If you don’t already have an email marketing strategy in place for your insurance agency, now is the time to create one. Email marketing is a cost-effective and efficient tool that helps keep you and your agency in front of prospects and clients on a regular basis, helping to generate sales leads while also helping to build trust and nurture your client relationships.
Here we offer an in-depth guide to email marketing, including tips to implement a successful email marketing strategy.
Key Takeaways
- Understand exactly what email marketing is and how it plays a role in your overall marketing strategy
- Learn how a successful email marketing strategy can benefit you and your insurance agency
- Explore tips to consider when creating your email marketing strategy
What is email marketing?
Email marketing is a component of a digital marketing strategy that involves sending branded emails to potential leads and clients that have opted in to receive information from your insurance agency. The goal of an email marketing campaign is to keep your business name and brand in front of leads and clients in an effort to build trust, nurture relationships, and increase sales opportunities.
Benefits of email marketing in the insurance industry
With over 300 billion emails sent each day, email marketing is considered to be one of the best ways to reach customers directly in the digital space, driving even more sales to businesses than social media marketing. In addition, other major benefits of a quality email marketing campaign include:
- High ROI – on average, email marketing has an ROI of $36 for every $1 spent
- Ability to create specific email campaigns for different segments of your target audience
- Ability to automate email marketing for insurance agents, helping to increase efficiency
- Help gain trust and improve relationships
- Helps boost sales
Types of emails
Email marketing allows for a wide range of different email types that address specific purposes and clients. Having specific email marketing campaigns integrated into a quality insurance CRM allows you to automate many different emails based on lead triggers. Here are some of the most common email types used by insurance agents and agencies.
1. Welcome emails
When you convert a lead into a new client, a welcome email is a great way to thank a client for their new business while also introducing them to your team and the benefits that working with your agency provides. A welcome email is also a great way to invite new clients to follow your social media platforms to further help nurture your relationship. Adding a personalized new client welcome video to your email campaign is also a great way to add that extra personal touch.
2. Follow-up emails
Follow-up emails are sent to recipients that you have already made contact with but that hasn’t responded to previous emails or as a reminder for important dates, such as for policy renewals. The idea behind a follow-up email is not to start a new conversation, but rather to reignite a previous conversation. These emails are designed to be professional and direct to the point.
3. Lead nurturing emails
Lead nurturing emails are designed to inform and draw in leads that have opted in for information but have yet to close on a sale. Providing valuable information is essential for these emails in order to build interest in your services and well as build trust in you and your agency.
4. Event email campaigns
Birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays are great times to let your clients know they are important to you and that you value their business. With a quality CRM, you can automate these emails to send out on their specific dates, allowing you to wish them well on their special day.
5. Newsletters
Creating email marketing newsletters is a great way to keep your clients aware of new updates and promotions being offered by your agency. This is also a great place to spotlight agency team members and introduce them to your existing clients. Newsletters are also a great place to include informational and educational material that can help them make informed decisions when thinking about adding or changing their current policies. Newsletter emails should be sent on a regular basis, such as every month or every quarter.
6. Transactional emails
Transactional emails are those professional emails that request a clear response from the recipient. This email type is used for invoices, event registration, appointment reminders, policy renewals, and requests for personal information updates. These emails should be professional, precise, and include a clear call to action.
7. Cold emails
Cold emails are those sent to people who you have not had previous contact with and do not have permission to email them. Unfortunately, this type of email is considered spam and, when done as a part of a mass marketing campaign, can actually hurt your overall campaign, causing many of your emails to land in a recipient’s spam folder. While cold calls were once considered the norm, cold emails in mass are considered taboo. Cold emails, however, can still be beneficial when they are not part of mass marketing but rather done manually and specifically to the recipient.
13 email marketing tips for Insurance agents
As you create your email marketing strategy, there are a few tips to consider in order to achieve the best possible success. These tips address everything from what content to include in your email campaigns to how to best make them work for you.
1. Know your audience
When it comes to an email marketing strategy, your goal is to create campaigns that address the needs and concerns of your target audience. Before you even begin to create emails, you want to develop a strong understanding of your target audience by examining things like your existing clients’ average age, gender, income, homeownership status, and lifestyle. In addition, have a clear understanding of your target products. You want your email marketing campaigns to have information relevant to your audience in order to increase your open rate and conversion.
2. Build your email database
The key to every email marketing campaign is a quality email list. In order to build your database, you need to have ways available for people to opt into email marketing or become a subscriber, such as social media posts and landing pages with sign-up forms on your website. When integrated with a quality, insurance-specific CRM, these new contacts and email addresses can be automatically inputted into your database when a person submits the form. In addition, anytime you meet a potential client in person, ask if you can add them to your email marketing list.
3. Choose your email marketing software
Once you decide to implement an email marketing strategy, you need to determine how you are going to execute your marketing campaigns. With a quality CRM in place, this is often already available to you, making every aspect of your marketing strategy accessible in one central location. However, if you do not have this option in place, you will have to find email marketing software, such as Mailchimp or Constant Contact, to create and deliver your email marketing campaigns. In addition, your CRM or email marketing software will offer professional email templates to help you when creating your email campaign.
4. Get personal
We all have email inboxes filled with carbon copy mass marketing emails that, in many cases, simply get deleted. However, personalized messages often get more attention. With modern email software and automation, it is very easy to automate the addition of a recipient’s name directly into the subject and email copy, giving it a much more personal connection.
5. Pique the reader’s interest right away
While the copy inside your email marketing campaign is important, the first connection your email campaign has with a recipient is the subject line. You want to create a subject line that captures your audience’s interest with a straightforward message. Avoid confusing statements and the use of clickbait as it is more likely to be labeled as spam and decrease your open rate.
6. Take advantage of segmentation
Not every email campaign you create is going to target everyone in your email database. By segmenting your email database, you can divide it into different audiences and create email marketing campaigns for each different segment. This more focused method helps to increase your open and conversion rates.
7. Create value
When creating email copy, you want to include content that provides value to your recipient. A great way to do this is to provide some sort of educational content that will benefit the reader. This can include anything from industry news and specific policy benefits and information to the introduction of new products and services.
8. Add variety to your email marketing strategy
As we have shown above, email marketing offers a wide range of different types. When creating an email marketing strategy, you want to be sure to offer every recipient a variety of email content throughout the year.
9. Consider email timing
When we talk about email timing, we are looking at both when emails are sent, as well as how often recipients receive emails. When talking about timing, consider your audience. If most of your clients work 9-5 Monday through Friday, then you can focus your emails around the evenings and the middle of the week, as emails sent on Mondays are often lost in the shuffle, and emails on Fridays are often left to collect dust as the weekend approaches. Email marketing automation allows you to schedule your email campaigns based on the best times you decide on.
It is also important to consider how often you are sending email campaigns to a recipient. While you want to keep your name and agency name in front of your customers, too often can be too much.
10. Be mobile-friendly
Think about where your audience views your emails. In many cases, consumers use their mobile phones more often than their computers, so it is essential that any email campaign you create is mobile-friendly.
11. Be consistent
Consistency is key when it comes to insurance email marketing campaigns. It is important that you create a marketing schedule that you can easily work into your regular routine. This can be made easier when your email marketing strategy is implemented through a quality insurance-specific CRM.
12. Always include an unsubscribe option
While your goal is to grow your email database and turn leads into clients, you don’t want to waste your efforts on consumers that are not interested in your services. Including an unsubscribe link in every email campaign allows users to opt-out of your mailing list and helps clear your database and improves your click-through rates.
13. Analyze and optimize as necessary
When implementing an email marketing campaign, it is essential to have some sort of tracking method in place so that you can analyze everything from open rate to click-through rate. Gaining as much analytics as possible from each email campaign allows you to see what works and what doesn’t. Based on these results, you can optimize future marketing campaigns and incorporate what works in order to achieve the most success.
A quality email marketing strategy can make a big difference
Email marketing is a powerful part of your digital marketing strategy and provides a way for you and your business to better connect with your audience and improve your customer relationships, boost lead generation, develop trust with your clients, and help build your brand awareness. Following these tips will help you create a successful and effective marketing strategy that delivers quality results to your insurance company.
Our CRM can help further boost your email marketing
When it comes to email marketing for you and your insurance agency, a quality insurance-specific CRM can be a game-changer. With the right tool in place, you have the ability to fully automate many aspects of your marketing strategy, leaving more time to focus on other areas of your business.
At Better Agency, we understand the importance of a quality CRM for insurance agents. As former insurance agents, we designed our CRM with the insurance industry in mind and included the tools needed for success. To learn more about how our CRM, AMS, and Insurance Proposals can help take your agency to the next level, schedule a discovery call today.
