Reaching Non-Owners: All About The Message

BOSTON – Assume that John is a mid-career worker who does not own individual life insurance. Could a marketing message from a life insurance company tweak his interest enough to spur John to look into buying coverage?

That outcome is definitely possible, according to behavioral research that LIMRA has been conducting.

If phrased in certain ways, messages that carriers deliver about life insurance can sway non-owners to take such a step, according to Jennifer Douglas, an associate research director at LIMRA.

Douglas discussed some highlights from the research with InsuranceNewsNet in advance of a workshop she is leading today on the subject. She is speaking here at a pre-conference session before LIMRA’s annual meeting.

Finding the message that works

The goal of LIMRA’s research was to help marketers determine what life insurance messages most resonate with owners and non-owners. This often happens at the subconscious level, Douglas pointed out, but the LIMRA study found messaging does impact economic behavior.

Though aimed at mass marketers, the findings may provide food for thought for individual practitioners too, since many advisors tie their own messages about life insurance into the messaging of their carriers.

A key point is that “owners” (people who already own life insurance) differ from “non-owners” in their likelihood to buy, Douglas said.

The industry is trying to get more non-owners to become interested enough in life insurance to prompt them to take an action, she said. For this reason, carriers are becoming more interested in identifying messages that non-owners will notice.

“In our first ownership study in 1960,” Douglas said, “70 percent of adults owned life insurance and they paid more for it (than today’s lower rates) because they believed in it.” But by the time of LIMRA’s last ownership study, in 2010, only 59 percent of Americans were owners. “The industry is trying to figure out why” the decline has occurred and how to turn that around, she said.

The study was done in two phases. The first surveyed 2,000 consumers (including owners). The second phase surveyed 1,900 non-owners.

The researchers found that “social norming” messages do garner interest among non-owners. Social norming refers to referencing the prevailing customs or ideas of targeted population segments.

An example is a statement that asks people to agree or disagree with the statement that “life insurance is for people like me.” The “like me” component often prompts people to think about the social norms of groups to which they belong or with which they may identify.

Among certain demographic groups — or “prime groups,” as researchers call them — social norming messages can be of sufficient interest to stimulate a response, Douglas said. Moreover, these expressions of interest can be greater than if the prime groups only see a “control” message.

A control message is one that delivered to a broad audience and that increases overall likelihood to buy. For the life insurance industry, typical control messages are statements about using life insurance to build financial security, protect the family, replace lost income, pay final expenses and pay off a mortgage.

The life insurance control messages may be dry, “but they work,” Douglas said, so she believes carriers should keep using them.

However, to attract more non-owners, life insurance marketers might want to weave in social norming messages too. The researchers found that when this approach is used, the responses from non-owners “go above and beyond” the responses received when the non-owners see only the control message, Douglas said.

When social norming message work

In general, Douglas said, social norming messages can “work with” (draw interest from) all consumers. This includes singles, people without children, men, lower income individuals, all age groups and —important for life insurers — for non-owners of individual life insurance.

However, she added, “The marketing department will need to think this out, to find language and phrases that address social norms in their own words.”

However, she added, “The marketing department will need to think this out, to find language and phrases that address social norms in their own words.”

Many insurance company websites today emphasize how quick and easy it is to buy life insurance, Douglas noted. They say things like, “You can buy online in less than 10 minutes” or “No blood work required.”

That’s a mistake, she said. “Don’t tell them right out of the box that it is easy to buy, because that devalues it in the eyes of the customer. But don’t stop pointing it out, either. What’s important is, the first message should tell (website visitors) what will attract their interest. For example: People like you have life insurance.”

But certain messages work for some prime groups but not for others, Douglas cautioned. For instance, for married people in a prime group, “Get a deal” and “Buy now and save x percent” are messages that work. So does “Buy now because you may be uninsurable later.”

But while “telling women that ‘your husband should get life insurance for you’ works for women, it doesn’t work with men.”

InsuranceNewsNet Editor-at-Large Linda Koco, MBA, specializes in life insurance, annuities and income planning. Linda can be reached at linda.koco@innfeedback.com.

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