Case Study · Insurance

Cutting cost-per-lead 49% with a referral program.

A New Jersey P&C agency built a mutual-referral channel with loan officers, replacing aggregator leads with exclusive prospects tied to real buying intent.

Industry
Insurance (P&C)
Role
Strategy lead
Services
Strategy, Partnerships
Insurance Strategy lead
−49%
Reduction in average cost per lead across the agency.
The challenge

Aggregator leads were getting pricier and weren't exclusive.

The agency was buying nearly all of its new business prospect from lead aggregators. Each lead was resold to multiple other agencies, all racing to call first and undercut on price, and the cost was creeping up year over year.

What the agency actually wanted was exclusive leads tied to real buying intent. People who were genuinely about to buy a home, not people filling out a price comparison form. That kind of lead doesn't come from aggregators. It comes from the conversations happening one step earlier in the buying process.

The approach

Build a referral exchange with loan officers.

Most people buy home insurance at the same time they're getting a mortgage, which made loan officers the natural channel to partner with. We built a referral exchange program across New Jersey, encouraging loan officers to refer their active clients to our agency for home insurance quotes.

I onboarded loan officers directly into the program and helped manage their relationships with our sales team as they ramped up.

The results

Inbound that didn't depend on ad spend.

20+
Loan officers enrolled across New Jersey.
−49%
Reduction in average cost per lead across the agency.
$85K
New business premium generated from the referral channel in year one.
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