RIGHTQUOTE

THE DIRECT-TO-THE-CONSUMER FINANCIAL NETWORK

This Isn't Your Father's Insurance Pitch

If you ask, most of our parents have a life insurance salesman "horror story." Chances are it includes details like long-winded, hard-to-understand sales pitches at the kitchen table - often ending in an obligatory purchase because the seller was your mother's cousin's brother-in-law.

In increasing numbers, today's life insurance shoppers are replacing the "kitchen table" interface by choosing to make their insurance purchases through online insurance agencies. And as the typically-conservative insurance industry finds online competition heating up, marketers are becoming - dare we say it? - creative.

It takes some effort to find consumers in the mood to think about life insurance. Only about 16% of American households are shopping for life insurance at a given time, according to analysts at Coverdell & Company, the Atlanta-based firm whose RightQuote (http://www.rightquote.com) web site provides immediate life insurance quotes to consumers. Therefore, online insurance marketers must seek to advertise at web sites visited by a larger-than-average proportion of these consumers.

"We have to creatively utilize web advertising technology to be in the right place at the right time," said Michael Levison, CEO of Coverdell. "This might include placing banners at sites for new or expectant parents, new homeowners, or other places where surfers may be experiencing a 'life event' that triggers thoughts of life insurance."

But the creative prospecting doesn't end there.

"We are conducting tests where we send sales messages to consumers participating in opt-in e-mail lists. Consumers on these lists have agreed up-front that they are willing to receive ads for financial services like ours. It's quite a change from 'cold calling'," Levison continued.

RightQuote has even experimented with incentive-based web advertising, which offers consumers a small "reward" for visiting the RightQuote site and getting a quote. The "jury is still out," according to Levison, as to whether the leads generated through this method were from consumers genuinely interested in purchasing a policy.

At the very least, all of this creativity is welcome news for consumers. After all, it's increasingly likely that on the rare occasions that one is thinking about buying a policy, an online ad message will appear on the screen.

Explain this new type of insurance shopping to your parents and they are likely to say that — compared to their experience — this sounds like progress, indeed.

Coverdell & Company, one of the nation's leading marketers of insurance and investment products, is a wholly owned subsidiary of MemberWorks, Inc. (NASDAQ:MBRSE), one of the largest and fastest growing direct marketers of membership service programs. Coverdell & Company currently offers to co-brand or private label its RightQuote technology for businesses that want to add insurance functionality to their web sites.

SOURCE: DigitalWork http://www.digitalwork.com