Although mobile users accessing insurance information are not necessarily converting on the spot, brands that neglect to incorporate the medium into a marketing mix miss out on increasing initial exposure about insurance services to consumers, according to a report coming out today from Telemetrics and xAd.

XAd and Telmetrics’ newest “Mobile Path to Purchase” report takes a look at how insurance companies are incorporating mobile into multi-device campaigns. Additionally, the report examines the difference between smartphone and tablet owners who are accessing insurance information.

“Insurance is a true multi-media engagement category with heavy offline conversions,” said Bill Dinan, president of Telmetrics, Mississauga, Onatrio, Canada.

“Mobile devices – both tablet and smartphones – are starting to rival the PC in consumers’ insurance research process, but many consumers pick up the phone to talk to an agent and complete their purchase,” he said.

Different use cases
Insurance giants are playing up mobile to drive lead generations that eventually incorporate vast amounts of research from PCs.

Instead of looking for lots of bells and whistles, mobile users accessing insurance information want the content to be simple and straightforward so that they can easily enter their contact information and quickly see account information and pricing.

In fact, 50 percent of consumers will spend more than a month researching all of the insurance options available before making a decision.

Mobile behavior related to insurance companies is also skewed to take place at home versus on the go, likely when consumers have more time.

Despite mobile activity taking place at home where consumers are more likely in general to use tablets, smartphones generate 38 percent out of the 40 percent time spent on insurance content via mobile.

Sixty percent of insurance conversions take place offline, per the study. With phone calls as one of the primary conversion methods, click-to-call should be a key part of insurance brands’ mobile arsenal.

The report includes answers from 1,765 smartphone and 1,526 tablet owners as well as 994 insurance users.

Tailoring content
According to the report, insurance content has a mobile audience of 17 million users, 62 percent of whom are Android users. The remaining 38 percent of consumers own iOS devices.

Although there are more potential Android consumers for marketers to target, iOS devices are spending more time engaging with content.

Fifty-seven percent of the monthly time that consumers spend with mobile insurance content comes from iOS devices, representing an average monthly time of 14 minutes and 36 seconds.

Forty-three percent of monthly time spent on insurance content comes from Android devices, and the average monthly session is 11 minutes and 14 seconds.

According to the research, insurance brands have a bigger opportunity with apps than mobile Web to capture consumers’ attentions.

Sixty-five percent of users access insurance content through an app, and 47 percent of the audience uses a mobile Web site.

Additionally, mobile insurance app users are skewed to women, who represent 54 percent of total mobile insurance users. On the other hand, mobile browsers are favored by men and represent 57 percent of all mobile Web insurance users.

Unsurprisingly, the mobile app users are also spending more time with content, representing 66 percent of time spent.

Mobile content
The report also breaks down the types of insurance that both smartphone and tablet users are interested in.

Seventy-seven percent of tablet owners and 83 percent of smartphone owners are interested in automotive insurance.

For home insurance, 35 percent of smartphone and 41 percent of tablet owners were interested.

Twenty-six percent of tablet and 18 percent of smartphone owners were interested in health information.

When it comes to the specific types of information that mobile users are looking up, 47 percent of smartphone users were looking up current account information, and 41 percent of tablet owners were interested in doing the same.

Thirty-nine percent of tablet users looked up prices and compared insurance prices via their devices, and 31 percent of smartphone owners did the same.

Both smartphone and tablet users ranked a mobile-optimized site, contact information and online reviews as their top priorities in insurance companies’ mobile sites and apps.

“Insurance brand marketers need to ensure they have mobile-optimized sites to aid in consumers’ mobile research process and make contact information easy to find to help consumers connect with an agent to make the purchase,” Mr. Dinan said.

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is associate reporter on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York