As every insurance agency knows, gaining consumer trust is one of the biggest challenges in the insurance industry. In fact, one study found that only 20% of customers think that insurers are trustworthy and will do anything to avoid paying a claim. Another study found that, among U.S. consumers, 17% have no trust at all.
What’s behind these low levels of confidence?
The truth is, there’s no single factor or even a quick fix to this complex perception problem. But it’s clear that insurance businesses often struggle to humanize the customer experience. This is partly because policyholders don’t experience the personal side of insurance until they need it, like after a fender-bender, a hospital stay, or storm damage to their home.
The question is, how can insurance agencies build strong customer relationships before bad things happen? How can you elevate confidence among prospects and policyholders, improve lead generation, and increase referrals at every stage of the sales cycle?
It’s all about building personalized customer relationships that focus on trust.
Fortunately, the combination of digital marketing communication and marketing automation enables even small businesses to deliver personalized experiences and foster greater trust. Although many customer relationship management (CRM) platforms offer these capabilities, not everyone understands how to fully optimize them. Here are some highly effective insurance marketing strategies to consider.
How marketing automation drives insurance sales
To be honest, a lot of insurance companies tell the same story about their business. They highlight their experience, diverse product portfolio, customer service, corporate values, and more. So how can you get ahead of the pack to convert more prospects and upsell more customers?
Marketing automation can give you a big advantage. It not only empowers you to create and execute strategic campaigns that get results, but you can also accomplish much more with fewer resources. Here’s how:
1. Capture more qualified leads.
It’s harder than ever to capture leads, especially since potential customers can easily shop around and compare insurance rates online. The good news is, marketing automation software can make it easier to attract potential leads through social media marketing, website inquiries, Google Ads, and other online traffic.
The right CRM can automatically qualify those leads and flush out bots and other low-value traffic. By weeding out the chaff, your CRM can save time and improve results by delivering only the most qualified leads to your insurance agents.
2. Use metrics to measure campaign results.
Digital campaigns are a great way to execute a content marketing strategy that promotes specific products to your target audiences. Perhaps you want to attract new customers, diversify your customer base, or generate more revenue through upsell and cross-sell campaigns. You can continually measure responses at every step of the campaign to see how users are engaging with your content, and modify your online marketing messages to improve your results.
For instance, you may want to know how many people opened your email, clicked through to your website, viewed a landing page, or downloaded a market report. Campaigns are an effective way to achieve your marketing goals. The right CRM allows you to create customizable templates that are easy to modify. You can also track SEO keywords, quickly build branded landing pages, and conduct A/B testing to refine subject lines and other email content. Best of all, you get instant feedback so you can adjust your marketing efforts on the fly.
3. Get more out of email marketing campaigns.
You might be tempted to abandon email marketing in favor of social media, but email is far more important than you might think. Consider that:
- 89% of marketers use email as the primary channel for generating leads.
- 72% of customers prefer email as their main channel for business communication.
- 52% of responders said that email is their main communication tool.
With that in mind, a marketing automation platform can take much of the pain (and time) out of crafting email campaigns. For instance, it helps you:
- Save time by streamlining repetitive and time-consuming tasks associated with lead nurturing and outreach, social media posting, ad campaigns, and email marketing workflows. In some cases, marketing tools have been found to improve productivity by approximately 20%.
- Create highly targeted and automated email campaigns by generating email lists based on specific criteria you define. For instance, you can use targeted email drip campaigns to deliver relevant content to individuals based on their interests, preferences, and past purchases.
- With all these capabilities, it’s no surprise that email marketing automation has been found to generate 80 percent more leads and increase conversion rates by 77 percent.
4. Convert more potential customers.
Once you’ve captured a qualified lead, how do you nurture them through the sales funnel?
It’s true that many potential customers shop on price alone. But many other customers look beyond that to ensure they have the right insurance coverage for the right assets — and they want highly personalized and friendly customer service to meet their needs. The key is knowing specifically what the customer wants so you can inform them about relevant insurance products, reasons to purchase insurance, sign-up deals, and other educational materials that convert them faster and improve customer retention rates.
5. Create personalized communications.
After winning a new policyholder, the customer journey doesn’t end there. In fact, it’s only just begun.
With the help of marketing automation and customer insights, you can leverage list segmentation to target communications based on the customer’s place in the buying cycle. For instance, you’d only send a “welcome” email to new policyholders, not long-time subscribers.
To deliver the right message to right audience, you can start by dividing your email campaigns into three principal categories:
- Prospects: This group may consist of leads who entered their email address in your web capture forms to receive a free insurance quote. Or maybe they signed up for your newsletter or a webinar but haven’t yet become a customer. These are people you need to nurture. For instance, if they specifically requested a quote for auto insurance, you’ll want to follow up the quote with more detailed information about your auto insurance products and services. Perhaps you can share a competitive analysis that compares your auto insurance rates with other leading insurance companies. The goal here is to provide a compelling offer that moves them closer to a sale.
- New policyholders: Welcome them and introduce yourself and your business. Explain what products and services you offer, especially those which differentiate you from your competitors. And, of course, always provide contact information and explain what types of emails they can expect in the future.
- Long-time policyholders: These clients have already purchased at least one policy, such as life, auto, or home. If you haven’t done it already, determine the right time to educate them about the benefits of having all of their insurance policies with one company. You may also offer discounts if they agree to a meeting to discuss their insurance portfolio and review possible gaps in their insurance coverage. The goal is to continue nurturing the relationship by giving them more value and personalized service.
- Provide a 360-degree view of your clients and prospects.
The right CRM offers more than just marketing automation tools. It can help accelerate the sales process by helping your team work smarter and more efficiently.
For instance, you can keep track of every customer engagement, including phone calls, emails, follow-ups, and other touchpoints. All of these details can be tracked in your database so any agent can pick up where a previous rep left off.
As an example, let’s say a prospect requested a quote for life insurance. After an initial phone call with the prospect, agent #1 goes on PTO for two weeks. After a few days pass, the CRM pings the next available agent to follow up with the prospect. Agent #2 can simply read the notes left by the first agent to understand where the prospect is in the buying cycle, which products were shared, and gather all important details so the agent doesn’t have to ask the prospect to repeat details from the previous conversation.
Not only does this capability enable any agent to personalize the conversation, it helps the sales team work seamlessly and productively by avoiding time-consuming “hand-off” conversations about various accounts. Plus, the CRM can be configured to automatically remind agents to send important follow-up calls and emails so prospects and clients don’t fall through the cracks when an agent leaves the office.
Act! can help you meet your insurance sales goals
Act! provides all of the marketing automation tools insurance agencies need to grow their customer relationships and amplify their success. Discover how our powerful yet simple CRM platform can support your business with streamlined marketing and customer tracking tools that make it easier than ever to attract and retain lifelong customers.
Act! offers flexible customizations and app integrations to accommodate the unique ways your insurance company works. Whether you’re just getting started with CRM or want to take your marketing strategy to the next level, Act! can meet your specific marketing needs at any stage.
See how Act! can work for you — get a free, 14-day trial and discover how our customizable features and flexible deployment can work seamlessly in your environment!
