Astonish Results or Squid

[JayRob]

Astonish Results advertises every where, but it is quite pricey for a small agency. They have a stripped down version called Squid. Does anyone have an opinion on either of these products. I can't seem to find out what the difference is.

[sankykid]

Does anyone know roughly how much it costs to implement and maintain an Astonish Results product?

[Rochambeau]

Does anyone know roughly how much it costs to implement and maintain an Astonish Results product?

When I looked at Squid, their lowest price (with a 36 month commitment ), was $595/mo for their bare bones plan (website, lead management interface, super simple organic SEO and 1,000 e-mail sends). That's a contract commitment in excess of $20,000 though. Their high end package is like $1,500 with a 36 month committment (a commitment in excess of $50,000). You can get smaller commitment lengths, but the prices are higher per month.

After going though their presentation, the impression I got was that they seemed, like a squid, slimy. All slick and hyper-obsessed with throwing as many buzzwords as possible into the presentation.

With no agency management system integration, it's basically lead generation and management, nothing you can't do yourself with a management system, Constant Contact and a web site vendor, usually for a lot less money.

Astonish is much more expensive than Squid. I used to have the numbers but have long since thrown them out.

There is another thread on the subject from a couple of years ago, but it's a tough read as it deteriorated into a flame war.

[MarketMaker]

Neither. Unless, of course you are willing to mortgage your house.

Astonish makes you pay five years of service up-front, sight unseen. Their price = $2,750/month + $10,000 in upfront development fees. (They claim this is a $250/month discount because you are paying for five years, but you have no other choices.) If you don't have the $175,000 in liquid cash, they can arrange for you to "lease" the service through a third party.

You need to consider the following: What if the service doesn't live up to your expectation? What if the company doesn't keep up with the latest in marketing technology? What if the company goes out of business while I am still paying the lease? What if an opportunity arises where I want to sell or merge my agency, and the new owner/partner isn't interested in the service, can I cancel it? What about the remaining balance on the note that has already been paid in its entirety in advance to Astonish?

They almost refuse to sell you Squid, prefering to sell you the full-blown, pay up-front service.

Shop around, there are other worthy services that are less expensive, and don't require you to leverage your future. George Norhaus - an insurance name marketing has a program called Agencies Online that might be worth looking into.

[d's insurance store]

I think Astonish delivers on what they promise, the question I continue to have is whether the markplace is ready for what Astonish will give the agency. I continue to study, but have yet to buy into the concept that a retail, general purpose Independent Insurance Agency can contribute to the daily diologue through social media in a meaningful way that actually has Twitter and Facebook followers feeling that the content is worthwhile to the point of feeling connected with the agency.

My opinion dramatically changes when I think about niche agency products...you offer a narrowly defined product for a specific industry or niche, or a number of categories...but you present as the true expert on insuring one business category that is large enough to support your efforts. Then, in a focused, narrow way, communicating to interested parties content that is truly relivent and goes way beyond 'buckle your seatbelts' and 'raise your deductible' kinds of transmissions is geared to a targeted audience that really appreciates the content.

I have spent time and money on SEO for my general lines retail agency with pathetic results and I don't think signing up with Astonish for a scattershot, all product offering can pay many dividends, but that's my opinion and my view through my windows. I have yet to be convinced that the time and money investment from Astonish, or Michael Jans or any other guru can work for the small to mid sized retail agency that just wants to sell personal lines and small commercial lines to a general, appreciative population, that wants access to the agency when they need it, but otherwise just wants fair and predictable rates, coverage and service and really doesn't want daily or weekly communication about nebulous, generalized insurance issues.

[MarketMaker]

I think I should clarify that Astonish, once you are in, you can never cancel the contract. You have to take the five years, and even if you sell your agency or go out of business, unless you claim bankruptcy, you are on the hook to pay the five year note.

Some things to consider. A recent study showed that 37 million auto insurance quotes were made via the internet, and out of that number, only 2.9 million converted to sold business. Another study showed that 37% of those who inquire about insurance do so with a referral from a friend, colleague or acquaintance, vs. 34% who study on the web. Direct-writer share of the personal lines marketplace is less than 15%, up only slightly in 10 years from the 12% in 1991 - when virtually no one was quoting on the web.

Allstate recently announced that they purchased purchased Esurance AND Answer Financial. They paid $1 Billion, out of that $300,000 was for tangible value of both companies. What they don't say is how much the division of premium volume is between the entities, but if you take it as a whole, were are talking $300 million for both entity's customers, and the other tangibles such as locations, leases, office spaces, etc. It also stated that Esurance is the third-largest "quoter" of insurance in the marketplace. When you consider what the advertising budget must be, and to be the third-largest QUOTER of insurance in the marketplace, and after all of the years of flooding the market with ads all they have been able to translate is less than $300 in premiums? There are independent agents with far more premium volume than that, and it is small volume for even a single regional carrier's personal lines book, vs. a nationally advertised insurer.

What one can conclude from this information is that still the best lead generator is word-of-mouth, that people still seek an agent, and that if you have leads being driven to you via the internet, that you will be spending much of your time QUOTING but not selling the typical "GEICO" shopper, who by nature has no loyalty to you anyway.

[d's insurance store]

I easily concede the point that much of the personal lines shopping has gravitated to the web and the majority of those web quotes involve esurance, GEICO and Progressive. It doesn't leave much for everybody else. The figures that I've seen indicate the rest of us are all sharing only about 28% of the total web quote universe...and that's all of us who are not the big three.

OK, so as an agency you've got a website in a mid sized community where there's lots of competition. A prospect decides to shop for a personal lines, mono line auto policy and enters Google, typing in 'insurance quote' or 'low cost car insurance' or 'cheap insurance'. What comes up are about 7 million hits, both paid and organic SEO sites, all screaming 'LOW RATES', 'GREAT, FAST SERVICE', 'SAFE, STRONG, SECURE', 'CHEAP, CHEAP, CHEAP', and so on. Some of those paid sites are paying (at least in California, a heavy populated driving state) upwards of $60 per CLICK...yes, that's per click...just for the priviledge of looking at your web page. Pretty much, all of the sites look the same, requiring some proactive input from the viewer...either a phone call or filling in the blanks on a normal quote form for each car and driver.

Now, for anyone reading here...just what is Astonish or Jans or anyone else selling these fomula kits for many thousands of dollars going to do for the generalist agency to keep those eyeballs on the webpage and not scurry off to another web site listed on the first page of the search results? Specialize in Gas Stations? Auto Repair facilities? T-shirt manufacturers? Hot Dog vendors? Well, with that kind of niche you can tailor your web page to target just that audience and I venture to say the pay per click cost is far less for specific search terms, and the SEO can be managed to pick up on that specific searching audience. Then your web page offers scads of free content information generic to that targeted business. You're the expert, you own that niche. It works. But a generalist agency? I don't think so because you're bidding with the big boys. Is it really worth $60 for one quick look-see without any interaction? You be the judge.

[abenoy]

Does anyone have some suggestions for a solution that's geared more toward a smaller agency? Also, what's your preferred CRM system? I deal more in health and life than P&C.

Thanks in advance.

[agencyowner123]

My advice, as an Astonish client of 2+ years, is to run like hell when these guys come calling. Their presentation is exactly what your gut is telling you, so trust your gut, and not your fear that you're being "left behind" in teh digital age. Read the other pasts in this thread about what agencies really ought to be doing, and ask yourself if you clietns really want to dialogue with you on Facebook. Really? A well-written blog establishes your expertise and can provide you with SEO if you know a few things. Most systems, AMS or Applied, can provide you with very good email marketing campaigns.

Astonish's system is garbage, their support is awful and they know squat about insurance. Don't buy into the rock n roll nonsense. Yes, we need to be up to date. No, we don't sell used cars or rock n roll.

Add these things to the fact that they lie about everything and are renewing NONE of their clients, and you know all you need to know about Astonish. crooks.

[abenoy]

Thanks for the advice.

Are you using a CRM? If so, which one and your thought on it?

Thank you in advance.

[Pathwayinsurance]

This is a website that we launched within the last few months for an agency in Florida:

http://www.cyber-liability-insurance.net/

[SMIS2008]

hi
with respect to the some common that talk about Astonish deliver, is not true, we have spent so fare over $7,000 without generating a penny, we sign with them end of 2011 until now our web site is not running the way we want it, when requesting changes, it takes forever to get it done, finally we stopped our payment back in September 2012, we spoke to management without getting any results, they post our web site in the wrong category, the concept is good but the service is Zero

[NYagent301]

This is a website that we launched within the last few months for an agency in Kansas:

http://heritageinsurancegroup.net/

We have the agency ranked on page one of Google for more than 20 keywords. Pricing is significantly lower in price compared to other companies offering systems.

If this is an example of a good website I doubt the effectiveness it may have after any traffic is driven to it. The mouse over on the landing page graphics are terrible, white lettering on a white background makes some of it unreadable. There is no navigation to a home page once you navigate to other pages. A high schooler would do better work! Congrats on your keywords though.

[Pathwayinsurance]

This is a website that we launched within the last few months for an agency in Kansas:

http://heritageinsurancegroup.net/

We have the agency ranked on page one of Google for more than 20 keywords. Pricing is significantly lower in price compared to other companies offering systems.

If this is an example of a good website I doubt the effectiveness it may have after any traffic is driven to it. The mouse over on the landing page graphics are terrible, white lettering on a white background makes some of it unreadable. There is no navigation to a home page once you navigate to other pages. A high schooler would do better work! Congrats on your keywords though.

Thanks for your editorial NYagent301. Do you know anything about coding or graphic design? You made a statement that a high schooler would do better work? Would you mind sharing an example for us of a website that a high schooler developed that is a better website? (Non template website they coded by hand not using dream weaver or other website creation software.)

This particular site was created based on the agents request, it's cusom built and coded by hand and somewhat different compared to many insurance agent websites...it's not a template. I personally like it because it stands out from the typical insurance website that looks pretty much the same as every other insurance website. (Naturally I am biased.)

While its true that most high students are more Savvy when it comes to technology, Most high school students can't code HTML 5, css3, PHP, j query,by hand... can you? (This site is also mobile friendly Not because of a plug-in, but because it was designed from the ground floor up to be mobile friendly. That means it looks good on a smart phone, or tablet. The majority of websites built today are not mobile friendly.)

Do you know of a high school student that possesses the ability to code those programming languages by hand?

I personally can't code and I would estimate more than 90% (Maybe 99%) of high schoolers could not have created this website by hand to save their life.

I am looking to hire additional Designers that can code the languages that I mentioned above. These folks are in relatively short supply compared to the average graphic designer who only knows how to modify website templates.

If you happen to know someone that is a high school student or even a college graduate that can code by hand: HTML 5, css3, PHP, j query and is skilled in CS6 masters edition would you mind referring them to me?

We are hiring and my office number is 513-662-7000, ask for Jack Thomas.

Are you in the insurance business yourself?

Would you mind sharing your website with us?

I'm curious to see your site. (I promise I won't be negative even if your site is poorly constructed.)

You may respond privately to me if you do not wish to post publicly on this Forum.

[NYagent301]

Pathway - I don't think most end users will be able to tell if a site is hand coded or a template, unless it is a very common template. I'm just looking at this from a fresh vantage point and giving you my honest opinion. I have been an agent 24 years my website sucks and it is a template, so I would elect not to share it. If anyone else has an opinion on http://heritageinsurancegroup.net please chime in, maybe it's just me.