Michael Jans, President
Insurance Profit Systems
For more information,
send an email to
seriousbusiness
@zipdrip.com
Finally, Agents Are Making Serious Money on the Internet. Here’s What They’re Doing...
Business is turning to the Internet – and some are making it work. Here’s the latest news: commercial email is expected to increase 40-fold by 2005, with marketers spending about $7.3 billion a year to send it.
Why is that hidden tidbit of news important to insurance agents? Three reasons:
- First, recognize the reason that email marketing is expected to boom. Thousands of consumers are signing up daily – and it’s not just young people and “techies” anymore. Consumers are getting comfortable with email – and that means they’ll pay attention to the right kind of email message. (Keep reading to find out what that it...)
- That also means it will get crowded – meaning that now is the time to implement your email marketing strategy.
- Marketers are giddy about the unique intersection of urgency and "free delivery" - never even approached by any other media. Those same communication benefits - urgency and "free" - are ripe for agents to nurture existing clients and recruit new customers.
The window is closing. Soon, this highway will be crowded.
1. More urgent than your website.
Many agents are "under-whelmed" with the amount of activity their website generates compared to the effort that went into it. Making money with a website requires a lot of time, effort and skill - and a lot of those skills didn't exist five years ago.
Email marketing, however:
- offers immediate results,
- requires much less effort,
- and may be the single most powerful traffic generator for your website itself.
Moral: execute your email strategy first. (Dirty little secret among the internet marketers who are making “real” money. They figured out that their email strategy is more important than their website.)
2. Immediately capture email addresses.
Examine all points of customer contact. Add an "email capture" component to each one. Then, by mail and phone, contact your existing customers requesting their email addresses. A friendly high school student with a script can follow up on everyone who didn't respond to your written request. Make sure your automation system includes a required line in the database for email addresses. (You can also download powerful direct response postcards and letters designed to get email addresses from your clients from www.zipdrip.com. ZIPDRIP is an automatic email marketing system designed for insurance agents.)
3. Never spam.
Observe the rules of email etiquette. Your best list is your customer list. Your second best list is your own "inbound prospect list:" people who have expressed an interest in you. You may also consider testing an "endorsed list," for example, an association that has given you permission to send a value-added message to their members. Approach any rented or purchased list with extreme caution. But don’t “spam.” The broadcast mailing of unsolicited email can result in the loss of you internet service!
4. The care and feeding of your email strategy.
Care and feeding are the operative words for your email messages. This is not the environment for the hard sell. This is the place to add to the "relationship bank account" by providing short, but important value-added messages. Be a risk manager. Take care of your clients.
One of my favorite strategies is a "Safety Reminder Service." Design twelve seasonally appropriate safety, protection or insurance related messages and set up a monthly "drip" of valuable reminders to your audience. Invite them to contact your office for more information or special reports on topics of interest. (Visit www.zipdrip.com for samples of educational/nurturing messages.)
5. Use "groups" to organize your list.
To add more punch to your message, you may want to segment your list into natural groups, such as niche markets or commercial versus personal lines customers. Your email software application should let you organize them into "groups." Use the "bcc" function of your email program to hide the names of the members. Of course, for the most "punch," a programmer could dynamically personalize every message. More money, but lots more impact. (Again, you can use a service like www.zipdrip.com to group your market into natural segments. Even better, this service will personalize every single message you mail! Every message can look like a personal note from you.)
6. Use the tools and rules of High Impact Marketing.
Even though it's a "softer sell," all the principles of High Impact Marketing apply here.
- Use your "subject line" as a compelling headline.
- Use conversational tone, like you're writing to a friend you care about.
- Use bullet points to call attention to important points.
- Add value to the people you’re writing. You're not their to talk about you!
- Insert some legitimate urgency.
- Give them a compelling reason to contact your office for more.
- Sign off with your name, and add a "PS."
7. Enable the "signature" function.
Use the "signature" function on your email program to deliver a short, intriguing message. For example:
*****************************************
For a FREE Report on 8 Ways to Save
Money on Your Automobile Insurance,
Call ABC Insurance at (555)123-4567.
Written by Agency President, Bob Jackson.
*****************************************
8. Hot link to your website.
Want to drive traffic to your website? By now, you've got a captive audience, your email recipients. Earn their trust and give them a compelling reason to jump to your site, and they can do it with a simple "click here: http://www.abcinsurance.com for a special report on how to [fill in the blanks].
Summary: proactive marketers can't afford to miss this opportunity, but the window is closing rapidly. Get help if you need to, but you'll find this is a powerful part of your overall marketing strategy. For a free course on how to make money on the internet, visit www.zipdrip.com.
Michael Jans, CAE is the President and founder of Insurance Profit Systems and creator of the Quantum Club Coaching Program. You can contact him - or get his weekly marketing tips for P&C agents - on www.insurancemarketingtips.com -- or by calling his office at (360) 574-2400.
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Insurance Profit Systems 3205 NE 78th St., Suite 104 Vancouver, WA 98665 Voice: (800) 606-0477 | Fax: (360) 571-7600 seriousbusiness@zipdrip.com |
