How to Use Marketing Automation to Cross-sell Insurance

Most insurance marketers know that if you want to grow your business fast, existing clients are the low-hanging fruit. The average cost to win a new customer across all industries is estimated five times higher than selling to an existing customer. However, this number is even higher for the insurance industry, estimated at seven or even nine times more. On a dollar per customer level, that’s paying between $487 to $900 for each brand new customer.

You already have customers who are happy with your products and services, and if you offer them the right offer at the right time, you can help guide them into more and better policies and options. And, we get it. Figuring out the timing isn’t always easy. That’s where marketing automation comes in. 

Insurance policy cross-selling with marketing automation allows you to capture more of your existing customers’ business and do so at scale. With this tool, you can identify new segments within your customer base, deliver relevant content, and convert more business from the people who already know and love your insurance products. 

Cross-sell the Right Policies at the Right Time to the Right Customers 

You want to retain and expand existing relationships, but if you want to do this successfully, you need to work even harder than in the past. That’s because your customers want hyper-personalized experiences. If you reach out with a product or service that doesn’t feel relevant, you instantly lose customer trust, which is critical in all industries, but especially for insurance. And the next marketing email that you send? Chances are, they’ll click right past it. 

So, what is the answer? 

The solution is greater personalization, especially considering that almost all customers (71%) say they’re frustrated with shopping experiences that feel impersonal. 

Each of your insurance customers is at a different life stage, and the products and services they need change quickly, sometimes in a matter of months. A single adult who gets married or has their first child, for example, may now need products that weren’t relevant a few short months ago. 
Marketing automation allows you to tap into your existing database of customers, segment those customers, and figure out what offerings are most relevant. Every time you do this well, the customer will feel like you get them – and you will win their trust.

For example, Physicians Insurance needed a way to nurture diverse buyers with highly relevant content, to build trust and convert more leads. They used marketing automation to create more personalized content campaigns and improve conversion rates. A couple of results included: 

• Increased email engagement. More customers stopped clicking past marketing emails and the company experienced a 31% increase in email engagement. 
• Higher customer retention rates. Not only could the company now more effectively cross-sell, but retention rates increased. A 95% retention rate was achieved due to more customized content and advanced segmentation. 

The company relies on relationships to grow business, and most revenue is tied to the core book of business. Marketing automation helped them to make existing relationships stronger and get positioned for stronger growth. 

Lead Management Helps Shorten the Conversion Cycle 

Sales and marketing both play an important role in nurturing relationships and building trust. On their own, they are important, but when working together, the results are powerful – and sales cycles are potentially shortened. 

Over three-fourths of sales and marketing leaders report that collaboration between the two areas is critical to business growth. If almost all of your competitors are getting this wrong, imagine what happens when you get it right. You instantly earn a competitive advantage. 

The most tightly aligned sales and marketing teams achieve on average 24% faster three-year revenue growth and 27% faster three-year profit growth. Additionally, companies that aren’t aligning well are estimated to lose up to 10% of revenue annually. A few more considerations include:

• The majority of business goes to those who respond fastest. Up to 50% of sales go to the businesses that respond first. If sales and marketing are aligned, it empowers sales to prioritize the most relevant leads and follow up more quickly.
• Improved lead management helps to close deals faster. Sales and marketing alignment helps companies to become 67% better at closing deals. 
• Customers buy more from companies that deliver content at every stage of their buyers journey. Ninety-five percent of buyers say they purchased from a company that gave them relevant content at every stage in their journey.

For example, Insurance Agency Marketing Services is a company that supports the servicing of tens of thousands of insurance policies nationwide. The company was using a marketing webinar and newsletter program that delivered poor results. Sluggish response rates and low webinar attendance stalled their lead generation and nurturing efforts.

They needed better marketing intelligence for lead tracking, to support sales and marketing to deliver more personalized and relevant content. Through marketing automation, they achieved: 

• A large increase in webinar registrants. One of the company’s main marketing strategies was webinars, but they had a hard time getting sign-ups. With marketing automation, they experienced a 470% increase in webinar registrations. 

• Increased web traffic. The company wanted to nurture existing relationships, but it also wanted to plant seeds for new ones. Marketing automation supported a 300% increase in web traffic and click-through rates tripled from 2% – to 6%, well above industry averages of 2.2%. 

Since people are more likely to purchase from companies that deliver content at every turn in their journey, marketing automation supports the ability to accelerate funnel building by providing the right content at the right time. 

Use Content Marketing to Trigger Automated Campaigns  

Your customers receive massive amounts of content, and some of that content is really good. If you hope to compete with the noise, you need to provide excellent content, but equally important, highly relevant content. 

Your existing clients are continuously sending you buying signals. The challenge is that many of these signals are going unnoticed. For example, a customer might visit your website and download a product sheet about life insurance. Then he or she might attend a webinar about the topic, and visit the website, again, to gather a few more details. If you want to move this interest from lead to sales, your team needs intelligence to spot the triggers. 

Without a consistent framework in place, your marketing to qualified leads might be hit or miss, and your sales team wastes time chasing difficult to convert leads. Tools like lead scoring, used with automated campaigns, help close the gap between marketing and sales efforts and convert more business. A few situations where you can use content marketing to trigger automated campaigns include: 

• A customer clicks a link in your newsletter. Imagine that you send a newsletter to existing clients. A customer clicks a link within that newsletter to learn more about life insurance, and as a result, you can automatically add that person to a drip campaign. That person will receive more information about the importance of life insurance, and how to pick the best policy. 
• A customer signals interest during a webinar. You promote a webinar about umbrella policies to an existing customer, and that person signs up. The customer attends the webinar from start to finish, and then, you can segment that customer to receive future follow-up campaigns providing even greater depth on the topic.
• A customer visits your website for specific product information. An existing customer visits your website several times to view information about accident insurance. Based on this behavior, you can start sending them targeted information about the benefits of this type of insurance. 

Automated campaigns don’t need to be complicated; they can be as simple as a campaign that kicks into action 90 days before a customer’s policy renewal date. Of course, this is the optimal time to review their policy and spot any required changes, but it’s also a chance to learn more about the customer’s situation and if it’s changed. 

RSA, for example, needed to deliver personalized campaigns and rise above the noise in a highly competitive market. Using marketing automation, the company was able to increase broker engagement by 300% by delivering personalized and more relevant experiences. 

Insurance Policy Cross-Selling: Landing More Business 

Selling insurance is all about relationships. You want your customers to feel known, understood, and valued by your insurance company. But doing this effectively in today’s market requires tools that weren’t available in the past, and marketing automation has become a critical part of your toolbox. 

With it, you can reach your existing customer more effectively by understanding what they need right now, and then showing them that you understand. As a result, you can create deeper and more meaningful connections with your customers and support growth that helps serve them even better in the future.