soon.

Google Website Optimizer is the tool I use for most of my testing. You need to know a little HTML (just the basics) to install the code, but it is a great program.

I get a lot more actionable data from that tool when compared to Google Analytics. I'm not knocking analytics. I use both tools, but Website Optimizer is much more intuitive.

 

[focusgroup]

Great idea. One of these days, I'll get around to doing a Major Medical Health Insurance video but I never seem to find the time. Yours are very good although I miss the little person in the corner talking!

Chumps is this another one of yours? You are a machine!

Billy

 

[treeves]

yeah, for InsureMe leads, I pay $8 per shared lead. They offer an "upgrade" for the following: +$3 for matched 5 times or less, +$5 for matched 4 times or less, and +$8 for matched 3 times or less.

There are default filters already in place: Will exclude the following medical conditions:
Aids, Cancer, Depression, Diabetes, Heart Attack, Stroke, Alzheimer’s, Major Health Condition, BMI over 35, Denied Coverage, Pregnancy. In addition, the consumer must be under the age of 64 ½.
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In my prior life, I was a web and digital products developer. If you are interested in looking at the vBook titled "Health Insurance Basics", you can click here for the 1.8MB .EXE version of the virtual book (it even has video, which I have streaming from my web server): http://www.insuredbyreeves.com/images/ReevesHealthInsuranceBasics.exe

There is another version of the vBook that is only 855K that I will send to prospective insureds via email. But, they have to download a small .DNL extension program before they can play that vBook.

My wife said that I should offer vBook development to agents to give insureds a differentiator. I never really thought about that, but if any of you are interested in virtual book similar to the one I created that's custom for your agency, or for something completely different, let me know.