Telemarketing Services

Insurance telemarketing has been a staple part of the telemarketing services industry for decades. However, in order to actually sell insurance over the phone, telemarketing services agents need to have insurance licenses. There are essentially two different types of telemarketing agents in the insurance world-- a Tier 1 (licensed) and a Tier 2 (unlicensed) agent.

 

In the beginning, many telemarketing firms would simply generate leads for insurance agents. While this is still the case, additional telemarketing services providers have taken this practice a step further by actually offering the insurance sales over the phone, eliminating the need for an agent.

Telemarketing agents are actually licensed at the telemarketing service provider’s facility and trained to make the insurance sale right over the phone. Although leads can still be sent to agents, the industry has managed to move to more successful methods.

 

Insurance telemarketing also works well in conjunction with credit and debit cards. For example, a person can get a certain credit card and in a few weeks expect to receive a telemarketing call from a telemarketing services provider. That agent will be a Tier 2 telemarketing agent and without a license, however, will essentially sell the insurance with their telemarketing pitch. Once the customer has agreed to parts of the insurance the telemarketing agent will then “Live Transfer” the telemarketing call to another agent in house or in another facility that is a Tier 1 or licensed telemarketing agent. The interesting thing to note here is that the Tier 2 agent was allowed to call the customer because of an existing business relationship as a result of the debit card.

 

Many firms that are looking to outsource their telemarketing activities will do so by having a telemarketing firm with only Tier 2 telemarketing agents do the bulk of the calling or the initial interest telemarketing until their find a customer that would like to sign up for the insurance program. Paying a Tier 1 telemarketing services firm can be an extremely cost effective way to ensure telemarketing success.

 

In the '90s, telemarketing for insurance was very popular. However, the Do Not Call rules have significantly affected the insurance telemarketing industry and most of the telemarketing services for the industry, which were based on cold calls, have now been changed over to telemarketing services that are based on existing business relationships. This means that in order to make a telemarketing call the telemarketing services provider has to be able to prove the customer has purchased a product from the telemarketing client in the past 18 months.

 

Another way to avoid any problems with the Do Not Call list involves the 90 day business inquiry exemption where individuals who have requested information can be contacted 90 days after they made an inquiry. This allows for a growing number of Internet lead-based telemarketing programs, or telemarketing programs where the inbound telemarketing center received a call from a customer who has not purchased a policy, to be called back within 90 days of their call. Although the lead pool for these programs are much smaller, they do yield some very profitable telemarketing results.

 

According to the DMA and a study published by them, insurance telemarketing reached nearly $80 billion in revenue during 2006. This ever growing revenue means that telemarketing and insurance telemarketing can be very successful tools in direct marketing for insurance.