A survey that looked at the neurological response to marketing found that direct mail requires 21 percent less cognitive effort than other forms of marketing. This means that messages are absorbed faster and require less effort from recipients, making them a highly efficient means of engaging prospects. Brand recall is also as much as 70 percent higher for those who received direct mail versus those who only saw advertisements on other platforms.
If you’re an insurance agency that wants to succeed with your next direct mail campaign, Ballantine has created this list to show you how direct marketing insurance services can help. Here are four insurance related direct mail tips to help you take advantage of these trends and drive a strong response rate.
1. Personalize your content to consumers’ life chapters
Personalization is high in the insurance industry, with as many as 71 percent of insurance direct mail campaigns using it to some degree. Do not fall behind this trend and incorporate some of these elements into your own mailings.
Most insurance companies offer several different insurance products, all aligning to different stages of life. For example, there might be car insurance, health insurance, life insurance, and home insurance. When you personalize the content and images to align with the experiences of the prospective customer, you will have a far easier time engaging them and a much lower chance that they treat your product as junk mail. A young woman who recently bought her first car will likely respond better to an advertisement for a new car insurance policy that similarly features a young female driver, with hands carefully at 10 and 2, than they would the image of someone their parent’s age casually driving a minivan.
2. Personalize rates for the individual
If you have a good data set on your mailing list, then you likely know the ages and gender of the person or couples targeted by your direct mail. Using that data, calculate more customized rates for each recipient. Personalization will lead to your business creating insurance mailers that work much better than general, less customized mailers. The higher degree of personalization will encourage more engagement and with the more accurate cost, you will help make the decision making process easier for the prospective customers. When the prospects then contact your company, they will have a more accurate idea of their cost, thus initiating a more valuable conversation.
3. Understand your process fall off
The fall off is the point when the lead fails to move forward. You want to consider when your leads are more likely to stop contacting you. For example, maybe your current action plan has multiple follow-up steps, such as completing an application or an authorization form. To increase the number of leads you have who move forward, you want to make these steps as easy as possible for your customers. You might try including a prepaid envelope for them to return the necessary documents. You can also pre-fill as much of the document as you can. The easier it is for your prospects to complete your insurance direct mail marketing forms and the fewer obstacles in their path, the more likely they will be to move forward.
4. Incorporate affinity programs or relationships
Affinity relationships, such as with regional sports teams, can be wonderful opportunities for building engagement and encouraging people to give your advertisement a second look. If you offer special discounts for people who are fellow fans of the big regional sports team, you help to build feelings of camaraderie and encourage people to view you favorably. If you have an official affinity relationship with the team, you can also incorporate key images that attract more attention.
If you want to boost direct mail insurance leads and insurance sales driven from your direct mail campaigns, using a few key strategies will improve your success. Consider incorporating these direct mail insurance sales tips:
- Personalized content for the different life chapters of your prospects.
- Including personalized rates for the recipient.
- Strategizing to reduce the obstacles prospects encounter at the fall off point.
- Use affinity programs to attract more attention and encourage engagement.
Direct mail can be a highly effective means of driving insurance sales and boosting engagement with prospects. Those interested in learning more about direct marketing for insurance companies should reach out to us at Ballantine. For over 50 years we have been helping brands create strong marketing strategies through postcard marketing and other successful direct mail strategies. We can also guide you to maximize the return from your direct mail campaigns.
I'm the Director of Digital Services and Partner at Ballantine, a family-owned and operated direct mail & digital marketing company based in New Jersey. and started in 1966 by my great uncle!
