Exclusivefocus Spring 2013 - National Association of Professional ...

challenge is to identify homeowners in
specific Zip Codes whose policies are
coming up for renewal based on the anniversay
date of their home purchase. To
find the Zip Codes that may contain IS
friendly prospects, keep a log of the bestscoring
prospects from your saved quotes
file and from policies you’ve already written.
Once you’ve done that, it’s time to
launch a monthly direct mail campaign
targeting your intended audience. Just
think how powerful this could be if you
were to deliver a competive quote into
your prosepects’ hands a week before
they received the renewal premium from
their current carrier.
The good news is that the information
you need for this type of targeted mailing
list is most likely available. Many agents
are familiar with their county assessment
office, where properties are officially recorded
for tax purposes. These offices
generally make this information available
to the public online.
What many agents may not be familiar
with is another county office that records
data specific to deeds and mortgages.
Whereas the assessment office records
building ownership and characteristics,
the recorder of deeds office records information
detailing when deeds were transferred
and when mortgages were issued.
Oftentimes, the assessment office will
list the date of a property’s sale as the last
date the mortgage was refinanced, presumably
because when refinancing, an
owner must go through a process similar
to that of a new property purchase.
Now this is where the boys get seperated
from the men. If an agent doesn’t
dig for more information and mistakes
the re-fi dates for original purchase dates,
he will likely have expended a lot of effort
for meager results. The information
you want is the month and year when the
owner first bought the property, not the
date the mortgage was last refinanced.
This is because the original purchase
date will likely be the best indicator of
the date the homeowner policy will renew.
The recorder of deeds office will allow
you to search for deeds or mortgages
specifically. And since the issuance of a
new mortgage doesn’t transfer the deed,
you are able to get the true purchase date
rather than a refinance date.
What the county recorder of deeds office
makes available online varies from
county to county and some are easier to
search than others. If your county’s records
are not search-friendly, there are
other ways to get the information you
need, but it may require the services of a
knowledgeable consultant to “scrape” the
pertinent data from their system. Sometimes,
the data from the recorder’s office
will have to be combined with data from
the assessment office in order to get the
information you need. This may seem
like a lot of trouble and expense, but
that’s actually a good thing because your
fellow agents are not likely to follow suit,
leaving you with a great source of leads
and little or no competition.
Now instead of randomly sending direct
mail to the masses, you can target
your solicitations to prospects that have
real potential and you can time your
mailings to land in their mailboxes when
they are most likely to act.
When I was an agent and I used some
of these methods to generate targeted
mailing lists, there were months when I
would see response rates as high as 10%
to 12%. And because I was very specific
in my targeting, I was able to close a high
percentage of those prospects. This was
because I was selective with my mailings,
which were all based on how competitive
my products were in each market. If you
know where your rates are competitive
and where they’re not, you’ll save a lot of
marketing dollars and wheel-spinning.
Early on in my career, I learned that
nothing worthwhile comes easy. It’s the
same with developing and executing your
marketing efforts. In my case, the amount
of time I spent obtaining and refining my
targeted prospect list exceeded the time I
spent in preparing the mail piece, which
included things like printing, signing, and
stuffing envelopes. You will know that you
are truly creating a targeted list when you
find this to be the case.
When it comes to targeted direct mail,
there are two components of equal importance.
What we’ve discussed so far is the
first component, which is selecting a very
specific audience. The second is getting your
audience to open and read your correspondence.
Having the perfect lead list is fruitless
if 90% of your prospects throw your mail
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