Insurance Marketing Campaign Checklist

Export the in-force book from Applied Epic, AMS360, or HawkSoft. Segment by line of business, hazard class, geographic concentration, and persistency. Avoid including lapsed or non-renewed accounts unless the campaign explicitly targets win-backs.

Identify segments where retention is soft (under 80% three-year persistency) or where there is realistic upsell — umbrella attached to monoline auto, EPLI bolted onto BOP, cyber riders for small commercial. Tag the AMS records so the campaign list and the renewal list are reconcilable later.

Pull the most recent rate and form filings from competing carriers in the target states via NAIC SERFF. A competitor's recent +12% rate filing is a real opening for retention and switch messaging — vague claims of 'we're competitive' are not.

Scrub the campaign list against GLBA Privacy Rule opt-outs for non-affiliate marketing. Vermont requires opt-in, not opt-out, for any non-affiliate sharing. California personal-lines insureds need CCPA/CPRA-aligned disclosures. Attach the scrub artifact so the audit trail survives a market-conduct exam.

Express goals as new written premium, retention lift, or quote volume — not as impressions or click-throughs. A campaign that delivers 50,000 impressions and zero quotes is a failed campaign even if engagement metrics look healthy.

Standard KPIs: quote-to-bind ratio, hit ratio, lead CPA, retention delta vs. control segment, and 90-day persistency on newly bound accounts. Include a loss-ratio guardrail so marketing volume that drives adverse selection is caught early.

Split spend by line of business and channel. If appointed carriers offer marketing co-op funds, claim them now — most require pre-approval and creative sign-off, and they expire on the carrier's calendar, not yours.

Re-cut the budget against the principal's feedback. Document which lines or channels were trimmed and why so the post-campaign retro has the original hypothesis to compare against.

Back the launch date out from any required state DOI advertising filing windows — some states need 30+ days before the ad runs. For multi-state campaigns, the slowest state sets the launch date, not the fastest.

Every coverage claim in the creative must trace to language in the filed policy form. The NAIC Unfair Trade Practices Model Act and its state adoptions treat misrepresentation of policy benefits as a market-conduct violation — a tagline like 'full replacement cost' attached to an ACV form is exactly the kind of finding that turns up in exams.

Use the appointed carrier's current brand kit and required disclosures: legal company name, NAIC group, state-of-domicile, and any line-specific footnotes. Include the producing agency's NPN or license number where the state requires it (CA, NY, FL).

Advertising filing requirements vary by state and line — life and health filings are common, P&C filings less so but still required in select states. Check each target state's bulletins; do not rely on a national rule of thumb.

File via SERFF or the state's paper process, depending on the DOI. Build in 30+ days for review and possible objection cycles. Do not run the ad in that state until the filing is acknowledged or the file-and-use window has elapsed.

Walk a small panel of producers through the creative before launch. Producers will spot real-world objections — 'this implies guaranteed renewal,' 'the price example assumes a clean MVR' — that compliance review and brand review tend to miss.

Scrub against the federal Do-Not-Call registry and any applicable state DNC lists. TCPA penalties run $500–$1,500 per violation and class actions are routine — a single unscrubbed outbound list is the cheapest way to lose a campaign's entire budget in a settlement.

TCPA limits calls and texts to 8am–9pm local time of the called party. Autodialed or prerecorded calls to cell phones require prior express written consent. Verify the dialer platform respects per-recipient time zones, not the campaign owner's.

Wire UTM parameters through to the AMS or CRM so quotes and bound policies attribute back to channel and creative. Without attribution at the policy level, you cannot compare loss ratio by source — and that is the only attribution that matters at the post-campaign retro.

Set a written SLA for producer follow-up — five-minute response on hot inbound leads is the industry benchmark. Confirm each producer has active appointment and CE in the lead's state; routing a Florida lead to a producer with lapsed FL CE is an unauthorized solicitation.

Pull the weekly funnel: leads, quotes, bound policies, and CPA per channel. Watch for channels with high lead volume but low quote-to-bind — usually a sign of off-appetite leads that the underwriter is declining.

Compare the campaign cohort's emerging loss ratio against the carrier book average. A campaign that grows premium 15% but runs an 85% loss ratio against a 60% book has produced adverse selection, not growth. Flag any channels skewing the cohort.

Report on written premium, hit ratio, retention delta vs. control, loss-ratio guardrail status, and CPA by channel. Include the original budget hypothesis from step 9 so the variance — not just the absolute numbers — is visible.

Sit down with the lead underwriter, not just the marketing team. Underwriting sees the declined applications and the early loss notices that marketing dashboards don't surface. Decide whether to continue, iterate, or sunset based on what the book is doing, not just on lead-gen vanity metrics.