Have you ever wondered how Single Premium Whole Life Leads (SPWL Leads) compare to annuity leads?
If you are looking to increase your annuity and SPWL business you should find the following two case studies beneficial.
In 2014 an FMO’s approached us wanting to offer single premium whole life leads to their agents.
And of course, they promised us “if this works Scott you will get hundreds of agents and make boatloads of dough”.
The FMO told us the consumers most likely to purchase the SPWL product were:
- Bank CD customers age 60+ that liked safety and guarantees
- Someone that did not need access to their funds
- Someone that could pass basic medical underwriting.
I suggested that the FMO invest 50% of their marketing budget into our existing annuity program and the other 50% into a custom SPWL campaign that I would design for them.
Our annuity program at the time was proven because over 1,000 agents work the leads from 2010-2014.
I designed a radio campaign that was structured around the benefits of the Equitrust and Sagicor SPWL products.
The radio ad offered consumers a “CD Alternative” that could help them earn up to 7% returns, leave more money to their kids, help protect from LTC expenses, and offered the ability to get their original investment back at any time.
The key was that the word life insurance was NOT in the ad. The ad was selling the concept and did not contain the word life insurance or annuity.
Here were the results from the 2 week campaign.
Case Study #1 Lane G in South Carolina
SPWL Leads – 32 calls from our radio campaign in 2 weeks.
Annuity Leads – 4 calls from our radio campaign in 2 weeks.
The SPWL campaign pulled in 8X the number of calls the annuity campaign did.
Why the HUGE difference? Why did 8X more people respond to the SPWL offer? The word life insurance was NOT in it.
Lane had 30+ years of experience in the industry and ended up writing 1 of the 4 annuity leads and wrote a $300,000 case. He was happy!
How did he do with the 32 SPWL Leads? Nada! No appointments! No sales!
Why did only 4 people respond to the annuity ad? Not many people know what annuities are and have an interest in them!
The gross number of leads should not matter to you.
More leads = more work.
What you should care about is lead conversion and finding a company that has a process designed to produce leads that you can actually close.
Bottom line – Lane closed 1/4 of our annuity leads and struck out 0/32 with our SPWL Leads.
Winner – Annuity Leads.
Case Study #2 Wayne in the Midwest
The second case study IMO is even more shocking than the first. One of our clients named Wayne has been a $10+ million producer for years. At the time he had a telemarketing team who had worked over 500+ of our annuity leads.
In 2014 they could consistently close 1/3-1/5 of our annuity leads. This was huge because our leads were much less expensive and harder to close then. It’s MUCH easier to convert leads into sales today than it was 4-5 years ago.
Of course, when we rolled out our online leads he closed the first lead we sent him in Florida while living in the Midwest. Bottom line, Wayne is one of the most aggressive agents we have worked with.
And most importantly his team knew how to work leads.
Wayne’s group worked around 200 of our SPWL leads from us. We ran radio dedicated radio campaigns on the largest radio stations in Chicago, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis.
And his team struck out on ALL 200 of the SPWL leads. They were inbound calls in fact, not just normal leads.
Moral of the story – Look for something proven. Don’t be a guinea pig unless you have money to burn. Let someone else be a guinea pig.
In summary, if the advertisement does not a positive message about annuities the conversion rate is going to suck!
Winner – Annuity Leads. You can learn more about our annuity lead program here
