Running a small business can be a challenge. Chances are you’re the accountant, the marketer, the customer service representative, and about ten other roles. It can be hard to find the time to finish your to-do list, let alone grow your insurance business.

Insurance agency marketing can be especially difficult, particularly during a pandemic and recession. But it doesn’t have to be. Through a little investment in technology, there are simple steps you can take to ease your workload and let you focus on the big picture with insurance sales automation.

Automating your insurance agency’s marketing efforts is one of the easiest and most crucial actions you can take to save yourself valuable time. The right email marketing software can collect useful data and stay in touch with your customers. Automatic social media campaigns can raise visibility for your business and build your brand. Learn how — after some intentional effort upfront — you won’t have to lift a finger for your insurance company’s marketing to be effective. 

Insurance agency marketing automation

You don’t need a computer science degree to make use of automation. In fact, automated marketing features are designed to be as easy as possible to set up and use. 

Here we’ll dive into a few of the ways you can make automatic email and social media marketing work for your insurance business.

Email marketing features offer many useful gadgets you can put to use in just a few clicks. Email is still one of the most successful marketing strategies available, and automating the process makes it even more simple and effective. You can program everything from welcome emails to upselling and get a wealth of customer data back in the process. 

Welcome emails‌

An automated welcome series for new customers creates a good first impression. It can make the customer feel like they’ve become a part of something by using your company. 

An effective welcome series should include two to three emails:

• The first welcome email should thank them for their business.
• The second email should invite them to connect by following you on social media, signing up for your newsletter, or getting a free insurance quote.
• The third email (optional) should ask them for a little more information so you can get to know your customers. Include a clear explanation of how you’ll use that information. 

A welcome series lets the customer know you care, offers additional incentives for them to keep shopping with you, and can get you more data. And it’s all done automatically.

You can use an additional email series to nurture new leads — for example, someone who’s visited your site but hasn’t made a purchase yet. Short, pre-programmed reminders may entice them enough to come back and purchase an insurance policy or at least speak with a representative.

Transactional emails

These are the emails a customer gets when they make a purchase, confirm an appointment, or finish some other kind of transaction through your website. It automatically confirms their action and provides relevant details — like purchase total or appointment time — for their records. 

Automating these messages saves you time and gives the customer peace of mind. Purchase confirmation emails also let you upsell and cross-sell by recommending similar or complementary policies. The system even researches what products to recommend for them, basing suggestions on the customer’s past activity and purchases.

If someone visits your page to get a quote, automated reminder emails can‌ keep you top of mind, so they remember to come back. The same goes for if they browse but don’t complete the process of getting a quote or purchasing an insurance plan. An automated email might offer to answer any questions they have and include a link to schedule an appointment with a representative.

Click segmentation‌

Click segmentation will segment your audience into smaller, more specific groups based on what they click on when reading an email. It sorts people into groups according to their interests so that you can send them more targeted emails later on.

You can segment audiences by: 

• Demographic
• Location
• Past buying behaviors‌‌

Click segmentation is arguably one of the most important elements of automated email marketing because it helps you send the right message to the right people. Targeting your marketing emails to specific demographics — say college-aged women looking for an affordable policy — will have exponentially higher open and click-through rates than scattershot marketing tactics. It’s like having your own team of robot marketers.

Customer Feedback‌

Another critically important tool that automated email marketing gives you is the customer review. Your email list gives you a direct line to reach out to your customer base and ask for feedback.

Customer reviews help you find out what you’re doing right and what you can change, straight from the source. If there’s a design flaw with your mobile app and people can’t make their policy payment, you can correct it in the next iteration. If part of your website lags or a form isn’t working, you can fix it. 

Encourage your customers to leave a review on sites like Google and Yelp if they’ve enjoyed your service. The more positive reviews you have, the more people can find you, and the better your business looks. 

Once you’ve built up some reviews, you can take the time to respond to them. And it’s important you do so, whether they’re good or bad. But the data gathering part — the encouraging customers to leave their thoughts — can be done with zero effort on your part. 

Automate your social media marketing campaigns

Remembering to post regularly on social media can be exhausting. There’s pressure to put out content to stay relevant constantly, plus the threat of distraction whenever we log on. Automated social media marketing can get rid of that headache. 

Instead of making each post manually across multiple social media accounts, use a tool that lets you manage everything in one place. The latest software lets you create posts in bulk and schedule them later, creating less stress for you. 

The best social media management software lets you engage with your audience from your dashboard without switching between apps. Analytics data gives you valuable insights on who your audience is — how old they are, where they’re located, what their interests are, and more. That’s data you can use to laser focus your marketing. 

Give it a shot‌

Now that you know what insurance agency marketing automation can do for you give it a try! It’s simple to set up, and the dividends it pays are well worth the effort. Set up marketing automation for email and social media, make a plan, and see how it goes.

Not sure what to do for your first automation campaign? Try one of these ideas:

• Share industry news, tips, and commentary. What are the latest developments in the insurance world your clients should know about? How can they better navigate that industry? Create a campaign around providing value through expert insight.
• Announce upcoming events in your industry. Are you hosting an online webinar on insurance basics? Want to see who’s going to the latest industry conference? Share and promote it on social media with automated posts.
• Show appreciation for your customers and clients. Highlight someone who benefitted from your service or who let you know they had a great experience. Have a customer appreciation event and talk about it on social media. Send automated emails inviting people to come. 
• Provide answers to frequently asked questions. Showcase your industry expertise by answering common questions in your industry via social media. Set up a poll beforehand to see which questions people want to have answered the most, then answer them in posts or even via live video.

Using effective marketing for insurance sales automation provides multiple effective ways to engage with and get feedback from your audience. Automated marketing for insurance agencies is easy to set up. 

‌Want to know even more tips on running a successful insurance business? Check out our free marketing guide The Download, to help you gain a competitive edge in your industry.

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