Effective Insurance Email Marketing

“Is email marketing dead?”

Email marketing is the grand-daddy of interactive online marketing. Email marketing has been around for more than 15 years. It is directly or indirectly related to the advent of every other interactive communication platform, including instant messaging, texting, social media, forum interaction and more.
But, email marketing remains one of the hardest strategies to implement for an insurance agency (or any business for that matter). The challenges abound:

1. Deliverability – getting past spam filters and into the recipient inbox.
2. Lack of client/prospect email addresses.
3. Little knowledge on how to mine the management system for this precious information.
4. No creative expertise to design good email.
5. Who is going to write the content?
6. How are we going to track the campaigns? Are we getting results?

Capturing email addresses

Most of the agencies that I talk to have been negligent in capturing valid email addresses from their clients. Here are some common reasons:

1. CSRs and producers forget to ask.
2. Clients object, and the agency is not trained to handle the objection.
3. No clearly defined process for capturing emails – how to ask, how to record, how to mine and so on.
4. Popular older version management systems only have one repurposed field for email addresses, so producers and CS’s capture email addresses separated by commas or semi colons or spaces contributing to data inconsistencies.

Simple & practical solutions

So, we all know the problems. What about some solutions?
Let’s start by accepting responsibility for the fact that we didn’t make the collection of our client’s emails a strategy. Let’s do this now! Make this a priority.
Some agencies can use a giveaway strategy to collect email addresses, others could take the approach of submitting contact information to a third-party service that will collect the email addresses and return the information.
Then follow these steps:

1. Appoint a single, responsible and reliable person to be in charge of the project. Give him/her (let’s call this person, Sally Joe) a clear goal – 75% of all clients need to have email addresses in the system in 90 days.
2. Email your entire team of staff and producers – “Collection of email addresses is now a top priority for the agency. Sally Joe has been appointed to provide you with a script that will help you. Sally Joe will also conduct a simple training session in the conference room at [insert date/time here]. We have a goal to collect at least [500] client email addresses in the next [90] days.
3. Develop a script with Sally Joe and design a simple implementation plan.
4. Every week (yes every Monday) – send out a follow up email or announcement reinforcing the agency’s goal of obtaining client email addresses.
5. Measure every 30 days and adjust the pressure and need for team support accordingly.

Mining the data

Most agencies use a management system from either Applied Systems (TAM) or Vertafore (AMS). Someone in your agency attends all the training sessions or you have a resident expert. Tap into that person to get in touch with the software vendor to get a detailed step by step instruction on how to mine the system for your clients’ basic contact information. You will want the following:

1. First Name, Last Name, Phone Number, State and Email Address
2. List separated by the following main categories
1. Personal Lines
2. Commercial Lines
3. Life/Health and Benefits
3. Additional segregation if you want to be more targeted in your efforts:
1. Personal Lines
1. Monoline Auto
2. Monoline Home
3. Fixed Life
2. Commercial Line segmentation and so on; this will vary depending on your book.

What is your client receptive to?

I am told quite frequently from Agencies that they tried email marketing and got no results. Most of these agencies were expecting immediate sales opportunities. That’s the wrong approach to email marketing.
Email marketing is similar to radio in the sense that it is one piece of the marketing puzzle and is a medium that is designed to communicate trust and credibility with your audience. And consistency is the name of the game.
Insurance is not something consumers necessarily see as something to get passionate or emotional about. Consumers only care about saving money, getting value, and a subliminal sense of feeling good about the agency (YOU) on whom they depend. They will consume your content and not care enough to respond unless your call to action touches them enough to compel them to respond.
If you send your client base an article about how to prepare for the upcoming fire season, or get your house ready for winter, then don’t expect a response because you sent out an informational piece.
If you send an email that tells the reader that your agency is actively partnered with a local non-profit working toward a cure for cancer, and you are inviting them to participate in a luncheon next Saturday and will donate [$5] for every one who registers and attends (insert registration link), and they should invite their friends too, then you will get more tangible results. And, if you choose to take the opportunity to educate and cross sell the captive audience that attends the luncheon then you are going to end up with a lot more sales opportunities.
As a footnote to this section – the more targeted your message is, the more successful it will be.

Creative Juices

Emails do not have to be visually creative in terms of graphic design to be successful. So, don’t let the fact that you do not have the budget or resources for a graphic designer stop you.
Besides, the more graphics and HTML you have in your email, the less likely you are to get your message through increasingly strict spam filters.

Writing effective content

Anyone can write effective email marketing content. I am serious. All you have to do is follow some simple rules:

1. Have a singular message – this is the time to be crystal clear.
2. Subject Line & Opening Sentence – engaging subject lines should be contiguous with your opening sentence.
3. Be Brief – people have less time these days; give them a simple, easy to read message.
4. Call to Action – Have one, and communicate it clearly.
5. Avoid spam trigger words such as ‘free’, ‘guaranteed,’ and ‘offer.’
6. Follow CAN/SPAM rules. You can Google this to get the details.

The mobile factor

Accordingly to various recent studies people spend more time on their mobile devices than on traditional computers. This means you have less screen real estate, less patience and more distractions with which to contend.
In addition, many cell phone users don’t have the newer browsers, so, they view your message in a text-only version.
Email messages can be sent in multipart form and can render HTML or text depending on browser recognition, but this is often overlooked by email marketers.

Getting through spam filters

Spam filters are getting more sophisticated every day, and at the time of this edit (Feb 2014), appear to be ahead of spammers in terms of sophistication. They work in tandem with email and server blacklists along with content inspection services and algorithms. In addition, your sending domain and sending servers need to be set up just right for maximum email penetration.
Message content –

1. Keep HTML to a minimum.
2. Avoid Spam words
3. Follow CAN/SPAM rules.

Technical details –

1. RDNS - make sure the server you send from has appropriate Reverse Domain Name System records.
2. SPF – Sender Policy Framework (txt DNS records) are increasingly relevant these days. These records tell the receiving mail server that the sending server is a valid, allowed server/IP address.
3. Sending Server Reputation - use a tool like Senderbase.org (Cisco) to check the reputation of your sending network.
4. Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) lets an organization take responsibility for a message that is in transit.  The organization is a handler of the message, either as its originator or as an intermediary. The organization’s reputation is the basis for evaluating whether to trust the message for further handling, such as delivery.

Outsource, Insource or Both?

So, all of this can be overwhelming, especially if you consider that the landscape is changing constantly. Is outsourcing a preferred option?
In many cases, outsourcing is the smart thing to do. The questions you have to answer about your agency’s capabilities are plenty.

Helpful Links - Client Newsletters, Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing

Here is a decision tree that might help:

Useful Tools & Resources

1. MXToolbox.com – DNS, Reverse DNS, Blacklist Check, SPF record checks.
2. Senderbase.org – IP reputation check.
3. Spam Checker/s -
1. http://www.emailspamtest.com/
2. http://www.americaint.com/spam-filter-messagetest/spam-checker.html
4. Spam Words List - http://blog.mannixmarketing.com/2009/08/spam-trigger-words/

Recap

Email marketing is still one of the most cost effective ways to communicate with prospects and clients. The more targeted the message, the more successful your efforts will be.
You need to be consistent and treat every email blast as important as the last, making sure to send emails with regularity.
Outsourcing your content and campaign might be the preferred route based on your internal capabilities. There are many outsourcing options.
Email marketing is not a strategy on its own, it should be a piece of your overall marketing strategy to survive and thrive in this ever increasing industry of ours.