Are car insurance comparison Websites any good?
According to UK watcdog consumer associations, price compariso
n websites are failing to provide the cheapest quotes for car insurance and car loans in the UK.
Major comparison website that offer search facilities for car insurance and car loans are not all equal with search criteria varying significantly from car comparison website to website.
The similar website services such as comparethemarket.com, confuse.com, tescocompare.com or moneysupermarket.com will give very different resultsfor similar search queries for car insurance, car loans and other financial services.
When taking the largest car loans and car insurance comparison engines we can see find the following differences:
A search on moneysupermarket.com for the car loans with the lowest standard rate of interest came up with one at 6.8%. Yet on gocompare.com the best figure given was12.9%.
The magazine found that the price of basic car insurance varied by as much as £120. Gocompare.com gave a figure of £251 for one search while confused.com offered £371.
On identical policy comparisons for car insurance the magazine found that costs of loans varied greatly from £300 on gocompare.com, £232 on moneysupermarket.com and £253 on confused.com.
Which? said that consumers would do better to visit all three sites, providing they could cope with the extra information.
On explanation for the difference in results for both car insurance quotes and car loans comes from the diversity of customer information that is required by the comparison search websites. Because the questions tick a variety of different boxes, the returned quotes can vary significantly from car loan comparison website to website.
It can be very confusing to compare all three major websites such as gocompare.com, moneysupermarket.com and confused.com fro the same financial products and car insurance.
Customers also need to remember that the cheapest car policy or the cheapest, lowest interest rate for car loans does not mean that they are getting the better deal, the lowest price but especially the best policy adapated to their needs.
Al the more certain insurance and loan companies refuse to be included in the index of car comparison websites such as Directline.com who pride themselves as only operating direct.
Spotit.co.uk Spot the Ball is now live!
Finally!…. Spotit.co.uk is live!
Well you can’t say it didn’t take long enough, but we made it… We have just finished our live test spot the ball competitions on Spotit and we are now going to be opening up our first competitions.
So what competitions can you expect?
Well at Spotit we want to make sure that competitions don’t linger around for long… open fast sell the entries fast and get those winners. So we will be starting with smaller competitions that can turn over quickly so players don’t have to wait long for the competition winners to be determined.
The first competitions will be for cool electronics and gadgets, whether it be a custom designed Gold plated iPhone or gold plated Touch with your initials, or the winner can select the worlds thinnest LCD TV, the LG Scarlet, or the Macbook Air… Whatever the prizes I am sure you will love them, and as a competition winner on Spotit.co.uk you can pick your prize from a broad selection.
What online Spotit competitions will follow?
Next we will open up the travel competitions, first with smaller week end breaks in the sunny parts of Europe, you know, beach side in Portugal or Spain in a cool boutique hotel for a couple of nights. Then, in the heart of winter, it the great “Win a luxury Caribbean holiday in Barbados”, we like that one, its just what the doctor ordered to beat the crappy British winter months. Finally we will launch our first car competitions together with the help of Prestige Auto Select for some cool super mini cars, the car competition winner will get his insurance needs taken care of as well as some petrol money, you gotta love that…
A couple of surprises to come!
Finally, and we don’t want to spoil it, we are putting together some more insane and complex competitions, a bit off the beaten path… you will just have to check the website for updates… But I promise you some of them you will love by necessity, others, well they are every boys dream…
Come back soon so you don’t miss out…
Should you buy customer leads?
Is buying customer leads worth the money?
Why spend time and money acquiring customers when you could simply buy them?
Why spend marketing budget when you can buy an opt in list of users?
Well if it is too simple it won’t work… but don’t take my word for it… Yes its true, I bought lists, did deals to buy opt in users, I won’t work, or at least not enough to give you a better ROI then say… intelligent marketing and customer acquisition…
How do I know… I’ve done it… and have just done it again… and it still doesn’t work.
Here is a bit of a theory as to why.
The simple way that customers in these opt in list are acquired. They are forced down a path where opt-ins and questionnaires galore are the steps they take to get to where ever they are going. Where are they going? these opt-in customers are following the “Free road”, somewhere at the start someone promised something for free… a free subscription, free ebook, free competition entry, win this for free, enter for free, get a crappy gift for free…
The key is this: People rarely opt in for something they are not specifically looking for… unless they are incentivized… with something free.
Next reason why these leads are… weak.
The leads that are generated through this carrot method will rarely ever respond to your emails. Why? Because the won’t read them. These people are well organized, with dedicated email accounts for all the messages they will receive from all the sign ups and opt in they had to do in order to receive the “Free” carrot.
Leads made of compaholics
In many circles these leads are generated by compaholics. A compaholic is someone how loves entering the gazzzilions of free prize draws and competitions. They will accepte all forms of conditions, accept emails, calls mail, as long as they get entered into prizes draws, no matter how remote the chance of winning something, anything, for free.
This is the model for 95% of lead generation, something for nothing. Its for this reason that the leads you buy will rarely convert to a registration, and almost never turn into a sale.
Don’t believe the lead hype.
So no matter what the lead generation agency tells you, no matter how many times they say, “We are different, we are better, our leads are qualified, etc, etc” the leads will suck. Simple. For the same budget there are tons of other marketing activities you could do with better ROI.
Better yet, save the money and reward your exiting customers, use your existing customers to refer new customers. Its a double beneficial whammy… but forget those leads.
Spotit.co.uk Completes development changes
Spotit.co.uk improves security and transaction engine
Spotit.co.uk before even its planned launch has added an additional layer of commerce security and extended its testing phase. A new judging process process and auditing process to determine the competition winners has been added.
” the UK competition laws are fairly explicit”, explains Ivan Imhoff, Founder of Spotit.co.uk, “Customers compete against a panel of judges… so it is only normal that Spotit.co.uk be the fist UK competition website to determine the winners by pitting them against multiple football referees for each and evey single competition ”.
It’s not enough to worry about the technical security, the authenticity and security of how winners are determined is key to trust and confidence. By implementing an encrypted and secure judges application, audited by independent Solicitors no one on the planet knows the winning coordinates until the competition closes.
It is the implementation of these technical and security improvements and upgrades that have delayed us in launching. But in the end it will be worth the additional trust and confidence customers will come to expect.
What are the first competitions?
Inaugural September Spotit.co.uk competitions
What kind of Spot the ball competitions can you expect to see in September?
Spotit.co.uk will start small and grow fast. In September we are launching with a couple of great little competitions:
- Win 2 night luxury breaks in Venice, Rome, Greece or Portugal.
- Win an Ipod Touch+ Macbook
- Win a new Samsung Series 6 40 inch LCD TV
- Win both a Digital 5.1 home cinema and a Sony PS3
That’s for the smaller competitions… but they will all have a maximum number of entries of only 125.
Yep, that’s right, only 125 competition entries. Spotit.co.uk is the first UK online competitions that cap the competitions to very low amounts of entries. We like to call spotit.co.uk competitions, “Realistic competitions”… where winners are a bit more frequent, then anything else you will find.
The bigger Spotit competitions will be coming in October, with the new Alpha Romeo MiTo car competition, the Luxury Jamaican Holiday week for two worth over £5,000 , but the biggest surprise is yet to come … so wait for it at a newspaper near you or visit Spotit.co.uk to see upcoming competitions.
