An Abridged History of Internet Insurance Leads

by Jeb Foster

Internet Insurance Leads: Humble Beginnings

In 1995, in a cramped condo in Castle Rock, Colorado, insurance agent Tim McTavish created a rudimentary web site and thus single-handedly ushered in the era of internet insurance leads.

For a couple of years McTavish had been

advertising to consumers in the Yellow Pages under the name Insurance Shopping Network. When the consumer would call the number listed with the ad, he or she would then be paired with a few local agents, who would in turn compete with each other to sell the prospect a policy.

While it worked quite well at first, toward the second year he noticed that ad prices and response rates seemed to be moving in opposite directions-in the wrong direction. And that's what prompted him to buy a book on HTML-hypertext mark up language-the code needed to build web sites.

McTavish, now the president of InsureMe, which sold over 10 million internet insurance leads in 2007, saw the early promise of internet insurance leads. He knew that consumers would love the convenience and efficiency of going to one web site and seconds later leaving with multiple contacts. The setup allowed their previously conflicting desires to coexist: getting covered quickly while also getting the best coverage available. Until then, obtaining the latter required thumbing through the phone and making a half a dozen phone calls, each time giving personal information so that the agent could work up a quote.

As a struggling agent himself, McTavish knew that the same setup-matching consumers and agents through an online application process-would be a hit among agents. "To effectively have serious prospects come to you-it didn't take a lot of imagination to see this thing taking off," McTavish said. "As an agent, I'd tried every marketing scheme under the sun, and none of them proved to be all that effective. Most of the time there just wasn't any response. I knew online leads would be different."

Internet Insurance Leads Hit the Big Time

InsureMe (then known as Insurance Shopping Network) wasn't alone for long. Netquote, a fellow Colorado lead generation company, came online shortly after. A couple years later the dot-com boom would lure entrepreneurs in droves. Now, if you Google internet insurance leads you'll see dozens of different companies on the first page alone.

"For while it seemed there was a new lead gen company popping up every day," said McTavish. "A few offered some real value to agents, and they've stuck around to become venerable competitors to InsureMe. A great many, though, were less than scrupulous, and they've been marginalized. Unfortunately, a lot of these fly-by-night companies have created a lot of cynicism about internet insurance leads in general."

The upside, McTavish says, is that it gave InsureMe an opportunity to carve a specific next within the growing industry.

"Over the years, InsureMe has sought to differentiate itself by offering exceptionally qualified and highly targeted leads." To that end, InsureMe offered an ever-wider range of filtering and geo-targeting options, allowing agents to pinpoint their ideal market- down to body mass index (a popular filter for health agents) to credit history (a popular filter for all agents). Most recently, the company has introduced the 'max times matched' option, which allows agents to choose the number of times a lead is "matched" to other agents.

"We've also built an incredible customer service team that is dedicated to helping our agents thrive," said McTavish, adding that agent support is the largest department in the 60-person company. "In a way, we've become a service company that happens to sell insurance leads."

What's Next for Internet Insurance Leads?

"There is so much competition [among lead generators] now, and while that makes it harder for us, it helps us to grow and avoid complacency," said McTavish. "And increased competition, needless to say, is a great thing for agents."