With AEP season having come to a close recently, we thought we’d take a look back at some of the insurance lead trends we saw in this past year’s Open Enrollment. Some were new and unique to this year, a huge spike in Med Advantage interest/demand, and some were extensions of what we have seen in the past. Overall interest and adoption continue to grow and third-party marketers have stepped into the void created when the government reduced its ad spends promoting AEP. That focus from marketing companies has really come in two areas: the purchasing of insurance leads prior to and during the early part of the open periods, and an increase in pay per call activity during the entire period. Given those two overarching trends here what we saw this year.
Insurance Lead & Call Trends
- Demand for data at call centers and with agents writing their own policies grew in all areas. The focus here has shifted to automation and innovation and away from high-cost individual insurance leads.
- Lead demand was heaviest in the 30 days before the start of AEP and during the first 14 days of each period.
- Pay Per Call demand started to ramp up 7 days before the start of each period and continued through the last day.
- As noted above we saw a huge increase in demand for Medicare Advantage leads and calls this year.
- Demand for non-search traffic sources continues to grow as search volume plateau’s and CPCs continue to grow.
- Email once a reliable contributor of high-quality insurance lead volume is dwindling as users become more discerning.
All-in-all Open enrollment in 2020 continued to grow for us and the trends noted above continue to reinforce our belief that innovation and product will drive the market. Automation is going to allow companies to buy more and more efficiently on the lead front. Innovation will drive new ways to improve quality and increase call volume. Demand for insurance click traffic from non-search sources like Clicks to Convert will continue to expand into next year. What will be interesting to see is what new trends like the Medicare Advantage lead demand explosion will occur during the 2021 AEP season.
