If I were to walk into your office right now and ask you what separates your insurance agency from your competitors, you could probably talk my ear off for an hour or more. In addition to price and coverage, you’d likely mention things like your superior knowledge, company stability, customer trust, and how you and your team value personal relationships. All of that’s great, but there’s one major problem.
Most of your competitors are likely telling a very similar story.
Since the narratives are mostly the same, you must find a way to deliver your story in a way that distinguishes you from the pack (especially as more and more consumers are turning to the internet to research and purchase insurance policies that work for them and their families). One way to do that is by investing in marketing automation for insurance marketers. This software empowers insurers with the tools they need to accomplish much more with fewer resources and less time spent creating and executing campaigns and processes — and will allow you to focus more on signing new clients and upselling existing customers.
Let’s examine three marketing automation uses cases for insurance brokerages to give you a better understanding of how this powerful software can differentiate your brokerage in an extremely crowded and competitive market.
1) Attract New Prospects With Gated Content
Back in the day, insurance agencies could rely on their local reputation to generate word-of-mouth referrals, but we now live in a more complicated time. Insurers have to prove their worth on a daily basis and must fight tooth and nail for each and every policy.
The bigger challenge is that most of this fighting now occurs online, where customers have the freedom to evaluate various options simultaneously. And to stand out, insurance brokerages have to find a way to capture their target customers’ contact information to engage with them on a more personal level.
The opening round of this battle involves using the digital tools at your disposal to attract prospects that fit your business model, which is no easy feat considering the saturated insurance market. Thankfully, marketing automation can help you attract new prospects at the top of the funnel with gated content housed on engaging landing pages.
Landing pages are an integral part of your paid digital marketing strategy. Their purpose is to allow you to promote relevant content and offers and, in turn, collect contact information that you can use to continue to engage and nurture leads through compelling customer journeys. In order to secure that conversion, you will need to gate an offer enticing the user to convert behind a brief form. This offer might be a content asset like an eBook (e.g., “Car Insurance for New Drivers”) or a special discount for moving to a new policy.
The copy of your landing page should address the user’s needs and include the keywords they likely used to click on your ad, social media post, or email CTA. The goal of a landing page is to generate leads, so aim to keep your content brief and don’t try for the hard-sell at this stage.
Here’s a rough outline of how to structure your landing page content.
- Start with a compelling headline that gets your visitors excited about what you’re offering.
- Add a brief introductory paragraph addressing the challenge that your offer or asset proposes to solve.
- Below this first paragraph, include a brief list of bullet points that summarize what you’re offering on the page.
- The final step is to include a sentence with a strong call-to-action (CTA) urging the user to complete your form to receive their content asset or other offer.
Lastly, you need to create a brief contact form that the prospect must complete before receiving your offer. Forms should always be placed above-the-fold (before the user has to scroll down for more information) and include a prominent headline instructing the user what to do and why to do it.
For example, you might want to say something like, “Schedule Your Free Bundled Policy Consultation!” The form itself should only include the fields necessary for your agents to follow-up, so be sure to ask for the user’s name and email address. If your brokerage offers different types of insurance policies, you should include a drop-down menu asking the user to choose which type(s) of insurance (home, auto, health, etc.) they’re interested in. This will help you segment your leads for better nurturing and more effective sales conversations.
The best marketing automation platforms will take things one major step further by including a feature known as progressive profiling. Progressive profiling is a process that involves creating dynamic forms that change over time as you gather more information on a lead. As users complete more forms, the fields will automatically update — allowing you to avoid repetitive questions and learn more about your prospective policyholders over time. By learning more about your leads, you’re able to deliver more targeted messaging and content in your lead nurturing campaigns.
Speaking of which…
Marketing Automation for Insurance Organizations
2) Segment and Nurture Insurance Prospects for More Lucrative Sales
Most insurance agencies offer several different types of insurance products, as well as multiple policies within each type that are designed to fit their customers’ unique needs. With all these diverse products being tailored for dozens (if not hundreds) of different audiences, you can’t deliver the same messaging and content to all of your prospects and customers.
This is where marketing segmentation plays a crucial role. Segmentation is the process of dividing prospects, leads, and customers into different groups based on certain demographics, firmographics, and behaviors. The idea being that specific segments of consumers who share many of the same traits will likely respond similarly to marketing and advertising initiatives.
With the right marketing automation platform, segmentation really is a breeze. With just a few easy steps, you can segment your target audiences and start delivering winning campaigns.
- Set the conditions for how you’d like to segment your leads. For instance, someone who completes a form requesting an auto insurance quote on your website would be added to a list of auto insurance leads.
- Create the operation that will occur when your conditions are met. So, in the example above, whenever anyone completes that form, they will be added to your list of auto insurance leads.
- Determine any actions that will trigger when new leads are added to your list. Common actions include sales notifications, automated lead nurturing emails, and paid remarketing tactics.
Once you understand who you’re targeting, the segmentation process becomes so much easier. At the outset, however, there’s a heavy content lift to satisfy each stage of the sales funnel.
- Top (TOFU): eBooks, Blogs, Infographics
- Middle (MOFU): Industry Reports, Webinars/Videos, Checklists
- Bottom (BOFU): Datasheets, Product Whitepapers, Success Stories
Once you have created all of this content, you’ll need to organize it to fit each of your audience segments (new homeowners, safe drivers, budget health, etc.). Then you should draft a series of simple and direct emails for each topic you want to discuss. Each email should include a CTA linking to a content asset or contact form. We usually include 4-6 emails per campaign, but this number will vary based on the amount of good content you have in your stable and the average sales cycle for your policies.
The final email should summarize everything you’ve delivered so far and provide links to the assets you’ve previously shared. The primary CTA for this final email should be to complete a form to schedule an appointment with your agency or to purchase a new policy directly from your website.
Now that you’ve finalized your content and written your emails, it’s time to launch your automated email nurture campaigns. You should set your email drip campaigns to trigger whenever someone completes a form on your website or on one of the landing pages we discussed above. You can also create a regular cadence for when you send these emails, as well as if/then logic that can either change or terminate the campaign based on how your recipients are interacting with your communications.
By delivering consistent messages to specific audience segments according to a regular cadence, you’ll remain top-of-mind with your prospects. You’ll also be better positioned to offer valuable content that leads your prospective policyholders toward more informed decision-making.
3) Follow-Up With Stagnant Opportunities
Understand that individuals and families researching their insurance options have a lot of choices and will probably scan the playing field before making their final decision. That doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten about you or moved on, but it’s still nice to give them a gentle reminder if you haven’t heard from them in a while. Insurance prospects can be hard to come by, so when you’re able to attract promising leads, you need to keep them in your sales funnel.
Let’s say a young married father of two clicked on one of your agency’s Google ads for supplemental health insurance for his family. He downloaded a datasheet from your landing page explaining his options and outlining the policies you sell. A week later, he visited your site once again and, after browsing a bit, requested a quote. Unfortunately, that was a month ago, and you haven’t heard anything since.
Naturally, you’re probably frustrated that such a great opportunity slipped through your fingertips. Well, with marketing automation, there’s something you can do about it! Consider this: have you ever abandoned a website shopping cart only to magically get a reminder email a few days later? That’s marketing automation in action, and you can do the same thing with prospective policyholders who go silent.
Similar to the nurture program we discussed above, you can deliver follow-up emails to existing leads and customers to follow-up on open opportunities. Here’s how!
- Create a workflow that includes all prospects who complete a form or request a policy but don’t make a purchase.
- Set the condition that everyone who falls into this category receives an email with a special offer or discount.
- You can filter those who don’t respond or take action into a new nurture campaign that addresses their pain points and keeps your brokerage top-of-mind. This way, when they’re ready to make a purchase, they’ll know who to contact.
Persistence is key in insurance marketing. You don’t want to overwhelm your prospects, but you do want to gently remind them of how you can help satisfy their needs as you guide them through a smooth customer journey. Follow-up email sends to existing leads is a great way to keep them interested in everything you have to offer.
Insurers Trust Act-On Marketing Automation to Get the Job Done
These are just three common use cases for marketing automation in the insurance industry. Our insurance agency customers find new and interesting ways to use this software every day and often share their success with us. If you’d like to read more about how some of these companies are using Act-On, please click the links below.
You can also read more about marketing automation for insurance brokerages by downloading our free eBook, “5 Marketing Challenges Facing Insurance Brokerages.” It’s packed full of great information about what marketing automation is, how it helps insurers improve marketing processes and results, and why it’s the perfect fit for your agency. Click the link below to download your copy today!
Lastly, if you’re ready to learn more about Act-On’s marketing automation solution, our team of experts would love to speak with you about your current situation and how our software can help you take your agency to the next level. Simply click here to request a demo with a marketing automation specialist.