Did Bankrate Buy Insuranceagents.com?

[Bob Klee]

FYI: BankRate.com now owns: NetQuote, InsureMe, InsWEb & InsuranceAgents.com. Why would they buy these companies? They need agents. AllWebLeads bought InsuranceLeads.com for the same reason...they need agents.

I think the biggest threat to Carriers buying leads is the PPC companies like SureHits & Brokers Web. Reply.com is now jumping into the PPC space with their click traffic now.

So, who is left of any size/volume that now sells leads to agents? Norvax, QuoteWizard & ??

Who else do you all buy leads from that you would recommend?

 

[YouGotMyMoney]

For Health Leads that pretty much wraps it all up...for major lead companies.

 

[sparksfly]

I am a now Former employee of Insuranceagents.com, and yes, Bank Rate did buy us. We were carving out an Exclusive Niche with free tools to help close the deals (IA Quick Connect & Follow Up Email Campaigns), and after we received the Award for #1 closing Rate at Leads Con in Vegas for all of 2011, that was pretty much the icing on the cake Bank Rate needed to make it happen, as we won the award over ALL the other companies that Bank Rate owns. As of 3/26/2012, our doors were officially closed....

 

[Bob Klee]

I am a now Former employee of Insuranceagents.com, and yes, Bank Rate did buy us. We were carving out an Exclusive Niche with free tools to help close the deals (IA Quick Connect & Follow Up Email Campaigns), and after we received the Award for #1 closing Rate at Leads Con in Vegas for all of 2011, that was pretty much the icing on the cake Bank Rate needed to make it happen, as we won the award over ALL the other companies that Bank Rate owns. As of 3/26/2012, our doors were officially closed....

Interesting...but the #1 closing rate was an award by Leads360, a CRM tool. So the award was based on the agents that use Leads360 & the lead companies that are integrated with them. Also a minimum amount of agents/leads have to be on their platform to be considered one would suspect.....so not a real measure of the industry but of the players that are integrated with them it sounds like to me.

What was your role at InsuranceAgents & did Lev reward all the employees for their hard work or just lay everyone off/fire them like InsuranceLeads.com did when AWL acquired them?

 

[sparksfly]

I assure you, all the other Lead companies there would've loved to have the award! And if you look it up, we were #1 overall, we also finished second in the other two categories they judged on....Leads360 is huge, this is no small honor- I was proud of it. We did a lot of things in 2011 to make it happen. I wasn't just in sales, but account management, and lead quality....I saw people month in and month out writing policies and staying with us last year because they were having success. If ever there was a time to bash my former company, it would be now.....but we were doing good, no doubt about it.

 

[YouGotMyMoney]

which types of insurance leads were your client having the best success with?

 

[Bob Klee]

SparksFly,
I was not slamming Leads360 or your former company but trying to put another perspective on this award. I wonder how many agents on this forum use their CRM? I personally love the system & we use it for our sales team, but there are other CRM's that we also integrate with that we have more agents with than L360.

I'm curious, from what you know about this industry, what makes you think this "award" is such a high honor? We won one of the categories last year [InsuranceAgents did not if I remember correctly] but were never told the criteria for being considered. I applaud Leads360 for coming up with it from a marketing point of view but I've seen several on this Forum talk about other CRM tools they use that they love so I'm wondering how many here use them for their business?

I suspect most employees had non-compete agreements so that most likely keeps folks like you from working in this industry for 1-2 years, correct?

 

[sparksfly]

Some employees signed that I believe. And I wonder who's in charge of monitoring such things??

 

[axel foley]

Sparksfly...I used to talk to my rep all the time from insurance agents.com...unfortunately I just heard he is no longer w the company...he was great to work with...I've been a client for two years and it was mostly due to him...great guy...I hope everything works out for you

 

[Bob Klee]

I am a now Former employee of Insuranceagents.com, and yes, Bank Rate did buy us. We were carving out an Exclusive Niche with free tools to help close the deals (IA Quick Connect & Follow Up Email Campaigns), and after we received the Award for #1 closing Rate at Leads Con in Vegas for all of 2011, that was pretty much the icing on the cake Bank Rate needed to make it happen, as we won the award over ALL the other companies that Bank Rate owns. As of 3/26/2012, our doors were officially closed....

Re-read this thread.
Sparksfly.
FYI: IAgents.com did not invent the follow up email campaign
HometownQuotes.com was the first company to my knowledge, that had a "Follow up Email Campaign" for agents back in 2005. We have offered it for Free the past 3 years as it is such an excellent tool for our agents. We expanded it from 5 follow ups to a tool that an agent can use for over a year. This was before the excellent CRM tools that are available today.

I also am 100% sure that the paperwork was in place to buy IAgents.com before LeadsCon the end of February or they could have not closed the deal by March 26th Due diligence & all the legal paperwork to be drafted could not have been done that fast:

Still, congratulations to Lev & the folks at IAgents if that was what was best for him & his employees. Did Lev pay any severance pay to those that helped build the company or were you all just fired with a thank you & a handshake? [you don't have to answer but it is something I've always wondered about when founders take the Big Bucks to exit]