FE Question
- Thread starter hope33709
- Start date
- 969
I have read on this forum that a suggestion for FE leads could come from mailing letters out to the obituaries.
Has anyone ever really tried this?
At one time I did do it for another business and did good, but never for insurance.
That is Creepy... If you can not afford to purchase real leads... Get a job and save money until you can.
- 4,875
I have read on this forum that a suggestion for FE leads could come from mailing letters out to the obituaries.
Has anyone ever really tried this?
At one time I did do it for another business and did good, but never for insurance.
I spoke with another member of this forum (can't remember their name) about this same issue 6 months ago. I believe they said they will mail to obit's family a month after the funeral and would get about a 5% response.
The 5% response was absolutely bogus. We actually heard more like "we've been getting around 5% for the last several years"...total hogwash after a little real world testing.
- 4,875
What response rate did your testing reveal? I would think it would be higher than the usual 0.8%-1.4% but maybe not. What exactly did you mail?
- 115
In the Funeral Home Pre Need Business it is called "CLOVERLEAFING".
The morning of the obituary, you look up the deceased home address and mail to neighbors on all sides of the dead guys address. (No limit on having to wait a month to solicit like needed if marketing to the deceased immediate family.) You can typically find 6 to eight addresses within view of the deceased home.
"OH LOOK MARTHA, What a coincidence that we got a letter from the funeral home and Billy Bob just died the other day."
Make a long story short, the response rate was ZILCH.
I would not spend a dime of my own money on this type of marketing.
All it did was create awareness of the Funeral Home name in the community and did nothing for the preneed sales people.
Local Funeral home billboard.....
The morning of the obituary, you look up the deceased home address and mail to neighbors on all sides of the dead guys address. (No limit on having to wait a month to solicit like needed if marketing to the deceased immediate family.) You can typically find 6 to eight addresses within view of the deceased home.
"OH LOOK MARTHA, What a coincidence that we got a letter from the funeral home and Billy Bob just died the other day."
Make a long story short, the response rate was ZILCH.
I would not spend a dime of my own money on this type of marketing.
All it did was create awareness of the Funeral Home name in the community and did nothing for the preneed sales people.
Local Funeral home billboard.....
SMITH-JONES FAMILY F_NE_AL HOME
What's missing?
U R
Let us help you put the FUN in Funeral!
Nothing says LOVIN' Like Mama in the OVEN!
Want to have money to bury her?
Buy some Life Insurance now you cheap jerk!
What's missing?
U R
Let us help you put the FUN in Funeral!
Nothing says LOVIN' Like Mama in the OVEN!
Want to have money to bury her?
Buy some Life Insurance now you cheap jerk!
- 17,077
Since I work closely with funeral homes, I've tried versions of this many times. Here is what I've found.
1. Selling life insurance to widows/widowers who have lost their spouse within the last 6-months:
Result- not much better results than general direct mailers. Most widows/widowers have several life insurance policies and perceive themselves as covered. Others are working with their attorney, stock broker/financial advisor etc to rearrange everything and results in long sales timetables with 5-decision-makers.
Many of the spouses WILL prepay their funeral after the death of a spouse. But this is usually a single-pay plan with the same funeral home they had the spouse's funeral at. They are not doing it to buy insurance, they don't care if it's insurance funded or bank funded. I have tried to market insurance policies and funeral trusts to people who have had funerals at other funeral homes that I don't represent and it has been a waste of time.
2. General mailings to brothers and sisters who lost a sibling at a fairly young age (between ages of 40 to 60):
This has always been a more responsive group to general insurance mailings. Their whole day to day life didn't change (like the spouse's did) but they just had a HUGE wake up call. Think of how hard it would be to get Billy May's or Michael Jackson's spouse to respond to your insurance mailer with all the commotion going on in their life during the next 12-months compared to Billy May's or Michael Jackson's brothers and sisters. The siblings just had a HUGE wake up call that people of their OWN generation can now suddenly die.
Everyone goes through life thinking the chances of them dieing today is about ZERO. We train our mind to think this way so we don't dwell on the negative things. But when you lose a sibling prematurely, you have a huge focus on your own mortality for several months. Those are the people who will respond in higher numbers than average to life insurance mailers.
That's the good news. Now for the bad news...it's VERY labor intensive to identify and direct mailings to them.
When you send general bulk mail to entire zip codes, you are already reaching some of these highly motivated people. They are some of the ones already responding.
As for the clover-leafing info from the other poster. That is not the way most funeral homes market pre-need. That was a distastful method that SCI (Service Corporation International) used to teach their newbies to get them out talking to someone without spending any money on leads. SCI had many bad ideas and clover-leafing was just one of them.
1. Selling life insurance to widows/widowers who have lost their spouse within the last 6-months:
Result- not much better results than general direct mailers. Most widows/widowers have several life insurance policies and perceive themselves as covered. Others are working with their attorney, stock broker/financial advisor etc to rearrange everything and results in long sales timetables with 5-decision-makers.
Many of the spouses WILL prepay their funeral after the death of a spouse. But this is usually a single-pay plan with the same funeral home they had the spouse's funeral at. They are not doing it to buy insurance, they don't care if it's insurance funded or bank funded. I have tried to market insurance policies and funeral trusts to people who have had funerals at other funeral homes that I don't represent and it has been a waste of time.
2. General mailings to brothers and sisters who lost a sibling at a fairly young age (between ages of 40 to 60):
This has always been a more responsive group to general insurance mailings. Their whole day to day life didn't change (like the spouse's did) but they just had a HUGE wake up call. Think of how hard it would be to get Billy May's or Michael Jackson's spouse to respond to your insurance mailer with all the commotion going on in their life during the next 12-months compared to Billy May's or Michael Jackson's brothers and sisters. The siblings just had a HUGE wake up call that people of their OWN generation can now suddenly die.
Everyone goes through life thinking the chances of them dieing today is about ZERO. We train our mind to think this way so we don't dwell on the negative things. But when you lose a sibling prematurely, you have a huge focus on your own mortality for several months. Those are the people who will respond in higher numbers than average to life insurance mailers.
That's the good news. Now for the bad news...it's VERY labor intensive to identify and direct mailings to them.
When you send general bulk mail to entire zip codes, you are already reaching some of these highly motivated people. They are some of the ones already responding.
As for the clover-leafing info from the other poster. That is not the way most funeral homes market pre-need. That was a distastful method that SCI (Service Corporation International) used to teach their newbies to get them out talking to someone without spending any money on leads. SCI had many bad ideas and clover-leafing was just one of them.
Last edited:
- 4,875
- Thread starter
- #9
When I mailed to Obits 25 years ago it was not for selling insurance, it was for filing claims to the insurance company's for people on Medicare. It was to help seniors sort throught the bills and get payment form the insurance company's. I also did it for attorney's with probate, estates and guardianships. Online filing put me out of business.
Less than .5%. We mailed the same exact letter that someone else said pulled 5% for several years. Actually several of the responses were from folks who were very upset that we would have mailed them something like that. Once we realized the results were no where near 5% and it was getting under the skin of several who did respond we pulled the plug on it.
I actually thought the whole thing seemed a little disingenuous from the beginning but that supposed return rate coupled with the ridiculous closing ratio the person threw on top of it made us give it a try. Complete waste of time but at least we found out the person who proposed it was totally full of crap so we didn't have to listen to any more of their tall tales.
