Lead Generation

I am certainly not promoting Insurancelister. Nothing to gain and not impressed with my little bit of research. Just sharing what happened to me. I found the site and decided to explore.
 
I may have already won . . .

Got a voice mail after lunch. Kinda interesting actually.

Joe got my application & has GREAT NEWS! I have already been ACCEPTED AND APPROVED into his program. All I need to do is return his call to complete the IMMEDIATE ENROLLMENT in his SPECIAL PROMOTION that ENDS AT MIDNIGHT.

Next thing will be Ed McMahon showing up at my door with TV crew.
 
I may have already won . . .

Got a voice mail after lunch. Kinda interesting actually.

Joe got my application & has GREAT NEWS! I have already been ACCEPTED AND APPROVED into his program. All I need to do is return his call to complete the IMMEDIATE ENROLLMENT in his SPECIAL PROMOTION that ENDS AT MIDNIGHT.

Next thing will be Ed McMahon showing up at my door with TV crew.

I would love to hear about the "special promotion."
 
Most lead generators are not producing their own leads. Rather they buy them from affiliates that are paid a fee of up to $3.50 per lead. The affiliates, such as the one in this thread will have multiple sites linked to each other where you can get quotes on life,health, auto, home, mortgages . . . you name it.

Each of those names is sold multiple times to folks such as NetQuote, Leadco, InsureMe and so forth. Then each of those marketers will sell their lead up to 6 times.

So from one site such as HealthInsuranceRates.com your data may be sold 20 - 30 or more times. No wonder these folks get annoyed at multiple calls within minutes of submitting their data one time to one site.

So lead marketers such as NetQuote will pay $3.50 for a lead then turn around and sell it 3 - 6x for $10 each. Even with credits and unsold leads for zips nobody wants, they still make money.

That's why they are still around.

Lead marketers always make money despite the seemingly never ending number of competitors. Their COGS is so low they can afford to mark it up 3x and sell it again to 5 people making their total mark up as much as 15x the actual cost of the lead.

What a racket.
 
This is why before I turned off my leads clients would claim to have been called over 10 times. I'm not here to slam any particular lead company but a very good broker friend of mine just shut off an account. He found out they were generating leads through email spam touting "health insurance for $49 a month." How did he find out? He got spammed by them! This particular company claimed they only generated leads through the major engines. When he called they claimed it was just an experiment.
 
To be fair, some leads companies have pretty sophisticated software to track which leads each affiliate is generating, and they can see if they get a higher number of complains about a particular source, that they are selling them to more than one source, then they will cut them off and ban them. Also, some companies pay a lot more than 3.50 per lead to their affiliates. For example,

https://www.quotesauction.com/affiliate/index.asp
http://www.hometownquotes.com/affiliates/
At these prices, they make fairly certain that they are not resold.
 
I think interenet leads in general have gone downhill noticeably. I hopped on them in late 2003 and it was a closing frenzy. They really did only go to three agents - two in some cases and closing 1 out of 10 was easy for an average agent. I'm getting emailed stories now of 0 deals out of 40 leads. I was luckly to get 1 out of 20 before I pulled the plug and I'm no sales slouch.

There are still good sources. I think LeadCo is good bang for the buck as is InsureMe. I had Hometown quotes and they were always good as well as allquotes and localinsurance.
 
I use HTQ and have generally been pleased with the quality of leads. They do suffer from time to time, and they do track their affiliates. When I look at my lead source there is an affiliate number. I do know that, if they get too many complaints from their clients about lead quality they will shut that affiliate off.

Disclaimer. If someone decides to use HTQ, I would appreciate if you mention my name (Bob Vineyard, they won't know who somarco is). They will give me a credit to my lead account for the referral.

I have consistently written more business thru HTQ than any other source. Their credit policy is outstanding.

That being said, the site I referenced earlier IS in fact selling to HTQ and others. I have made HTQ aware of that and am waiting on a response.
 
When I had leads Hometown was probably my best source and I was constantly trying to get them to send me more leads. But Maryland is a very small state they couldn't give me the volume.
 
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