Back from HIGH TECC! Check out our slideshow!
James and I are back from HIGH TECC; we gave our presentation—Search Engine Marketing: How Insurance Agents Can Take Advantage—yesterday afternoon.
I also had the pleasure of spending some time with the presenters and conference-goers on Sunday during the welcome parties. If you've heard rumors about how warm and wonderful Steve Anderson and his team are, consider those rumors confirmed. I had a fabulous time talking with them and look forward to meeting up with them again in the future.
I hope to compile some additional thoughts about HIGH TECC this week, but for now, enjoy our slideshow from yesterday's presentation (located in three installments after the jump). We should get a copy of the audio as well, so we'll pass that a long as we get it.
Comments
This is great stuff!!! We are doing an overhaul of our website and this is such useful information. I cannot wait until the audio is available.
Posted by: Ken Peck | July 17, 2007 06:41 PM
Thanks, Ken! We'll pass it along as soon as we can!
Posted by: Megan Mahan | July 18, 2007 10:14 AM
Very nice upgrades. Site looks nice.
But let's face it. To agents...the cost of the lead is the top priority. For years, your prices were outstanding. Now, NetQuote, LeadCo and Vimo (and others) have passed you up. And your affiliation with EHEALTH is quite compromising.
I hope things change a bit (re health leads). This is meant to be constructive criticism. I have been an agent for 27 years and have been loyal to Insureme. But your prices need to come down.
Respectfully
Ed
Posted by: ed | July 20, 2007 10:10 PM
Ed,
Thanks so much for your comment. We're always glad to get feedback from our agents and this blog is an open forum.
In regard to pricing, our increase last quarter was the first increase we had done in years. I'm sure you can appreciate that the cost of doing business and generating leads has increased over the last few years.
Why has the cost of InsureMe's business gone up? Well, we generate our leads using top-tier search engines like Google and Yahoo to attract actively-looking consumers. That means when they type in a keyword like "health insurance quotes," they find InsureMe, come to us, and fill out a quote form. It also means we don't use flashy banner ads, spam, or prize giveaways to lure people to InsureMe.com.
Furthermore, we recently evaluated our base pricing in comparison with that of our competitors. We're still below some of those that you mentioned above. (You can view our lead pricing here.)
We know pricing is a big deal to agents. But I think lead quality is equally as important. There's an old adage that you get what you pay for. We've found that our agents don't mind paying for a good lead that converts, versus dumping $5 in lead after lead that consists of inaccurate or missing information and the like.
As for our affiliation with eHealth, we're always looking to improve the experience on the agent side, as well as the consumer side. We know that a better shopping experience makes for a more buy-ready customer, which is good news for our agents.
Furthermore, eHealth closes very few of the leads sold to them. That's because consumers—despite shopping online—still like talking to an agent before purchase.
In sum, we look at everything from price increases to business partners from every angle. And that we're always happy to take suggestions and constructive criticism from agents. How else will we learn to make the service better?
Thanks again, Ed. Please keep the comments coming!
Posted by: Megan Mahan | July 25, 2007 11:23 AM