Ever wonder what sets successful insurance agencies apart from those organizations that struggle year after year?
What makes up for an insurance agency’s most effective marketing tool?
Email marketing.
When an insurance professional gets an email from a potential customer with the subject line: “Re: New Account Request” and the body of the email contains all the information necessary for the insurance professional to fulfill the customer’s insurance needs, they know right away that they have a qualified lead.
In the age of the internet, customers are able to research insurance agencies online, find the perfect one online, and get everything done digitally, without ever leaving the comfort of their home. Therefore, the ability to send emails brings the opportunity for insurance professionals to engage with their audience more effectively and gain more trust and credibility.
But why stop there?
Once the customer has entrusted you with their business, why not grow their interest further and engage them to make a purchase decision?
You can take the information given to you through the contact form on your website and use that data to send automated follow-ups, while also taking into consideration the customer’s location and the time zone differences to adapt the timing of your communication. For example, an agency in Oregon might want to send emails three to four months later than those sent out from an agency in Massachusetts.
What is an Insurance Agency?’s Purpose?’
An insurance agency’s primary purpose is to provide insurance products and services to their clients. However, since customers can find the perfect match for their needs online, agencies can also benefit from marketing in other areas.
Life insurance, for example, can be a very profitable venture for an agency. But it can also be extremely time-consuming. To keep up with the demand for life insurance, most agencies have to hire additional staff. Marketing campaigns, automated emails, and lead-generation websites can help agencies decrease their administrative workload and increase their savings for higher-quality products and services.
How to Create an Email Marketing Campaign for Your Insurance Agency.
Now that you have a basic understanding of what makes up an insurance agency and why you should care about email marketing, let’s dive into the nuts and bolts of creating a successful email marketing campaign.
Identify the right audience.
As previously mentioned, since customers can find the perfect match for their needs online, you can use that fact to your advantage and target the appropriate audience for your insurance agency.
To do this, you need to take into consideration a number of factors. First, identify what makes your product special. Second, determine your target audience’s profile. Third, find out what their interests are and what makes them click. Finally, establish a clear call-to-action for the reader.
For example, if you sell corporate travel insurance, you might want to target individuals in high-income jobs between the ages of 20 and 40 who enjoy traveling but hate wasting time at work. Or if you sell life insurance, you could target small businesses with one or two employees in the town of New Britain, Connecticut, since that is where you are headquartered.
You can use a lead generation tool to explore a number of these factors and more. For example, the Avada lead generation platform is a free tool that can help you find the right leads for your insurance agency. With Avada, you can search for your product or service, target the perfect audience with a few clicks, and gain valuable insights into what makes them tick. Through Avada, you can access a variety of consumer and business intelligence that can help you pinpoint the exact people and demographics that will buy your product or service.
Choose the right content.
You will want to choose content that will appeal to your ideal buyer and engage them to take further action, namely, to make a purchase. To achieve this, you can use a content creation tool like HubSpot to develop engaging, value-oriented material that will grab the attention of your audience.
As a content marketer myself, I often recommend using the following formula when creating content for a marketing campaign:
- Evocative headline- Attention getter– Actionable points– Closing paragraph
- 3-5 bullets with supporting evidence– Factual content– Anchor text– Closing paragraph
- 6-10 pages long
- 400-500 words
- Single spaced
- 1-2 images
- 1 link to a website
- No more than 3 links to other websites (internal & external)
- Headers: Title– Subtitle
- A call to action
Creating content for a marketing campaign can be hard. You have to keep in mind various platforms (e.g., social media, websites, etc.), the target audience’s needs and circumstances (e.g., what makes your product special?), and the timeframe within which you will need to complete the content (e.g., a blog post to be published in the next week).
Luckily, content creation tools like HubSpot make the process easier and can help you produce content faster.
Distribute your content.
Once you have content ready to go, the next step is to get the word out to as many people as possible. To do this, you can create and distribute content to various platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
For example, suppose that you are the marketing manager of a multi-agency insurance firm. You might decide to create and distribute a blog post to showcase how various insurance products and services can help businesses protect their assets. With this content, you can target the audience and top-level executives for your client’s insurance agencies with a single post. To do this, you can simply repurpose the content and spread it to your other social media platforms. Now, when a potential customer encounters your content, they will know exactly which agency they should contact to get the best deal.
Measure the results.
After you have gone through the process of creating an email marketing campaign and started to receive some results, you can gather various data to assess the effectiveness of your effort.
To do this, you can use a tool like Google Analytics to track the results of your marketing campaign. With Google Analytics, you can discover a number of valuable information about your campaign, including the number of page views, bounce rate, and the like.
To get the most out of your marketing campaign, you will want to assess how different variables like content, design, and distribution impacted the results.
For example, did the headline evoke a reaction? Was the content valuable to the target audience? Did the design of the email match the overall brand message of your agency?
Why Should You Care About Email Marketing?”
So you’re wondering why you should care about email marketing. Let’s take a look.
Email marketing is one of the cheapest and most accessible marketing channels available. It typically costs nothing to launch an email marketing campaign and you can engage potential customers at any point in the buying cycle, whether they are interested or not.
Marketing through email allows you to establish credibility and trust with your audience since they can contact you at any time with questions or comments. In a world full of shady businesses, it’s good to be able to provide people with proof that you are a genuine company with standards and practices.
Since customers are already inside your potential customer’s inbox, you can use email marketing to send out periodic special offers or discounts. For example, you might want to send out a special offer just for people that have read your blog post or signed up for your email newsletter. This type of campaign can drive in-person leads and even gain you some customers that you wouldn’t have had before.
Besides the above, email marketing is one of the ideal platforms for brand awareness, generating leads, and building credibility. To learn more, please visit the HubSpot blog for insurance and financial services for additional articles on this topic.