The 1996 movie ‘Scream’ taught us one thing: Don’t answer the phone! And much like the characters of that movie, so to insurers should heed this advice when engaging with Millennials.

Stereotype of a Millennial Vs a Real Millennial:

The popular stereotype of a millennial, a young-entitled-vegan-socialist with no money or job is crude and out of date.

Millennials were born between 1980 and 1995, making the oldest among them turning 40 this year. They have jobs, money to buy cars and houses, but should not be assumed to follow the buying patterns of the older generations as they themselves age.

What is true is that they generally have different values, aspirations and preferences to the older Gen X and Baby Boomer cohorts. While one can debate (endlessly) these differences, it’s crucial for anyone who wants to sell to them to understand their customer’s needs.

Following on from Millennials, and often as strange to the Millennial cohort as to the older demographics are Gen Zers; Born between 1996 and 2010 (post-2010 are named Gen Alpha), The oldest among these will turn 24 this year. They are your interns and first hires. They have grown up digitally native, mobile-first and don’t use Facebook.

The LinkedIn influencer Teo Pham makes a great case for how to see Millennials and Gen Zers as potential customers and what’s needed to sell to them.

So How do we sell them Insurance?

First, what NOT to do:

We need to understand and respect their preferences, even if you don’t understand the why of their motivations or believe it’s inefficient or silly.

Most importantly: These generations HATE having to book an appointment to see a human or even make a phone call.

“Millennials may live on their smartphones, but they despise using those devices to do the very thing they were first invented for — to actually talk (verbally) with other people.” [2]

Millennials and Gen Z want an intuitive, mobile-only process to purchase. They don’t want to see or speak to anyone, it should all be app-based and a few easy-to-understand clicks. They want to buy on their phone, from the sofa, in the evening. If anything hinders that – like needing to set appointments, call an info number between certain-times, or having to wait, these are all death-knells to selling to these age brackets.

Contrast this with older generations, who prefer to see or speak to a real person to help and guide them when purchasing, especially complex products like insurance.

Younger generations largely have a form of social anxiety that didn’t exist with the previous age groups. It is crucial to understand that this impacts their buying decision. Older sales managers: scoff at this at your peril.

A recent survey of 1200 Millennials showed that:

“81% of respondents also acknowledged that they often feel anxious about talking on the phone. Indeed, that they sometimes have to work up the courage to do so.” [3]

This trend is not just in the US, and smarter companies are not only understanding this, but getting in on the joke. British Telecom, the company derived from the UK’s national telephone monopoly, recently sponsored an article in one of the UK’s leading newspapers, with an anecdote:

“Nowadays, a phone call is my idea of a sick joke. Since moving out of the family abode and living in London I recoil in horror if my mum tries to ring me on the phone.
I can only assume that someone in the family has died. She knows now the importance of preceding any phone call with a text, explaining that A) no one has died and B) she just wanted to talk on the phone because it’s “nice”.” [4]

Our survey shows that beyond social anxiety, Millennials see making phone calls as time-consuming:

Listening to voicemail too is considered slow and inefficient. A recent NPR article interviewee sums it up:

““When it comes to voice mail, they're just over it," says Jane Buckingham, a trend analyst at Trendera.

Kidd's main problem with voice mail is that it's time-consuming, and she's tired of listening to butt-dials and rambling messages. If someone really wants to get hold of her, there are lots of ways to do it, she says.

"I guess I usually just assume that it's probably not that important if you didn't text me, and you didn't send me a message on Facebook," Kidd says.”” [5]

Interestingly, the interviewee, as an older Millennial, uses Facebook Messenger, something thought of as archaic to the Gen Zs, showing the differences between these generations exist also.

Some views from this generation even go as far as to consider a phone call bordering on rude.

“But if you call someone, they need to respond right now on your time. It’s just inconsiderate.” (6) Says Hillel Fuld of Inc.

What can WE do

So if we can’t sell insurance to millennials the traditional ways, then what can we do? Well, we can have an easy to use, a quick and automatic app that can take only the most needed information, quote instantly and bind the policy straight away. Anything less and watch your traffic fall precipitously.

Now I’ve built it, will they come?

Something key to success in the digital marketplace is often over-looked. Just because you have spent time, money and effort on your app, will anyone actually come to use it? How do you drive traffic to download the app, and then to continuously use it?

There are a host of brute-force methods, spending money to advertise in the more traditional manner (be it on/offline), or paying for pay-per-install on other apps or games – even paying for the user of a mobile game to get in-game rewards for downloading your app.

What we @LVLFi propose though is something better for everyone. Behavioural Economics is a known scientific field. Research has shown that regardless of industry, using incentives and prizes to offer your customer for their engagement is a far more effective way to drive them to your desired goals than using spam.

Our approach is to offer customizable games and gaming mechanics to make engagement more fun for the user. This is particularly useful in insurance, often thought of as ‘boring’ and complex by those outside our industry. If we can make that engagement between an insurer and insured more fun and offer prizes for doing so, we can change the paradigm of what people think of when engaging with their insurer. No more need for agents to schmooze on the phone or the golf course, but instead give insurers the ability to reach tens or hundreds of thousands or more of their insured offering them something that rewards them for their participation.

We use a mix of games, raffles with real-world prizes and gaming mechanics to entice busy people of all ages to open their insurer’s app, and it has benefits; we increased step count for a health insurer 19%:

But can I buy it drunk?

Drunk Shopping is a $45Bn a year industry [7]. Should this become the new litmus test for sales? Should we strive to make an app so easy-to-use, so compelling, that we can convince drunk people to open it, interact and buy policies? I say it as a joke, but is there some validity to this? If Lemonade can make purchasing home insurance so quick and easy that a drunk person could do it, why should we all not strive for our mass-market products to be that convenient?

Recap:

The focus of our article is this: One needs to employ different methods to sell to different age groups. We can’t bracket a billion or so people universally together, but we can see trends emerge and best practices to sell by age cohort. The way we have sold insurance to Baby Boomers and Gen X – via agents and phone calls doesn’t apply to Millennials and more so to the emerging Gen Z consumer group. One needs well thought out, attractive apps that are incredibly simple and intuitive to use and offer something positive to the consumer to keep them returning.