Insurance email marketing often seems like a daunting task to insurance agencies and brokers, because of the complexity of CAN-SPAM Act and opt in email marketing best practices. Conversely, some agents think you simply need to buy an email list and blast out an offer. Today, email marketing is a highly nuanced method to engage both clients and prospects, and should be a staple for any agency or broker.
The goal of these initiatives should be to build a trustworthy online relationship with both prospects and clients. Agencies and brokers can utilize email marketing to extend their reach, to demonstrate expertise and to establish thought leadership. When thinking of insurance email marketing, think of it in terms of the “Five Ws”, namely the Who, What, When, Where and Why.
- Who: Develop A High Quality Prospect & Client Email List
- What: Relevant Topics & Content
- When: Date, Time & Frequency Distribution
- Where: Calls to Action
- Why: Lead Conversion, Insurance Leads
Using this famous formula, agencies and brokers can focus on the following five critical tasks when it comes to rolling out this marketing initiative:
- Assemble a high quality email marketing list, and follow opt-in best practices and CAN-SPAM regulations.
- Digital content should be educational and relevant. Talk to your audience with content that they will find beneficial.
- Determine a reasonable frequency – wait at least two weeks between email campaigns. As of this writing, Tuesday and Friday mornings have the best open rates.
- Provide clear “Calls To Action.” CTA’s include “Register for a webinar”, “Click here to learn more” or “Sign up for our newsletter.” It’s usually best to have one CTA per email campaign, two at most.
- Determine the goal of your campaigns and measure the results. Use AB split tests to better refine open and click rates. Be careful that you don’t include spam phrases or rush words (buy now, hurry, offer ends soon, etc.).
As agencies and brokers begin their email marketing initiative, they should take the time to create a well thought out lead handling process. After all, how will the leads from these campaigns be distributed, followed up and tracked. Agencies and brokers should determine how to disseminate, track and measure incoming email marketing leads.
- Lead Scoring: Which leads are your highest priority?
- Lead Distribution: How, why and to whom are leads distributed? What happens with: Request more information, get a quote, newsletter subscriptions, and other type of leads?
- Lead Follow-up: Preferred method of follow-up for lead type by producers.
- Lead Tracking: How will you track these leads? Do you have an agency management system that does this, or do you need to create a simple tracking system for all your email marketing leads.
- Lead Reporting: How will your agency share the results with the executive team and producers?
- Lead KPIs: Key Performance Indicators can be very helpful in measuring lead gen campaigns. Examples include: Total Leads Per Month, Meetings Scheduled, Quotes Per Lead, Closes Per Lead, Appointment Show Rate Per Lead.
Insurance email marketing is an important and nuanced lead generation initiative. Agents and brokers lacking the time, staff or skills can consider outsourcing this lead generation initiative to a proficient insurance marketing agency.
Sometimes it helps to simplify complex marketing initiatives such as insurance email marketing. For many agents, brokers and wholesalers, creating a successful email marketing initiative can seem like a daunting task. If we drill down to the essential components, a simple way of looking at these campaigns is shown below: