Postcard mailers

[dev1nsan]

Wanted to get some thoughts on the effectiveness of postcard mailers, specifically for non-standard auto. Has any one tried it and would you recommend it.

[Big Dog]

One thing to keep in mind is - how do YOU respond to postcard mailers? i.e. do you read each one, or round-file 90% of the junk mail you get?

That being said, I personally don't think targeting the non-standard auto market is all that wise. Most tend to be less than stellar when it comes to payment habits, tough to deal with as a client, and oft times transitory. That is, lots of work on your part for very little return.

[independent guy]

Progressive sends those out on our behalf, and we've gotten a handful or two of referrals from each batch that usually result in a successful sale. Quite frankly I'm surprised, I swear up and down at junkmail and rip it to shreds.

[dev1nsan]

I would love to target the preferred market but I don't have any preferred carriers to place them with. I could use a superior access but its not your book of business and getting a quote takes 24 hours. What I mean by postcard mailers is sending out postcards to random people in a targeted area. Right now it's either that or Penny Saver.

[d's insurance store]

Look, we've entertained postings like this before. Certain marketing areas are still receptive to personal lines insurance advertising in places like Yellow Pages, Penny Saver's, Direct Mail price/quote requests in either letter or post card format, supermarket shopping cart and little league outfield sign sponsorship, etc.

BUT, a big chunk of the insurance buying public is NOT responding to this sort of stuff due to advertising overload, no need or willingness to shop, loyalty to the current market or media burnout. Add to those people who are just not responding the growing numbers of people who are rejecting the need for a local insurance agent and buying their personal lines products on the internet and you have a growing convergence of wasted dollars on what I would call the traditional advertising media with unfulfilled aspirations of agency owners seeking to grow their agencies.

We all tend to view the world around us as to what happens in our micro markets...so those who've had success and continue to have success with things like post card mailers will advocate them. Those, like myself, who've found that there is greatly diminished returns from those old school media avenues will pooh-pooh attempts at selling me those types of advertising.

The only way to tell if it might work is to test the market and hope that you're not pouring money down the drain. I've often thought after pissing money away on these kinds of schemes that I would have been better off tearing a $5 dollar bill in half and handing one half to a total stranger and telling them I'll tape the other have of the bill to their half if they only show up in my office and get a quote. At least then you know what your total outlay will be and it becomes easy to measure your policy acquisition cost.

Seriously, I'm not optimistic in even the mid term time line for the economic survival of small to mid sized independent multi line agencies. As I see it, and again, this is just my biased opinion, market forces and buying trends are all lining up to diminish the agent as a value added component in the purchase of personal lines in the future. I'm very glad I'm not starting out from scratch!

[wlunday]

It needed to be said... I think "d's insurance store" makes a good case for thinking ourtside the box in regard to advertising.

I've often thought about what the outcome would be if I took all the funds I spend each year on advertising... The Yellow Pages of 4 different local phone books ($3000 each), $300 a month on local newspaper ads, the occasional radio spots (mostly for local sports sponsorships) and all the community maps, etc...

All added up I spent almost $20,000 on this stuff last year!

If I took half of that I could hire and train a good, part-time, in-house lead solicitor. Heck, if I didn't have to spend all my time working with the yellow page sales reps and chasing away all the other folks wanting my advertising business I could probably do it myself! Wow. Actually selling... what a novel idea!

I know it's tough, but it beats digging ditches in the rain!

Swymmer

[d's insurance store]

For a very long time, agency owners, including myself, have operated under the premise of 'Is the phone ringing?', and if the answer is YES, then let's just keep spending our advertising dollars where we have been, and if the answer is NO, then where can I spend some money to bring in some prospect calls?

I remained in my local Yellow Page directory for probably two years longer than it was useful, fearful that my business would go down the tubes if I pulled out, even though clearly, I wasn't generating the incoming phone activity to make staying in a sound business decision. Yes, I've read and re-read the articles on how to make the Yellow Page and other advertising more useful by offering the 'FREE SECRETS YOUR INSURANCE COMPANY DOESN'T WANT TO TELL YOU' and the other recriprocal advertising techniques, of putting testimonial text in the ad ("...I was a 96 lb. weakling until I purchased my Auto coverage from XYZ Agency, and now since then I put on 20 lbs of muscle and my bad breath has been cured...oh, and I also saved $67 per year...") and screaming price savings ("...SAVE $100, $200 OR AS MUCH AS $300 WHEN YOU LET US SHOP YOUR RATES..."). But, my experience being my truth, it didn't do squat for increasing my agency's quote load over the final three years.

Now my milage may vary from your milage, and I'm very willing to conceed that other marketing areas may behave differently and there may be lots of communities that still patronize the business that places local newspaper ads and people still read a direct mail piece rather than toss it in the dumpster and where every buying decision is preceeded by a finger walking trip through the local Yellow Pages, but I tend to think that those markets probably have someone like Andy Griffith as town sheriff and cell phone service is still years away.

If WLunday were to actually take an afternoon and really track that $1050 Yellow Page expense each month and truly figure out if all of the books are bringing in equal amounts of quotes, I wonder if the expense would prove to be worth the monthly cost.

[dev1nsan]

OK so pretty much unless your in the middle of nowhere, most likely the old fashion way doesn't work anymore. I can agree with some of that, but what else is there. Unless your willing to spend big bucks on online advertising then you'll just end up on the 20th page on google.

[wlunday]

Now that I've had a week to think about it, I'm going to invest in a real, live, lead generator. I can pay a half-time salary to a capable person for the price I'm paying for yellow pages and etc...

I'll keep a small spot in the books, but spend the extra savings on a new part-time person with skills.

Swymmer

[St.CaptiveGuy]

Marketing is more an ongoing strategic development than just a matter of 'getting your name out there' through yellow pages or post-card advertising. This post talks about spending serious dollars, which is great: marketing should have a high priority on an agency's budget, but consider a couple more options before making a long term $$ commitment.

Education is the absolute key to give you the odd ideas that will get you in with your target audience more effectively than just doing what everyone else does. There's lots of coaches and consultants and programs out there that will let you pay them to teach you this stuff, and some of them are worth what they charge, but there's plenty of sources that are free or low cost that will give you lots of great DIFFERENT ideas that may work a lot better than a standard postcard mailer.
- National Alliance's Dynamics programs are really good for a 1-shot instruction program.
- Michael Jans / Insurance Profit Systems has a lot of material, but if you go to his site and get on his email list (free I think) the weekly bulletins he sends out are concise and full of ways to make marketing programs more effective.
- One of the quickest sources of creative marketing ideas I've seen is a book called "The Ultimate Sales Machine- Turbocharge Your Business With Relentless Focus On 12 Key Strategies" and you can get a 30 minute audio version from Audio Tech Business Briefings pretty inexpensively.
- Even joining an agent association & looking to hook up with another similar but more successful agent in a different location can give you access to someone that can serve as a marketing mentor and give you more ideas than you can shake a stick at.

Whatever you do GET SOME OUTSIDE INPUT. Creativity usually doesn't flourish in a vaccum, so exposure yourself to some new concepts, put that to work in your agency and then measure your results. Then test & adjust, test & adjust, test & adjust, & you should be able to develop a marketing program that effectively reaches your target prospects & drives them to your agency. It CAN happen!

[d's insurance store]

OK so pretty much unless your in the middle of nowhere, most likely the old fashion way doesn't work anymore. I can agree with some of that, but what else is there. Unless your willing to spend big bucks on online advertising then you'll just end up on the 20th page on google.

I wish I had the answer...another poster made mention of marketeer Michael Jans and we've had occasional contributions on these forums by Scott. Both of them are advocates of setting yourself apart from the crowd and clearly defining just what it is you do better than anyone else and promoting that in the marketplace. Those are VERY difficult things to do when you present and desire to be a generalist, especially in personal lines and small commercial.

I mean everyone else is stessing 'service, safety and security' along with great pricing. So what's a consumer to do? Why you over everybody else selling the same thing. It's not like your the commercial expert in habitational or garment manufacurers or some other narrowly defined market.

Heck, even Michael Jans is promoting the buying of other agencies and the training of CSR's now...and I wonder if that's an indication if his marketing courses have run their course.

There are no easy answers in this marketplace we work and live in for our 'me too' products.

[mhutch69]

dev1,

postcards for non-standard auto are very expensive due to the minimal response to that method of advertising from any other product. 1% is a decent return as far as response, then you have to sell them insurance. It is very difficult to separate non-std risks using mailings.

I have found postcards work well for retention. (as good as anything else for poor retention business) I have been using postcards to attempt to "bring them back" subsequent to cancellation. That is decent because they typically do not think we want them back after not paying. We tell them on the front of the card "WE WANT YOU BACK" and find many customers think we are mad at them for not paying.

Advertising today is very spread out among many different sources in my opinion. Not one works fantastic like the old days of first placement full page YP ads. That is over. We got out of yp ads in 2003 as they stopped paying for themselves. Radio is one of the best sources if you have the budget to sustain the campaign for over a year of heavy ads. Depending upon the population of your city, $100,000 a month is a minimum to penetrate a smaller city.

Good luck.

After 30 years of trying different methods of selling, I am unsure what to do everyday. Internet is the latest way and that costs decent money too.

MRH

[independent guy]

postcards for non-standard auto are very expensive due to the minimal response to that method of advertising from any other product. 1% is a decent return as far as response, then you have to sell them insurance. It is very difficult to separate non-std risks using mailings.

We have a lot of business with Progressive, and they are sending out postcards directing people to our agency. Surprisingly, we've gotten a decent response from it. They aren't just postcards though, they're a little nicer than that. The point is, they foot the bill and build their brand, while directing people to our agency. You can't beat that.

I have found postcards work well for retention. (as good as anything else for poor retention business) I have been using postcards to attempt to "bring them back" subsequent to cancellation. That is decent because they typically do not think we want them back after not paying. We tell them on the front of the card "WE WANT YOU BACK" and find many customers think we are mad at them for not paying.

This is a very good idea in my opinion. Although we do have plenty of people call us back after their policy cancels, we do find that some of them think that we have some personal resentment towards them because their policy cancels.

After 30 years of trying different methods of selling, I am unsure what to do everyday. Internet is the latest way and that costs decent money too.

I live in a university town, and we have a great many people make initial contact with us through our website. Advertising in the foreign student club handbooks/websites is cheap, and you can develop a very good presence with any foreign populations within your area through that. Then the issue is finding staff that will be patient with understanding people.

[meytai]

I was thinking about post cards..

I think postcards are great to be done quarterly.. to remind people who you are, where you are, make sure your logo is big so people will connect/link ou with the postcard when they pass you by on the way home.

Post cards are great for retention and reminding people of what other services you offer

[cfluent]

Try the postcards. Try them with different copy, different calls to action, and isolate the groups you send to by different characteristics. As far as calls to action go, 'get a quote' may not always be the best (or only) one. We all have to face the fact that people do not shop insurance for fun, and unless there is a compelling situation (my premium doubled, I just moved, my kid got his license, etc.) you may not capture the interest of the recipient with a get a quote/save money blandishment.

If you don't have a website, you should get one. If budget is an issue, Yahoo Small Business or Google Sites will let you set up a site for nothing or next to nothing. That will allow you to expand your call to action by offering checklists, how-to-save-money tips, etc. via your website and capture contact information in the process. This approach will not net a bunch of new business right away, but can build a high quality prospect pool and allow you to begin building a relationship with future clients.

I would also recommend focusing on a sub-set of the non-standard market. As a whole, non-standard is competitive and your post cards can get lost in the shuffle. Here are two subsets of non-standard: 1. Affluent professional with a recent DWI, and 2. Young driver with multiple speeding tickets. The needs of each are slightly different, your message should be tuned accordingly, and zip code targeting should help you zero in on where they are.



The point of all this is that post card mailings don't have to be spray and pray. Target, hypothesize, test, review, and tweak. Be creative, and you will get results.