The Annuity Lead

People are so used to junk mail that they’re often disappointed when their mailbox is empty!  As much as they like to complain, everyone wants to have something in their mailbox when they get home at the end of the day.  As an annuity agent, you may have heard that direct mail campaigns are a great way to reach potential clients and good for annuity marketing.  Of course, as with any advertising medium, direct mail has its pros and cons.  However, many annuities agents have found that this annuity lead generating method offers some of the best return on investment for your money.  The following are some of the advantages of annuity direct mail campaigns:

1. You can target your advertising. Annuity agents get their leads from various sources – for example, you can target all new home buyers in your area with a direct mail piece that emphasizes annuities with guaranteed payments as a way to ensure they’ll always be able to make their mortgage payments, even if they’re unable to work. You can also target a certain income, age or area, depending on the type of annuity leads you desire.

2. Annuity direct mail campaigns are easy to measure.  Finding out how many people saw an ad in the newspaper or on television is nearly impossible to measure, but studies show that most people will look at a direct mail piece, even if they later throw it away.  Even this single look-through is enough to fix the image is in their minds.  In addition, you can measure response of the piece by including a coupon or an offer for a free gift if they make an appointment with you.  In general, the response rate for direct mail is about one percent – not bad for most forms of advertising and a staple of annuity marketing.

3. You can be creative with direct mail.  You can incorporate colorful, eye-catching graphics into your piece, or send it in an envelope to stand out from the many direct mail postcards floating around out there.  You can put together an educational newsletter that offers prospects quality information in addition to your annuity sales message.  Best of all, you can incorporate different messages into each piece, and send them sequentially as part of a targeted drip marketing campaign.

4. While annuity direct mail may seem expensive up front, it’s relatively high return on investment means that the cost is actually low compared to other forms of advertising, like TV or radio ads.

When planning direct mail for your annuity marketing campaign, you should consider several factors:

• It’s always best to use a professional copywriter and/or graphic designer to create your direct mail pieces.  You want to put your best foot forward, so include their fees in your direct mail budget.

• Make sure your message is clear on your direct mail piece.  Many people don’t understand what annuities are, and because you’re licensed to sell insurance, they may think of an annuity as life insurance.  Be very specific about your product’s benefits.  A jazzy piece will do you no good if you’re getting calls from people who want something other than what you offer.

• Save money by using bulk mail. All you need to do to take advantage of these discounted rates is get a free permit from the post office that allows you to use bulk rates.

• Consider using a dip annuity marketing campaign, where you send targeted direct mail pieces during certain intervals.  For example, you might send out different pieces at an interval of one month each.  Each piece should look different and should focus on a different aspect of your sales message.  Because most consumers have to see a message seven to ten times before they actually make a decision, this will keep your name in front of potential customers until they’re ready to buy.

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If you’ve developed the opinion that annuity seminars don’t work for marketing annuities, you’re wrong.

Annuity seminars don’t work when they are done incorrectly. But make a few changes, and you can have 50 people, every time, attend to hear your presentation.

The first issue is matching your message to the market. It’s a simple idea that many annuity agents skip, assuming they know their audience. For example, let’s assume you want to market your annuity seminar to people age 60 and over. To develop a winning seminar invitation, you need to know how these 60+ investors think. You cannot assume that your 60+ market thinks like you do. If you’re 45 years old, you probably want to know about opportunities to make money grow. But people over 60 (in most cases) are not focused to make more money. They care about preserving their capital. Their biggest concern is fear of losing principal. So is it any wonder that your opportunity-oriented seminar titled, “How to Earn More with Annuities,” doesn’t get much of a response?

You could triple your attendance with the right title, such as “Six Ways To Cut Taxes and Protect Your Nest Egg.” This title appeals directly to their fear (i.e. not having enough) and will pull in the attendance from a 60+ audience. Whichever target market you choose, you really need to know their most significant emotional concern and with pre-retirees and retirees the concerns are about preservation and having enough. If you can title a seminar addressing the major concern(s) of your target audience, you have half of the battle won. If you’re not sure, then do some interviews and find out what’s really on the mind of your target prospects.

And please, don’t have the word “annuity” or “annuities” on your invitation.  Annuity prospectsdon’t want a sales pitch. If your annuity seminar looks like a sales pitch for annuities, no qualified annuity prospect will attend. Prospects want benefits.  So make sure your title conveys the benefits they will learn about: preserving capital, keeping money safe, having enough for a life time, saving taxes and having more to spend, reduced financial worry and peace of mind.

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There are potentially millions of people who may want to purchase annuities, from the recently retired to the fortunately wealthy, and with such a lucrative market it is important to remember that nothing is set in stone; there are a number of different proven ways of selling annuities and many that should be considered. Let’s look at some of the more popular, and how they work.

Lead generation

There are numerous telemarketing companies that can help in finding you potential customers by providing a professional lead generating service. They look at the service you are providing, deduce the clients most likely to be interested in your product, and send them a message offering the service that you provide – in this case annuities.

This is a simple and effective method of generating annuity leads, and leads are essentially potential sales waiting to happen. Look on the web for telemarketing organizations, and you will find a cost effective and simple method of marketing your product.

Direct Mail

Direct mail works by targeting potentially interested parties, and not just to addresses at random, by using lists generated by direct mail specialists.

These lists contain only people or organizations that will be interested in particular products or services – in this case, annuities.  Your best demographic is females, age 60+.

Selling annuities in this way is a proven method of generating leads, and with companies out there that focus on direct mail campaigns, you can be sure to find a campaign supplied by a company that will not only mail your offer to the chosen clients, but design and process the entire project.

Direct mail is a long way from the ‘junk mail’ that it once was considered as, and is now a technologically advanced method of selecting the right potential client for the right service. However, if you don’t want to do it that way, you can buy lists of potential clients from companies that generate and supply them, run your own direct mail campaign.

Drip marketing  - the repetitive sending of direct mail Or email) to the same prospects, making sure your mail drop is high quality, and targeting the same addresses over and over again – is an effective way of hammering the message home.

Each time they receive the message – and for the best effects it must be five or more – it will subliminally be taken on board, even if the card is simply thrown away or email deleted. The repetition element is important in cementing the image, and once the mail drop has been done it is important to remember to follow up your campaign; a quick telephone call to each of those on the mail drop list, making sure they received the card and asking if they are interested will elicit a response in some cases that may not have been forthcoming otherwise.  The same can be accomplished dripping with an insurance newsletter.

The above are just some of the methods of selling annuities, and with time and experience you will be sure to develop many more of your own using these guidelines and ideas.

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An annuity marketing firm will help in selling annuities to investors. There are innumerable firms across the country who help insurance companies and their agents to sell annuities. These wholesalers or distributors are referred to as independent marketing organizations or field marketing organizations or master general agents. Let us find out what are the annuity marketing tools and methodologies that are used.

The first step in annuity marketing is to target the database that lies with the company or acquire a database of potential annuity buyers. Insurance companies and their agents use software applications that segregate this database based upon various parameters. Some of these parameters can be the age of the person, sex, annual income and whether the individual already has an annuity with the company. After the first filtering down of data, the sales agents of the company start speaking to the prospects explaining the various products that may suit their financial requirements.
 
The annuity agents spend more time with prospects who show a first level interest in any product offered by the company. Once the first level of telephonic conversations is done, the agents go and visit the prospects in person. In this meeting they make a powerful pitch of the various annuity products offered and suggest a few which may actually benefit the customer’s financial planning goals.  Once the prospect is convinced that a particular annuity product suits their requirement they may choose to buy the product. In a no-sale scenario, the sales agent will drip on the prospect with an annuity newsletter, thereby keeping the relationship warm and connect back with the prospect after few months to a year. As we know the financial requirement of an individual changes over time. So a product which may not be relevant today can have relevance for the individual after a year. But if the agent does not keep in touch, if their annuity marketing does not include dripping, they have foolishly lost the value of the initial contact.

Marketing and sales are two different processes. In marketing annuity sellers try to attract the client’s to buy their products while in the sales process the annuity seller will typically try to hard sell a product to a prospect. For marketing annuity products companies adopt different mechanisms such as media, print and Internet advertising and offer seminar support to agents.  Few other approaches are publishing letters and press releases.

Flyers and inserts in newspapers are another good mechanism to publicize an annuity product or seminar. We may have seen college students distributing flyers at busy malls announcing the launch of an annuity product from any of the leading insurers. Information booklets also serve as a great tool to disseminate information about annuity products to prospects. These annuity marketing offers can be offered via newspaper ads (local senior publications are quite cost effective), direct mail or an internet based annuity lead system. These annuity booklets can contain valuable information on how to plan ones financial future or how to secure your financial requirements after retirement. There is no one marketing tool which can be perfect. Companies and agents use one tool or a combination of marketing tools which they feel will be the most effective to achieve their business goals.

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