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Update News for February 2013    

Here is a quick run-down on what you will find in this bulletin:

• We Have Acquired www.term4life.com
  
  
• Term4Sale Listing Renewals
  
  
• Do Canadian Direct Marketers Need an Association?
  
  

These topics will be dealt with in more detail throughout this bulletin.

For a long time in the U.S. there has been some minor but routine confusion with our domain name term4sale.com and term4life.com. I'm not sure why, but you could tell someone the web address "term4sale.com" and they would respond "term4life.com". I think it's the connection in peoples' minds "term" and "life". That is less of an issue in Canada where "term" is often used as a stand along reference to term insurance, whereas in the U.S. they like to refer to it as "term life insurance", not "term insurance".

Anyway, it didn't happen all the time but it happened enough that we knew it would be helpful to own term4life.com and point it to term4sale.com. After years of trying to purchase term4life.com a deal was finally struck in January. While it was a moderate investment to acquire term4life.com (we bought it from the current owner), it is now our domain name and it is currently pointed to term4sale.com. We have also acquired the domain name term4life.ca, and will soon have it pointed to term4sale.ca.

One of the challenges that you have with any domain name is the different ways people can forget or misspell it. You learn, after time, which are the most common mistakes that people make. Through the years we have continually added domain names that we thought were confusing similar or which were typically typed in incorrectly. Some are obvious at the beginning (termforsale or termfoursale) and you should obtain those at the beginning. Some you will figure out later, as you have more interaction with visitors. term4life.com was one of those after the fact names.

Now that we have term4life.com, we are tempted to possibly creating a new site where we offer simple comparisons of no lapse UL products, life paid to age 121 (no lapse UL is a U.S. product much like Term to 100 in Canada). We would not load it up with other limited pay versions.

When you think about life pay no lapse UL, "term for life" is really all that it is. Low cost no lapse UL is term for your lifetime. Term to 100 is the same idea in Canada

If we created such a separate site (it would have links to term4sale.com and back) we would treat it the same as gi4sale.com, and allow those agents who are listed at term4sale.com to also be listed at the new site. Further, we are also thinking that we would require (on that site only) the consumer to identify themselves first, before allowing them to run a quote. While I would not want to do that with term comparisons at term4sale.com, it seems to me that it would be interesting to see how many people actually told us who they were, before letting them run a quote. We get asked about our consumerID option for web quotes, and there is an ongoing debate about the wisdom of not letter the consumer get a quote before requiring them to identify themselves.

Once we have gauged U.S. reaction, and if we go down that route, we would consider splitting the permanent products from our Canadian term4sale.ca site, and putting them at the term4life.ca site.

We would appreciate your feedback on this, and you can send your comments to: service@compulife.com

We apologize for not getting the mass email out to subscribers earlier in January, letting them know that all the renewal changes have been posted to Term4Sale. As occurs each year a certain number of subscribers do not renew and that opens up previously full postal codes for agents who have been wanting them.

Bob Barney took two weeks of holidays during January and it was decided that it would be telephone overload if Jeremiah had to handle the calls resulting from an email why Bob was gone. The email went out on January 30th.

Regardless of whether you got the email, you should feel free to check now as to which postal codes are now available (any postal code that doesn't have 3 agents listed). You can do that at:

As always, paid postal code listings are on a first come, first served basis. Once a subscriber has paid for a postal code, they can only be bumped by a subscriber asking for that postal code as a "home" or "free" zip code. If you don't understand how that works, you can read about it at:

Glenn Cooke of Life Insurance Canada.com Inc. contacted me in January and asked if I would be interested in making Compulife subscribers aware of his interest in creating an association of agents/agencies who are focussing on direct marketing to consumers. By that he is referring to agents/agencies interested in doing sales in other than face-to-face situations.

This method of selling is much more common in the U.S. and some of those in that segment of the industry have already created a group called "LIDMA". You can find out more about that here:

Those who remember will appreciate that Glenn is a former employee of Compulife and has always been quite serious when he sets his mind to any venture. In that regard I asked Glenn to put together an email announcing what he wanted me to pass along, and he sent me this:

Are you doing business in Canada non-face to face? Are you facing increased pressure from companies over this business model?

Glenn Cooke is hosting a meeting of like minded brokers with the goal of creating an association to promote the interests brokers who do any part of their business without meeting their clients or conducts any life insurance sales in a non-face to face fashion.

The meeting will be held at Glenn's home near Waterloo Ontario on the morning of Saturday February 16th. If you are a broker with an interest in this process, you should attend. For those planning on attending, please contact Glenn at (866) 662-5433 or by email at glenn@lifeinsurancecanada.com

NOTE: Posting this information is not an endorsement of anyone or anything, we just thought that some of our subscribers may want to know about it and be given an opportunity to participate.