Anyone Tried EverQuote?

[SmartWorker]

I'm a P&C agent in MA and someone pointed me in the direction of EverQuote to get auto leads. I'm skeptical of their model, but I'm wondering if anyone has tried them out.

I've setup an account and mapped out a region to get a goal number of leads per day. The pricing presented to me was $6 (nonstandard, non-exclusive) to $21 (premium, exclusive).

Thanks!

 

[jdlash]

I used them and the leads weren't bad. After a while I started only getting premium leads from 80-90 year olds. That didn't work, so I no longer use them. The exclusive part didn't make sense to me. I found that most of the time you would get shared leads, then every now and then they would be exclusive. This tells me that they sell them to multiple agents and if you are the only agent in the area that sells the lead, then you get to pay extra for exclusive. In my opinion it would have been exclusive anyway.

Give them a try as the leads were good until the age became a problem for me. I wish they had more filters for multiple vehicles, etc.....

 

[dondulah]

they are really good. I know them well. If you need more info PM me. I highly recommend them.

 

[SmartWorker]

I did start a campaign today and limited myself to 2 leads/day so I don't blow my budget in one day.

So far I've received a 80yr old who said he thought he hit cancel, not submit. The second lead was a "preferred" lead with two at-fault accidents (despite that being a non-standard trait), a DWI, and a non-renewable license due to 14 unpaid tickets/excise tax/etc.

Hopefully I'll get credit back for those, but we're not off to a good start.

 

[SmartWorker]

An update: I did get credit back for the first two bum leads I received which is a good sign. Closed a couple deals so far, so I'm optimistic.

Ultimately, I'm running at $10/lead with a 20% close rate -> $50 per acquisition. I can live with that for now as I'm just getting started and I need to write some business in the short term to get rolling.

If I can write a handful of referrals off that business, the cost goes down significantly and I'm a happy agent!

 

[HarrisburgAgent]

SmartWorker - still happy with the leads you are getting?

I signed up this week, and started with 2 a day just to get an idea... After the first day, I quickly changed my parameters to only receive the "premium" leads. Of the 6 leads I got so far, only one person has been responsive at all. With the information I had received on the others, they were not what you would call a "premium" lead in my opinion. All types of recent losses, poor insurance score, didn't really own a home as indicated etc...

I am going to hang in there a bit longer, but not the best start.

 

[presidioie]

Nice....I'm web scraping expert. I use python scrapy framework. My scripts can run on linux or Windows. I schedule scripts on server if it is required. I do google scraping, facebook scraping, yellow pages, linkedinIn, amazon, webshops, specialty sites and other sites with lists of any items. I can scrape secured and protected sites, my crawlers can enter into login form, emulate ajax requests etc. If site block IP i can use proxy or TOR. I can try avoid captha on site in avtomatic or manual mode. I can export data into json, csv (excel), mysql, mongodb.

 

[SmartWorker]

SmartWorker - still happy with the leads you are getting?

I signed up this week, and started with 2 a day just to get an idea... After the first day, I quickly changed my parameters to only receive the "premium" leads. Of the 6 leads I got so far, only one person has been responsive at all. With the information I had received on the others, they were not what you would call a "premium" lead in my opinion. All types of recent losses, poor insurance score, didn't really own a home as indicated etc...

I've stopped requesting anything other than standard/non-exclusive leads and I've been happier with the ROI. The grading of leads doesn't seem to match up, I agree. That's why I decided to drop the others and focus on the cheaper ones to get the most bang for my buck.

As for your own experience, 6 is far too few to make a judgement. Give it a month and don't worry about the oddball grading. Figure out your cost per acquisition over a longer period and judge from there.

I'm running about $50 per acquisition and taking about $150 in for commission each. I wouldn't want to run my business solely on $50 leads, but they help get business in the door for me right now. Generate a few referrals off that business and things look a lot better.

 

[thecommercialguy]

Nice....I'm web scraping expert. I use python scrapy framework. My scripts can run on linux or Windows. I schedule scripts on server if it is required. I do google scraping, facebook scraping, yellow pages, linkedinIn, amazon, webshops, specialty sites and other sites with lists of any items. I can scrape secured and protected sites, my crawlers can enter into login form, emulate ajax requests etc. If site block IP i can use proxy or TOR. I can try avoid captha on site in avtomatic or manual mode. I can export data into json, csv (excel), mysql, mongodb.

Did anyone understand this? Please explain.

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I'm running about $50 per acquisition and taking about $150 in for commission each. I wouldn't want to run my business solely on $50 leads, but they help get business in the door for me right now. Generate a few referrals off that business and things look a lot better.

Is $50/lead as an acquisition cost fair in the industry? You mention $150 for commission, so that would mean you're taking 33% acquisition cost and after taxes you're left with maybe 30% to pocket to the business? I've only worked on Commercial P&C with my only experience cold-calling and referral based, so the personal auto/homeowner lead world is new to me. I'd appreciate any help to understand the horizon here....

 

[SmartWorker]

A little background and context is in order. I'm only three months in to writing P&C and P/L Auto has been an easy way to get clients on the books to generate revenue. Most of my business so far has closed in a couple days of first contact and the rest have closed in 2-3 weeks max. I'm closing 70% of the business I quote, mostly due to my efforts within my natural market.

I think DHK brought up the difference between today marketing and tomorrow marketing and I'm definitely engaged in both. My natural market has some potential and lead purchasing has been a way to make up the gap so I can earn more today and accelerate my renewals next year by getting a fast start.

My tomorrow marketing has been contacting mortgage brokers and small car dealerships to help them solve their problem of dealing with slow service insurance agents. I'm just getting started on cold-calling for C/L, though that process is definitely a longer term thing for me. I'm basically collecting x-dates and working with my mentor on how to write proposals.

The current iteration of my business plan is to be writing a 70/30 split of P/L vs C/L with more than 75% of my P/L business to be multi-line. I'm betting on the multi-line and C/L business to be stickier than average, giving me a good long term renewal base.

For now I have no clue whether $50/acq is good/bad on an industry basis, but it's a way for me to accelerate the growth of my book. Furthermore, I'm tracking any referrals I receive from purchased leads to justify the investment.

Let's say I close 10 @ $500 investment, then get 7 referrals out of that bunch from 1st and 2nd level contacts. That's around 1 in 4 giving me an average of 2 referrals. If I'm averaging $150 commission, I've closed 17 for $2550 out of a $500 investment. That's beginning to look much better and now I'm under $30/acq.

Looking toward my longer term goals, I'm also aggressively seeking to develop multi-line business from this group as well. My theory is that online shoppers are less likely to be loyal customers unless I can convert them to deeper business. If 5 of those 17 get a home policy at ~$100 commission, I'm over $3000 from $500.

Sorry for the huge post, but you said you were seeking to understand where I was coming from.