Thursday, December 03, 2009

How to Produce Your Own Life Insurance Mailer

Photo by DodgertonSkillhause at Morguefile.com
Most life insurance companies provide direct mail pieces to their agents for use in prospecting and advertising. However, many of these pieces tend to be less than consumer-friendly, and therefore ineffective at attracting new clients.

The power of direct mail marketing success comes from the quality of the mailer. According to the Marketing Survival Kit, “Direct mail can become the most predictable and consistent way to generate new customers.”

If you have the time, energy, and resources to produce your own life insurance direct mail piece, your marketing campaign results may be dramatically better.

Step 1

Determine your target market. Consider who you want to attract with your mailer. Choose a specific county, city, or area in which you plan to mail. Decide on the age, income level, family status, and any other important factors of the people you want to attract as new clients.

The most common target markets to which life insurance agents send mailers are retirees and wealthier upper-middle class families. Although these demographics may appear perfect for your life insurance prospecting, bear in mind that these two groups are constantly bombarded by other insurance producers with the same goals, which has resulted in numbness to marketing efforts.

Try to generate lists that are very specific to a particular niche or class of people that you can relate to and easily build rapport with.

Step 2

Decide whether your mailer will be in the form of a postcard, or a letter or flyer inside an envelope.
Postcards are more difficult to design, but cost significantly less to mail. Flyers inside envelopes are easier and less expensive to create, but require more postage.

There are pros and cons to each type of mailer, and the only way to truly find out which is better is to test both. Historically, postcards have yielded much better results with younger recipients, a fact that is likely attributed to their fast-paced lifestyles, whereas envelopes tend to yield better results with senior citizens.

Step 3

Design your postcard or flyer using Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Word. These programs allow you to customize the font, colors, size, and layout of your mail piece.

Take the time to produce a high-quality mailer that will make the recipient stop and take a good look at it. Be sure to include a “call to action” in your mailer that instructs the recipient to contact you.

Designing the mail piece is the most important step in achieving success with your own life insurance mailer. If your target market is one composed of more educated, sophisticated consumers, you should focus on the actual content of the mailer rather than attempting to impress your recipients with fancy artwork or complex images.

However, if your audience is likely to be less educated and of a lower income bracket, the best results will typically come from flashy designs, large lettering, and less actual information. Your goal with this group is to entice them to contact you for further details.

Step 4

Print your flyers and envelopes using a color laser printer for the best quality. This type of printer will require less time to print each piece, and does not result in the soft and wet ink spots that come from inkjet printers. If your mailer is a postcard, it is best to have it commercially printed.

There are countless websites and companies that will generate several hundred postcards in full color for very little money.

Step 5

Send your mailer to the target market list you created. In the beginning, it is best to send your mailer to a smaller, more manageable number of recipients. Once you begin receiving responses, you will be able to gauge the effectiveness of your mail piece on the target market and determine whether the mailer needs revision or the target market needs adjustment.

Tips

When sending flyers or letters inside envelopes, it is essential that you find a way to make your mailer stand out from the recipient’s normal bills, junk mail, and other solicitations.

Consider using colored envelopes and hand-writing the addresses on the front, and be sure to use ordinary stamps instead of a postage meter. This implies that more time was taken to prepare the envelope, and the recipient is more likely to open it.

Warnings

Prospecting using direct mail techniques can become very expensive. It is important that you do not rely exclusively on any one marketing or advertising method, but instead combine tactics that can work together to increase positive responses.

References

Marketing Survival Kit: Effective Use of Direct Mail Marketing Techniques
LifeInsuranceSelling.com: 10 Ideas for Improving Your Direct Mail Response Rates

Resources (Further Reading)

VistaPrint
Lumpy Mail
Mullaney Cookson Marketing




This article is a Twisted Nonsense Exclusive! (12/03/2009)

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