The blog will include the following categories of resources, among others:

• Insurance lead management best practices
• Lead tracking tools, software and services
• Tips and tricks
• Lead management Guides
• Resource links
• Insurance Lead generation practices and processes
• Leveraging social media for customer acquisition, retention and service
• Internet lead buying – concerns, issues and best practices
• Lead distribution and routing engines
• Lead quality
• Lead nurturing with drip emails and follow-up tracking
• Lead conversion issues
• Technology trends and impact on insurance agencies
• Industry happenings
• Tutorials, webinars, etc.

Insurance verticals

The site will not be restricted to any particular vertical or segment. It will cover all segments and insurance types including individual insurance and group  insurance practices. Whether you are a single agent practice or a multi-agent, multi-location insurance agency, the site will be a great service.

Health, Life, LTC, Automobile, Homeowners, Business / Commercial, Annuities, RV/Boat, and Renters Insurance related information will be included in the blog resource.

1. Gather only the minimum information required on the landing page forms. Adding more (optional) fields will result in junk data and reduce the lead quality.
2. Validate required fields as well as optional fields for format and content. Email address and numeric data should be 100% validated. Even text fields should be validated for length and patterns.
3. Validate phone number and Area code (using a reference database). There is no meaning in validating these fields after getting the leads. The validation should be performed in the front end.
4. Validate geographic information such as country, state, county, and zip codes. Make sure that the validations are appropriate. If you are collecting Mortgage leads or Insurance leads, there is no meaning in providing a country drop down with 150 countries of the world! Provide a drop down with State names for US only. If you are collecting Business Opportunity (Biz Op) leads in US and Canada, let the state drop down display both US and Canadian states.
5. Validate the city against IP address of the user. Please note that this not a foolproof method and hence this could be used to score the quality of the lead.
6. Validate physical address, if collected in the sign-up form. Again, online validation is preferred.
7. Distribute leads based on suitable filters. If you are distributing leads to multiple lead buyers, multiple filter sets can be used to deliver required leads depending on the customer requirements.
8. Choose one or more suitable lead delivery methods. While email is the most widely used delivery method, there are other reliable methods for lead delivery and distribution. Email, API, Direct Application Access and Fax methods can be used in combination based on the client’s business.
9. Employ right lead generation methods. Avoiding methods such as forced pop-ups, providing incentives to the user, etc. can greatly improve the lead quality.
10. De-dupe leads after capture in the lead distribution system. Since users may be submitting the registration forms from more than one site on the internet, de-duping the leads will help improve the client satisfaction. If you are using affiliates and multiple sources, this is an important step prior to lead distribution.

Even if you are outsourcing lead generation and landing page design to third party service providers, make sure that these principles are adhered to. Employing simple, template based landing pages may not address these requirements.

If you are a GSA (General Sales Agency), the lead distribution is essentially a function of assigning the leads to your agents based on certain rules and policies.

Lead generation firms and lead sellers distribute the leads based on their sales lead distribution rules to meet the requirements of the lead buyers (independent or captive agents and / or insurance agency firms).

Distribution for Insurance Agency

Since over 75% of US population is using the internet and the internet is increasingly used to buy and research  products and services such as insurance policies by the consumers, internet based insurance leads have become a source of business for insurance agencies.

Whether you are generating your own leads on the internet or purchasing leads from internet lead vendors, quick and efficient distribution of leads to your agent is of prime importance.

Using an automated lead distribution and management system, the leads can be captured from your web sites as well as the lead vendors’ systems. Entire process of manual entry of prospect information into the lead management system can be avoided by picking a suitable lead distribution software system. Of course, the leads collected by traditional means such as networking meetings, seminars, personal visits and phone calls can also be entered into the system, so that the leads can be managed and tracked in a central database.

Once the prospects are in the system, these can be distributed to your agents in real time using preset rules. Some of the options for distribution are:

• Geography (such as County, Zip Code)
• Seniority of the Agent
• Type / Profile of Lead
• Round Robin method

Distribution Options for Lead vendors

Lead Vendors can use an effective Insurance Lead Distribution System to collect the leads in the database from their own lead generation sources and third party sources, distribute the leads to their clients in real time based on extensive filter criteria, process payments based on order conditions, track and process lead credit requests / returns, and obtain sales reports.

The following criteria could be used for real time insurance lead distribution:

• Geography (State, County, Zip codes)
• Lead Types
• Lead Profile parameters (such as preexisting conditions, current insurance situation, past incidents, etc.)
• Client Priority
• Exclusivity (ex. Exclusive, Non-exclusive, Semi-exclusive)
• Number of Times Lead Distributed
• Carrier Restriction
• Volume Pricing
• Price of a Lead
• Payment Status

The leads can be delivered in real time using instant email alert notifications to the agents or agencies. The lead information can also be provided as an attachment in CSV or XML form depending on the lead buyer requirement.

The lead buyers can also be provided access to the lead tracking system, so that the leads can be tracked online for increasing lead conversion rates. This could be a great value addition for the customers.

The insurance lead distribution and management systems such as LeadPro247 will generally support unlimited leads clients and online payment processing based on the payment terms agreed on. The clients can also make credit requests for invalid leads using the online system, which will lead to increased customer satisfaction.

Insurance Lead Types

Many insurance lead vendors and agencies deal with multiple insurance verticals. The insurance lead distribution and management software systems generally support the following lead types, unless it is a specific industry oriented system.

• Health Insurance Leads
• Life Insurance Leads
• Home Owner Insurance Leads
• Mortgage Protection Insurance Leads
• Auto Insurance Leads
• Renters Insurance Leads
• RV / Motorcycle / Boat Insurance Leads
• Annuities

However, the system must be capable of handling the specific lead profiles for each insurance type.

The system must also be configurable and flexible to suit your specific requirements. LeadPro247 Insurance Lead Distribution System is one such system tuned to the requirements of the insurance marketing vertical. Whether you are a muti-agent, national marketing insurance agency or a lead provider catering to the insurance lead buyers, the system will help you distribute, track and manage the leads. If you are an independent or captive agent, the system can be beneficialy used to track, nurture with drip email marketing (with built-in autoresponder service) and track the leads for better conversion.