Using Birthdays to Market Life and FE

[Alston]

Back in 80s when I sold life insurance for MetLife some agents were contacting their clients just before their birthdays to get them to buy another policy before their age changed and their price went up.

Is anyone using this strategy today that would like to share?

 

[goillini52]

Back in 80s when I sold life insurance for MetLife some agents were contacting their clients just before their birthdays to get them to buy another policy before their age changed and their price went up.

Is anyone using this strategy today that would like to share?

Just a thought, that won't work with every company as some use age nearest birthday.

I think that's a good idea. Also a good idea if you're going to move a Med Supp client to another company to lower their premium to make the new company effective before their birthday.

 

[Jerard]

You also can wish them happy birthday when you call.

 

[walthamny]

I call current male clients 2 weeks before their wife's birthday to remind them. I also try to call before wedding anniversaries. It usually gets me a review appointment and you get more referrals in a friendly conversation.

When business slows, I call prospects couple weeks before their DOB and ask for an appointment right after their birthday week.

I also call ex-clients on their birthday. First, they are hard calls, they help me keep focus second if they are not happy with whoever they are, they will never call me back. I love closing ex-clients, I get paid again.

If you call only on their birthday to sell, in my opinion, it would be hard to build a referral business.

 

[goillini52]

ya..that's good idea.. wish Happy Birthday..

Hey Alton...how do you say Happy Birthday in your native tongue?

 

[Todd King]

I intensely (did I mention intensely) dislike life insurance agents who call me right before my birthday to get me to buy another policy (read put money in their pocket) WHEN IT IS CONVENIENT FOR THEM because they just happen to have me on the phone right now, BUT when I have, what is to me, a real coverage need, they are nowhere to be found. I have a Penn Mutual agent right now who has left me hanging twice and is going to loose his commissions on current product if I can figure out a way to do it.

My medsupp purchasing experience was interesting too, including being thoroughly ripped (privately) by a forum member, who is a major, forum respected national player in the med supp market, for the final choice I made.
The very first person I spoke to wanted me to buy plan G from her because A) Her proposal was the lowest priced plan G in my market and B) all her customers liked her agency's annual rate review and switching to the new current lowest plan. She was distinctly uninterested in discussing things which might have been in my interest like Other Plan Options, Characteristics of the Insurance Company, and whether my health would let me qualify for the spiffy annual company change process. (and the agent in another agency who would have gotten the order because he followed up several times, lost it because he would not discuss the plan type I wanted, even though his agency wrote a good priced carrier for it.)

So for me, what you are proposing--at least in regard to life insurance and the med supp--puts me in the "zip your wallet, high alert mode" with an unspoken "let's see where he or she is when I have a policy service need or a life event requiring coverage change".

While I understand your apprehensiveness, you're only looking at this from the "client" position. With all of the problems you have stated above that you had, I understand why you think of agents the way you do (in this post anyway). One thing you have to realize is that you are way too analytic and probably asked for information way beyond what you needed. Just wait until you become an agent and you'll begin to understand why many agents wouldn't bother to keep in touch with you. One of our jobs as agents are to make things simple. You like to complicate things, so it seems. So don't be so quick to blame the agent.

Please don't think I'm trying to put you down, but you do fall into the category of the client that you wished you had just never called.

 

[mickeyma]

Almost all life companies have gone to age nearest birthday.

 

[VolAgent]

Almost all life companies have gone to age nearest birthday.

Are we talking traditional life or final expense? One way you are correct, the other you are dead wrong.

 

[goillini52]

I intensely (did I mention intensely) dislike life insurance agents who call me right before my birthday to get me to buy another policy (read put money in their pocket) WHEN IT IS CONVENIENT FOR THEM because they just happen to have me on the phone right now, BUT when I have, what is to me, a real coverage need, they are nowhere to be found. I have a Penn Mutual agent right now who has left me hanging twice and is going to loose his commissions on current product if I can figure out a way to do it.

My medsupp purchasing experience was interesting too, including being thoroughly ripped (privately) by a forum member, who is a major, forum respected national player in the med supp market, for the final choice I made.
The very first person I spoke to wanted me to buy plan G from her because A) Her proposal was the lowest priced plan G in my market and B) all her customers liked her agency's annual rate review and switching to the new current lowest plan. She was distinctly uninterested in discussing things which might have been in my interest like Other Plan Options, Characteristics of the Insurance Company, and whether my health would let me qualify for the spiffy annual company change process. (and the agent in another agency who would have gotten the order because he followed up several times, lost it because he would not discuss the plan type I wanted, even though his agency wrote a good priced carrier for it.)

So for me, what you are proposing--at least in regard to life insurance and the med supp--puts me in the "zip your wallet, high alert mode" with an unspoken "let's see where he or she is when I have a policy service need or a life event requiring coverage change".

That's exactly what I'd expect from that member. Not so sure about"respected".

 

[Alston]

I was looking for a copy of a sales letter and/or script so that I could see the structure, write an outline and create my own mailing piece and phone script.

So far it doesn't look like anyone is digging in this mine today. I wonder if that means that it there is no more gold left or if means that we abandoned this gold mine just because we were distracted by shiny objects on the Internet.

The first sales book I remember reading is Joe Girard's How to Sell Anything to Anybody: https://www.joegirard.com/best-selling-books-by-joe-girard/.

He sold cars. Actually he sold a lot of cars. He had the Guiness World Record at that time. So he sold a lot of :bump:ing cars.

(I'm just now realizing how much that book influences how I sell and market today. I'd forgotten the book, even though I follow a lot of the advice in it, until I heard it mentioned on an old I Love Marketing Podcast last week.)

In that book or maybe one of his others Girard said that you should contact each person who every bought anything from you a minimum of 10 times a year.

He used a combination of phone calls, and mailings. He found a reason or an excuse to get in front of his clients every month. He even mailed "congratulations" and birthday cards blind. He didn't know if congratulations were in order and he didn't know their birthdays.

He wrote the book in the 1980s. In 2017 some of those 10 or more touches can be email or text. This brings the cost way down.

Until recently I sent an email each month to everyone who ever visited my website. (Unless their email bounced or they unsubscribed.) I redid my database in September (from flat to relational for the techies) and I still haven't rewritten my drip emailing program. I still mail post cards to clients and recent website visitors a few times per year.

My drip email marketing was pretty unsophisticated. I just emailed their health insurance quotes over and over with some sales copy that never changed. Nothing was segmented; clients, prospect and suspects got the same email. I had their birthdays, so my program was able to update their rates as they got older. But other than that and changing the subject to include the next calendar month, all the emails were the same. It was cheap and it worked to a point.

However, I want to make my marketing more sophisticated and more segmented. (Plus I need to move away from health insurance. The commissions have been eliminated on most products and slashed on others in my state.) So I'm working on a marketing calendar. My main lines are Medicare, Auto & Home and Life & FE.

I have a system to sell Medicare-related products that works well (although I feel like I'm cheating since they are mostly clients who age in). I have some untested concepts for Auto & Home. I'm still in the brain storming stage for Life & FE.

I want to get back to the monthly touches, but I don't want all of them to be by email. Some will be about this, some about that, some will be email, some will be postcards, some will have a blatant sales message, some won't, at least one will be a phone call, one will be a handwritten note and one will be a gift.

I can automate or delegate all of the above except for the handwritten notes and the phone calls. This means that after I code the programs, write the copy and create the systems, I can connect with 1,000 clients twice per year by writing about 4 notes and making about 4 phone calls a day.

I thought that the early birthday card approach was an idea worth resurrecting as one of the monthly touches.

After I try it (probably in March or April) I'll post on this thread. If I forget, I'll respond to a PM.