Having a successful email marketing campaign isn’t nearly as difficult as a lot of business owners make it out to be.  If you’ve spoken to a business owner recently and been told that email marketing doesn’t work, there’s one easy explanation for this:

They’re not doing it right.

Want to know how to keep and build leads into customers for your insurance agency business?  Then read on.

Be sure to check out our FREE Ebook, “How Successful Insurance Agencies Grow Their Business Using Inbound Marketing” to learn how to generate more traffic and leads to your website. 

Make sure they want your Emails in the First Place

First order of business: making sure that you obtained their email address in an ethical manner.  This means having them sign up for a newsletter or providing their email address in another way that first requires their approval.

I always suggest to my clients that they have a “double opt-in” option.  What this means is that after a visitor “subscribes” to your email list, you send out a secondary email to their email address asking for them to reconfirm their subscription by clicking a link. This ensures that you are in compliance with the CAN-SPAM act, and it will help keep your email messages out of their spam mail folders.

Know what they’re Interested In

As an insurance agency, you can have all kinds of people coming to your site for advice and information on a variety of different insurance policies.  When you create your newsletter or email contact list landing page or form for people to sign up, make sure it has some parameters set up that will help you define what kind of insurance they want (i.e. if a visitor wants pet insurance, make sure they have to specify this in some way on the form.  Sending these leads emails about home insurance would be a waste of your time and effort).

TIP:  If you invest in a quality CMS program, you can easily have all of these preferences listed to help you keep your leads organized and in order.  Most CMS programs can also be scheduled to send out tailored emails to your leads too, saving you a whole lot of time.

One good way to get people to sign up for an email marketing campaign is to begin by creating something free and that is of value.  For example, start off by creating a free Ebook for each of the different insurance policies that you offer.  You can then advertise your free Ebook on your social media accounts, through your blog, your site, landing pages, and through pay per click campaigns.

80% Content, 20% Sales

The goal of an email marketing campaign isn’t to make a quick sale.  The purpose of an email marketing campaign is to help build up a lead’s trust in you.  It’s to help bring your particular insurance agency to the forefront of their mind whenever they think, “I need to get some travel insurance!” or, “It’s time to renew our auto insurance.”  The best way to do this is to send out emails that offer quality information that people want, rather than sales emails that no one likes.

Providing quality content doesn’t have to be difficult.  You can curate current content on your site that you’ve provided throughout the week, and provide links to other existing content on your site that helps support the purpose of your email.  Mixed in your content you can always do a bit of advertising, but don’t be too obvious about it.  For example, you can suggest that you offer a particular type of travel insurance to anyone who may be going to Mexico and then move right along to the next bit of quality content.

TIP:  When creating your emails, make sure that the “subject” line of each email specifically states what the email is about.  Don’t attempt to mislead anyone about the content of your email, otherwise you may find yourself blocked by an ISP.

Always Include your Contact Details

Though a visitor may have signed up for your newsletter, they may not always remember where they signed up for it, or to which business it’s linked to.  On all of your emails that you send out, make sure that you include a full signature that includes your name, your position with the company, your website, phone number, fax number, as well as any social media links or handles that you may want to include.  You want to make it as easy as possible for people to find you and contact you when they need your business.

Key Takeaways:

Being in compliance with CAN-SPAM and offering great content are the two best things that will help you build your leads into real customers with an email marketing campaign.  Add in a few freebies and incentives and you’re sure to make them a customer when they need to purchase insurance.

Need Help?

If you’re an insurance agency looking to generate more leads from your email marketing, contact us today to schedule your free marketing analysis.