When insurance companies are looking to partner with a direct marketing agency, it’s important to ask the right questions to ensure the agency can meet your unique needs. With a complex and highly regulated industry, insurance providers need to work with marketing experts who understand both the challenges and opportunities they face.

To that end, here are five essential questions every insurance company should ask before hiring a direct marketing agency.

1. How much experience do you have working with insurance companies specifically?

Not every marketing agency is equipped to handle the specific demands of insurance companies. The industry is unique, requiring a thorough understanding of regulatory compliance, customer segmentation, and the importance of data security. This means you should look for an agency that has proven experience in the insurance sector.

Whether you’re launching a new product or expanding into a new market segment, you need an agency with a deep understanding of how to reach and engage insurance customers. Our 55 years’ worth of insurance-specific data doesn’t just aid in testing. It also informs our strategies, enhances our creative approach, and helps us maintain compliance for you.

2. What kind of return on investment (ROI) have you delivered for past insurance clients?

Results matter, and the ROI an agency delivers is a key indicator of their effectiveness. Before you sign a contract, ask about specific outcomes they’ve achieved for their clients. What response rates have they seen in their direct mail or digital campaigns? How have they helped other clients improve customer acquisition, retention, or cross-selling?

Ask for case study examples from other insurance companies who have used an agency’s services to gauge their results against your own goals. When asking for examples, it’s also good to make sure the type and size of company matches as closely as possible with your own.

3. How do you tailor campaigns to different insurance products or demographics?

No two insurance products are the same, and neither are their target audiences. Effective direct marketing campaigns need to be highly tailored—both in terms of the product being promoted and the specific demographic being targeted.

At FM Engage, we apply multivariate testing to fine-tune marketing strategies. Our FaQtor Test allows us to simultaneously evaluate multiple variables like creative elements, offers, and target lists, ensuring that campaigns are optimized for each unique audience.

This methodology helps avoid the limitations of traditional A/B testing and enables us to quickly identify the best-performing elements. We’ve found that data-driven personalization is key to reaching today’s insurance customers.

4. How do you ensure the accuracy and quality of the data used in insurance marketing campaigns?

Data is the backbone of any successful marketing campaign, especially in the insurance industry. From selecting the right prospects to personalizing offers, the accuracy and quality of the data used in a campaign can make or break its success. A top-tier direct marketing agency should be transparent about how they source and validate their data.

At FM Engage, we rigorously test and refine data models to ensure only the most promising prospects are targeted. We pull from diverse data sets that include demographics, credit personas, vehicle transactions, insurance purchases, and life stage clusters, all of which help us find winning strategies faster and more effectively.

Ask for a rundown of the tools and processes an agency uses when collecting, storing, and collating data. Here are some examples of specific questions to ask:  

• What is the testing process to improve performance over time?
• Does the agency work with a third-party provider to ensure compliance with data privacy laws?
• How often is customer data updated? How about performance data?
• What level of intervention is required from your internal teams?

5. How do you collaborate with internal marketing teams or other external partners? 

Partnerships are key when running a successful direct marketing campaign. An agency should not work in isolation; instead, they should collaborate closely with your internal marketing teams and any other external partners you’re working with, such as digital marketing firms or CRM providers.

Our approach involves continually testing marketing across multiple touchpoints—from direct mail to digital—ensuring that every channel works together to maximize campaign performance. We work hand-in-hand with our clients to develop campaigns that align with their overall marketing objectives, ensuring that messaging is consistent and effective across every platform. 

Finding the right insurance marketing fit for you

Before hiring a direct marketing agency, insurance companies should dig deeper than surface-level promises. Understanding the agency’s experience with insurance, its ROI track record, how it personalizes campaigns, its data accuracy methods, and how well it collaborates can make the difference between a successful partnership and a costly mistake.

Looking for a marketing partner to help test and optimize your campaigns?

Learn more about how FM Engage can help through our incubator lab and multivariate testing approach. Visit FM Engage’s page on marketing testing to discover how we can improve your marketing effectiveness from start to finish. Or better yet, reach out to us to have your questions answered directly.