Insurance Direct Mail Marketing: Tips and Best Practices

With the advent of technology and the rise of “on-demand” culture, marketers everywhere are constantly coming up with new ways to engage with their customer base.

Previously, we discussed how you can use direct marketing to generate sales leads, and also went over a few direct marketing examples that you can emulate for your next marketing campaign.

Using direct mail to promote insurance companies can pose quite the challenge given that the subject matter is considered “serious” and anything finance-related often scares people away.

In this article, we will take a quick look at some insurance direct mail ideas, and try to understand what makes a good direct mail marketing campaign for this niche.

1. Insurance Postcards: Write Compelling, Action-Oriented Copy

A good direct mail copy communicates your brand’s value proposition, preemptively addresses frequently asked questions, and appeals to a customer’s emotional triggers enough to warrant action. As a result, your campaigns generate more sales leads, create better brand recall, and have higher customer-engagement rates.

So, how does one go about writing copy that persuades people to give your brand a chance?

For starters, your opening message should immediately resonate with people, in a way that persuades them to stop for a moment and read more. Let’s consider the following example.

USAA “Entertaining your troops is what you do. Simplifying health insurance is what we do”

Instead of being sale-sy right away and listing their offerings, USAA’s health insurance postcard talks about “taking care of troops” — something most people feel very strongly about. At the same time, they also establish the Call-To-Action early on (“Need health insurance coverage? We’re here to help!”) which clarifies the purpose of the postcard.

USAA “Need health insurance coverage? We’re here to help!”

The subsequent copy (at the back) talks more about the brand, their many offerings, and their contact details. Notice how the text is short, concise, and straightforward. As a reader, I now possess all the information I need to make a reasonable decision about my insurance needs. Here, brevity ensures that the message is easily digestible, but also simplifies the technical jargon associated with insurance that people are often intimidated by.

Overall, your health insurance copy should establish purpose, and persuade people into action.

Recommended reading: Postcard Marketing Ideas: 6 Tips to Use Postcards Effectively

2. Leverage Customer Testimonials

According to a Nielson report, almost 92% of consumers rely on product recommendations from their peers — in fact, when given a choice, 70% of them will trust someone they don’t even know for recommendations over a salesperson. As a result, when it comes to establishing and nurturing customer relationships, SMBs are on the same playing field as huge corporations, simply because trust cannot be bought; it must be earned.

Today, more and more people are doing their research before making a purchase, and customer reviews/testimonials are often a deciding factor and for good reason. Let’s take the envelope from GEICO, for example.

GEICO “Look At Our Testimonials/Get A Free Quote”

Fred’s testimonial tells us two things:

1) He’s had a longstanding association of about 25 years with the company.

2) He’s a loyal and satisfied customer because the company demonstrates that they value his business.

For a potential customer, this means that GEICO not only has a multi-faceted portfolio of insurance offerings but also has a customer-centric approach to business. After all, they seem to have gone above and beyond to retain a customer for almost three decades by providing personal care.

When presented in the right context, a quick blurb about your product and/or services from a happy customer can greatly influence the way people perceive your brand.

3. Auto Insurance Direct Mail: Use Numbers to Drive the Point Home

Since prehistoric times, people have attributed an emotional, religious, or superstitious significance to numbers. And therefore, it should come as no surprise that numbers frequently make appearances in marketing campaigns.

Numbers, when compared to wordy headlines, are more likely to catch a person’s eye. Not only this, the human mind tends to register and pay more attention to the first number before the last. That should explain why you often come across products that are priced at $3.99 and not $4.

Numbers also help people quantify a “story’s length” or the amount of text they are about to read by organizing information in a way that’s easy to process.

Automobile Club of Southern California “You could save an average of $537”

Automobile Club of Southern California, an affiliate of AAA uses numbers for competition analysis, which is a pretty smart way to tell customers why they should choose your brand from the dearth of similar options available in the market.

The company is essentially tailoring its campaign for people who are still in the “consideration phase” of the customer journey, wherein, they are still researching and weighing their options. Not to mention, Automobile Club of Southern California also uses numbers in their auto insurance envelopes to clarify the exact amount of money you can save by availing their services.

Whether it’s an article on your company’s blog, a tagline under your Google search results, or the copy for your direct mail campaign, numbers can help you get more leads and ultimately, more revenue.

4. Provide Lucrative Discounts/Offers to New and Existing Customers

Customers are more open to trying new brands when they have to pay less, simply because they perceive the risk level to be lower than if they were to pay full price. As long as they are met with a positive experience, they are also likely to come back and engage with the brand on a long-term basis.

Remember, returning customers are more cost-effective to convert into loyal patrons, as they spend 67% more on average. Therefore, by offering a discount on your products, you’re attracting new customers while paving the road for a longstanding relationship with existing customers.

For example, Lifelock offers 40% off on their identity theft protection services in the first year to all new customers.

Lifelock “Make sure your family members have protection”

On a similar note, GEICO, the leading American company for car insurance, has a special discount reserved for members of the Indiana University Alumni Association.

GEICO “Choose GEICO. It’s simple”

When used strategically, discounts can supercharge your direct mail campaigns by helping you convert the risk-averse, first-time audience into returning customers. At the same time, they also prevent your existing customers from taking their business elsewhere.

Recommended reading: 5 Best Practices for Financial Services Direct Mail

How to Search for Insurance Direct Mail Ideas on Who’s Mailing What!

Who’s Mailing What! includes full PDFs of more than 8,000+ mail pieces across four insurance subcategories — general insurance, auto insurance, health/hospitalization insurance, and life insurance. Let’s quickly go over how you can use Who’s Mailing What! filters to search for top-performing insurance ad campaigns:

1. Click on Search → Use the Industry filter to find the insurance subcategory that’s relevant to you, or browse through them all.
   
2. Want to narrow down your search even further? Use direct mail filters to sort according to location, format type, business model, or controls. For example, if you’re looking for time-tested mail pieces, you can select Controls and Grand Controls under the Control filter.

Planning a direct mail campaign for your company? Look through our best-performing mail pieces in our FREE Look Up tool.

In Conclusion

Creating, and managing truly engaging direct mail campaigns can help you rise above the clutter of a digital marketplace and improve your marketing ROI.

We hope the above pointers about direct mail marketing, and the insurance postcard samples can help you formulate a communication strategy that goes hand-in-hand with your business goals.