Insurance Direct Marketing 101

Insurance direct marketing is incredibly complex but there are a few fundamentals everyone should consider:

Know your audience

In order to generate sales or qualified leads, you need to know your audience. This means knowing the needs and wants of individual customers and prospects.

Target the right prospects

You can have the best product and the best offer and still fail if you target the wrong insurance prospects. Segmentation profiles and statistical models provide sophisticated ways to ensure the right offer gets to the right prospect. And some good old common sense rarely hurts either.

Use a clean, updated list

Having a clean list just makes sense -- but may also be mandated by law. Keep your lists current by following established state and national rules related to privacy. The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) can point you to services that can update your files on a consistent basis. Clean files pay dividends.

Test your creative

Testing is the cornerstone of direct marketing yet many people neglect this step. All direct marketing programs (mail, print, inserts, broadcast, and Internet campaigns) should have a “control” (standard, benchmark). Testing should involve pitting the control against an entirely new offer or one that changes one or more aspects of the control.

Personalization works

Done properly, personalization can significantly improve response. In direct mail and email marketing, getting the envelope opened is the key to getting it read. Direct marketers should live by the "four-second rule." A consumer will spend, on average, four seconds with your mailing. When it comes to e-mail, the average interactivity you'll have is three clicks of the mouse or nine seconds of time. In breaking through the clutter, first impressions really do count!

Magic words

In direct response advertising, there are a number of magic words can help create effective messaging that gets results. Examples include "New," "Free," "Now," "Easy," "Today," "You," and "Guaranteed." Using these words in a purposeful way can help you to generate interest and a response. For mail marketing, there are magic words to avoid -- words that are often blocked by spam filters. For more information, see “Web Site Marketing Tips -- Avoiding the Spam Filters”

Measure and track your results

In direct response, "It's not worth doing if you can't track results." Direct response marketing allows you to measure response in a number of ways that make sense for your business—such as by acquisition cost per customer, by list, or by distribution channel—and then adjust your approach based on the results. Remember, in direct response, every dollar has a targeted income.

Insurance direct marketers who consistently apply the fundamentals of direct marketing will be the ones to succeed in an increasing difficult environment.