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Excel Impact, LLC |
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August 7, 2017 Issue |
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CEOCFO MAGAZINE |
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Q&A with Alex Matseikovich, CEO and Co-Founder of Excel Impact, LLC providing Solutions and Services that Connect Consumers with Health, Medicare and Life Insurance Products, Companies and Enrollment Options |
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Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder
Excel Impact, LLC
Interview conducted by: Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor, CEOCFO Magazine, Published – August 7, 2017
CEOCFO: Mr. Matseikovich, what was the vision when you started Excel Impact, LLC in 2013, and what is the vision today? Mr. Matseikovich: When we started the company, we wanted to solve two challenges in the insurance industry. One of them was to help consumers to navigate through the confusing waters of Health, Medicare and Life insurance products and help them make educated decisions. The second was to help insurance agencies and carriers connect with high-intent consumers through various channels such as online enrollment tools, telephone calls, text messages or email. Those two are the core of our business foundation and we build technology that provides a bridge between consumers and enrollment options.
CEOCFO: How do you help an individual make sense of all the information on various products? Mr. Matseikovich: It's pretty common in our industry to aim users at specific end goals, whether that's calling an agent or enrolling online. Our main difference is that we try to pick the best option for the consumer based on our available options, rather than forcing them into a single choice. When it was my time to buy health insurance for myself and my family, I still called an agent to go over questions, even though I’m a tech savvy guy and you would think online enrolment would be the best option for me. Our goal is to put a focus on the consumer and try to understand what they’re looking for. If you come to our website we look at a multitude of different metrics where you came from, what time of day is it, and have you been to the site before. Our passion is trying to deliver to consumers the information that they need to make an educated decision at that specific moment. We use every piece of data we gather to deliver the best experience possible for our visitors.
CEOCFO: How do people come to you? Mr. Matseikovich: We are a performance driven marketing company and our bread and butter is customer acquisition. We spend large sums of money on Google AdWords, Bing, Social Media advertising, display, and even some very old school approaches, such as direct mail. We have a fleet of tools on how we can attract and bring people to our websites. We try to stand out above the rest with exclusivity. We’ve purchased and built with branding in mind some premium web properties. For example, in the Medicare space we own the premium domain www.medigap.com. Medigap is a term that is used by the government as well as consumers very often in the Medicare space. It creates an immediate connection and reassurance to the consumer that they are in the right place. We are also in the Life insurance industry, where we focus on helping consumers to cover funeral costs. There are products such as burial insurance, also known as final expense. For that vertical we own www.burialinsurance.com, which is a very premium domain name in the space. We take an approach of not just having a website, but rather the approach of building a brand around it for each product.
CEOCFO: Are people reluctant to give information when they are going to one of your sites or do people just take it for granted that providing personal info is required? Mr. Matseikovich: That is a legitimate point! That is why we focus on providing multiple options to visitors such as enroll online, telephone call, chat, etc. to make sure that consumer takes their most comfortable route. As a matter of fact, we even have people that come to our website and request an appointment at home, because they would like someone to come in to their home and get the deal done that way. There’s wrong with that either. Our goal is to make sure that you feel as comfortable as you can on our website. To answer your question, this is where the branding part comes in. First of all, it is a premium domain and it is professionally built with a ton of information to read and learn before making any decisions. That is what we are trying to accomplish; to make you feel safe, secure, and educated before we ask you for information or we present you with enrollment options.
CEOCFO: How are carriers or insurance brokers interacting with Excel Impact? Mr. Matseikovich: That is the second part of our business. On the B2B side of our business, before we bring a partner on-board, we have a diligent exploration phase, where we try to learn about what your company is, what you do, how you operate, what your strengths and weaknesses are; to understand whether there is a match between consumers that come to our websites and to your companies process and practices. For example, we come across many agencies where their process is built around inbound calls. When a consumer inbound call is sent to their phone, they pick up, they educate them about insurance options and try to offer a policy. Now, if you send them a lead via email or post a lead into their CRM, they might not have an efficient process to get them on the phone and possibly will leave the consumer hanging waiting for agent’s call for ever and that is a concern to us since we always want to make sure that our consumers have the best possible experience when using our services.
We try to understand their strengths and what type of consumer would fit their business model best. Basically, if you are an agency and you say, “I want to buy leads from you,” or “I want to present my offering on your website,” there is going to be a lot of tests and questions asked before we can say if it is a good match for us or not and we are ready to scale, depending on your product, process and so on. At the end there is only one way to find out and that is to test and measure results.
CEOCFO: Does it surprise agencies when they find out that you do vet them in the way you do? Mr. Matseikovich: I am not sure if it’s surprises them, but they feel that our approach to new partnerships is different. We never look at agencies as a lead buyer, call buyer or traffic buyer, they’re not just a “buyer”. We always look at them as a partnership. When it comes to a partnership we believe that time needs to be invested to make it work and it has to be a good fit for both companies. Therefore, companies that have the mindset like we do understand why it is being done and also value that approach. That is because they do not want to waste time on buying leads or buying consumer calls that really do not meet their business model. We position ourselves as a boutique marketing firm and not just any lead generation firm. When we put the label “boutique”, we mean that there has to be a special connection and every partner receives special treatment. Instead of going by quantity we go by quality. We would much rather have less partners and realize our full potential with them vs. having a ton of partners and do very little with each of them.
CEOCFO: What is the business model with your partners? Mr. Matseikovich: The business model is the following. They pay us money per inbound inquiry. An inquiry could be in the form of a data lead, inbound call, warm transfer or it could be as simple as a redirect to their website from our site, assuming that that is the best experience for the consumer. Each action gets charged differently. For example, if an agency would like to buy data leads they could plug into our real time auction and bid on leads as they wish. If an agency wants to buy calls, that would be a whole different pricing model. If they are interested in getting visitors to their branded websites then we could work together on a cost per click model. Here is an example, we run campaigns with some very large insurance carriers in the space so for them the branding aspect is very important. Buying leads for such companies is not as valuable as getting visitors to their branded website where visitors get exposed to their whole suite of products. At the same time there could be an agency that does not have strong brand recognition and all they care about is qualified data leads. It really depends on how you operate and what objectives your marketing program has.
CEOCFO: Are you able to work with your clients on putting the technology in place? For example, they might like to take transferred calls, but they do not have it set up yet. Can you work with them on how to receive the information? Mr. Matseikovich: Yes. Typically, during the exploration phase we try to understand what technologies they have in place. We will talk to potential partners and identify their strengths and weaknesses. Let us say they do not have a good lead buying or lead dialing technology. We have a fleet of trusted partners that we will be happy to refer them to and help them learn how to use those technologies in the best possible way. Such an approach typically leads to a lot stronger partnership and opens new level of opportunities for both companies. We believe that it takes time and investment to make any partnership work at its full potential.
CEOCFO: What has changed in your approach over time as you have been developing your offering? What do you understand today that you might not have in the beginning? Mr. Matseikovich: We are still a very young company. It has been less than 4 years since we launched. We go through many changes on a monthly basis when it comes to marketing and/or business operations. Lately, we’ve been focusing more on the consumer experience. In the last few years, once we acquired www.medigap.com and www.burialinsurance.com, we started putting more value on the branding aspects of our business. Taking a consumer-centric approach requires us to sacrifice profits for the benefit of the consumer, in efforts to build strong brand recognition and long-term growth.
CEOCFO: Why should people pay attention to Excel Impact LLC, both from a consumer’s side and from a company’s side? Mr. Matseikovich: From the consumer’s side, there is a lot going on online, good and bad. The security of your data and the trust factor becomes more and more important these days than ever before. Paying attention to us as a consumer and using our services will give you piece of mind that your data is safe and secure, and you will get unmatched service from us or one of our trusted partners. That is really where we stand out. Our technology allows us to read consumer signals, understand what they are looking for. We take them from the moment they start thinking about buying an insurance policy to the point where they’re completely happy with the services they bought.
On the B2B side, I would pay attention because we are constantly evolving and growing with new opportunities. We are a very data-centric company and have helped many less-sophisticated partners to really understand how to visualize their data and sales process to a much more granular level in order to optimize their sales funnel. This ultimately leads to higher conversion rates, lower customer cost per acquisition, and overall better ROI. We are also rolling out new verticals and products which can further create opportunities for both new and existing partnerships.
We do have plans for future years, but they’re not set in stone yet. One option for us is to continue expanding into other insurance verticals like home insurance and auto insurance, both of which have huge potential. We’ve also discussed the possibility of focusing in on our core demographic, which is seniors. We’re helping seniors with insurance now, but we can just as easily start helping them with finances, medical devices, or anything else that might be of interest to them. |
“We position ourselves as a boutique marketing firm and not just any lead generation firm. When we put the label “boutique”, we mean that there has to be a special connection and every partner receives special treatment. Instead of going by quantity we go by quality.”- Alex Matseikovich
Excel Impact, LLC
Contact: Alex Matseikovich 305-504-8938
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Online Customer Acquisition Solutions, Excel Impact, LLC, Health Insurance Leads, Life Insurance Lead, Alex Matseikovich, Solutions and Services that Connect Consumers with Health, Medicare and Life Insurance Products, Companies and Enrollment Options, Financial Companies, Healthcare Company, Business Services Companies, acquire customers online, Online Marketing firm, consumer initiated inbound calls, IVR, qualified leads, Excel Impact, LLC Press Releases, News, Blog |
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