This Marketing Sherpa Chart of the Week provides an interesting context through which to view your insurance agency website analytics and lead management results.  Not all website inquiries turn into leads, but this chart suggests  that a healthy proportion could, and probably should.  If you are getting a lot of traffic but little sales activity, then some page redesign may be in order.  Of course, you have to be able to track lead sources first, especially since a significant proportion of web-sourced quote opportunities ultimately arrive by phone.

What this chart suggests is that, if you get 100 new visitors to your insurance agency website, 38 of them would graduate to sales-ready lead status; indicators of this might be signing up for a newsletter, staying on  your website more than two minutes, viewing 4 or more pages, or visiting a specific page to view a video or use an interactive tool.  All of this can be measured through site analytics.  Generally, you would define someone as a prospect when you have a chance to quote.  If the chart above is representative of your agency then of the original 100 web inquiries, you would have a chance to quote on about 15 (100 times 38% times 39%); again, these quotes might happen by phone or they might come through the website.  Ultimately, for every 100 new visitors, assuming site design helps people graduate to lead status, you would write about 4 new customers.

Not all visits are new, but if we assume that site visits breas down in a 60% customer visits, 40% new consumers visits ratio, then 500 unique visitors to your website in a month should beget between 8 and 9 new customers.  Additionally, some of your customer traffic should result in new sales as well, particularly if you are directing customers to website insurance resources through links in monthly e-mail newsletters.  We consistently hear from agents that about 1 new policy is written each month from e-newsletter campaigns for each 100 emails.

So, what would a modestly promoted website do for an small agency sending out 500 emails each month?  If 1.5 policies are written for each new customer and that number is added to the customer development policies sales resulting from just the e-newsletters, monthly totals would stack up like this:

14 policies per month from new customers
5 policies per month from existing customers
19 new policies each month purely from web sources

That’s 228 new insurance policies a year; not enough to turn your independent agency into a e-marketing phenom, but generally enough to feed one of your carrier commitments for the year, and the extra $35,000 – $75,000 in commission revenue (recurring, by the way) is a nice addition to the bottom line.

One more thought before I go:  independent surveys performed by comScore and Google all suggest that between 70% and 80% of consumers will go to the web after seeing an ad for insurance.  The more traditional advertising and direct mail you do, the more site visits you should see – if your campaign is effective.  What happens to those inquiries, that is, how many convert to leads and prospects, has a lot to do with landing page design.  So if you are going to spend a significant amount of money on an ad campaign, it makes sense to put a little time into designing and testing a landing page for that campaign.  If you do, you can maintain or improve upon the inquiry –> sales conversion rates shown in the chart and achieve a much higher ROI for a traditional advertising campaign.

Professional or Amateur?

There’s a lot that can be done with video, and having video production capabilities in the family (the kid with the Mac)gives you options. Clearly there is a place for professionally done video production, as well as a place for (reasonably professional), low/no cost, self-made videos (the 50-something with the digital camera).

In fact, there was a recent news item featuring CNN’s opening of ‘bureaus’ in seven cities where they previously did not have one. Expense is a determining factor in opening and maintaining a network news bureau – equipment, technical personnel, etc. The new CNN bureaus will provide broadcasts via web casts, ‘directed, filmed, and produced’ by the reporter. The vastly reduced cost of that kind of production makes it possible for CNN to provide direct coverage in more areas – an example of how fast and inexpensively produced video can coexist with higher production value programming. In fact, CNN has taken this a step further with their iReport service, where virtually anyone can report news and publish video ‘story’.

You have to wonder if there is a ‘best’ balance between videos that are slick and professional, and videos that are not edited with layered soundtracks. I’m sure there is no one right answer, but I’m going to throw this out there: providing only slick, commercial grade videos may suppress total views. Allstate Insurance has had a YouTube video channel for over two years, and the total views have been somewhat underwhelming at 7,114 (and 4 videos account for nearly 75% of all views). There are 37 videos on the Allstate channel, most have been viewed fewer than 200 times. I’m not suggesting that Allstate has not achieved acceptable ROI from its YouTube channel; remember, production and publishing costs would be low. I am suggesting that commercial grade videos may not always be the best way to go on the web, particularly when videos are published to a social site like YouTube.

What does this mean for your insurance agency? Don’t be afraid to have employees, customers, and others in the community produce videos for you. Worry less about matching TV quality production values, but focus on quick publication and community relevance. Your video views, and site traffic, should go up.