Email Marketing in 2022
Here’s what insurance agents can expect to learn from the article:
- The benefits and ROI of email marketing
- What to do before sending your first email
- How to create an effective email campaign
- Email marketing examples for insurance
- Ways to improve your email marketing
Why Use Email Marketing?
Email remains one of the most effective marketing strategies available to insurance agents. Here are a few reasons why:
Email Sees Global Usage: Over half the world’s population uses email for communication, giving agents a far wider pool of potential customers.
Email has Fantastic ROI: According to Constant Contact, the return on investment for email marketing is incredible 36 to 1.
Email Users are Active: Data from OptinMonster shows that the majority of email users (99%) open their inbox one or more times a day, and often do so before any other platform (social media, Google, or news outlets).
Before you can tap into the benefits of email marketing, you’ll need to develop a strategy. Here’s how.
Developing an Email Marketing Strategy
1. Establish Your Goals
What are you trying to achieve with your campaign? Consider the end result you want to accomplish, then build your campaigns around that goal.
Are you attempting to convert email subscribers? Trying to retain customers with a newsletter? Improve your current email marketing metrics?
Of course, you don’t need to select just one strategy. The key is to establish an objective for each campaign to help keep it on track.
2. Understand Your Audience
Who are your readers? What are your current customers like? Understanding your audience can help you determine the type of messaging that will work best.
Here are a few ways to learn more about your audience:
- Listen for common language amongst your target audience and mirror it in your messaging.
- Record common questions you receive and address them through your content.
- Conduct A/B testing to learn what your audience considers interesting.
3. Set Up an Email Schedule
How often will you send emails? This will depend on the first two items on this list, but also on how much content your team can create.
The best time to send emails is often in the morning (following the stats in tip 1). But, this could be different depending on your audience.
So, be sure to track your open and click rates, and continue testing to see if different send times produce different results.
4. Track the Right Metrics
Most agents have access to data tracking and analytics. But in a lot of cases, the wrong numbers are being used to measure performance.
The metrics you want to track include:
- Click-Through-Rate: Opening your email is the first step, but engaging it is the goal. This metric will help measure whether readers are clicking the content of your email.
- Subscribe and Unsubscribe: Does your audience consider your email content valuable?
- Open-Rate: Though not as important as click-through, your open rate is used to measure the effectiveness of your subject lines – the first barrier to email engagement.
- Website Traffic: What pages are your readers headed to? How can you include these in your email campaigns?
5. Check Your Landing Pages
Your email content should direct your readers to your website or another relevant page. So be sure to optimize your pages to coincide with your original message.
This will increase the effectiveness of your message and help ensure the goals you set for your campaign.
Anatomy of an Effective Email
6. Follow the 4 Guidelines of an Effective Email
An effective email is:
- Relevant: Contains information and offers the reader will find interesting
- Timely: Is up-to-date with current information, trends, and events
- Trustworthy: Includes information from reputable sources
- Personalized: Demonstrates an understanding of the reader
These guidelines are demonstrated through your subject line, content, copy, and CTA. So be sure that each of these sections supports at least one of the guidelines above.
7. Write a Click-Worthy Subject Line
Your subject line is incredibly important. It’s the first thing readers will see and should compel them to click your email to read on. Without an effective subject line, your content, copy, and CTA will fall flat.
Here’s how you can write an effective subject line:
- Use language that evokes an emotion or response – curiosity and urgency are two of the most popular.
- Make your subject line short and sweet by focusing on the exact value your reader will receive by clicking.
- Personalize it with the recipient’s name or highlight why the content you’re sharing is particularly useful to this reader.
8. Include Relevant and Timely Content
Relevant content is informative, timely, and personal. It should share information that your specific reader will find interesting.
This does not need to be just articles. Customers also enjoy learning about your team and company’s values.
Consider a few of these examples for your future content:
- Showcase your team members
- Demonstrate community involvement
- Provide advice, tips, and news
- Nurture current relationships with celebrations
- Increase sales gen with proactive offers
9. Write Strong Copy
Your email copy needs to be quick and valuable to retain your reader’s attention. So be sure to edit any emails you write to cut out any unnecessary information.
Here are a few tips to follow for writing strong email copy:
- Pay attention to formatting – readers don’t want a wall of text. Provide sufficient spacing and make sure your copy is skimmable. Use bullet points when appropriate.
- Keep your message conversational – it should feel personal, not like a sales pitch.
- Use the same language as your reader to increase personalization.
10. Create a Powerful CTA
Your call-to-action should wrap up your email and drive readers to the next step. Most of the time, a CTA appears at the bottom of your message.
But, don’t be afraid to mix things up. Here are a few tips for creating a powerful CTA:
- Use branded colors to draw the reader’s attention to your CTA button
- Make your CTA enticing by using language that emphasizes the benefits of clicking
- Use more than one CTA, if appropriate, by focusing on different benefits. Just make sure these CTAs share a common goal.
The Best Types of Emails for Insurance Agents
Here are some of the best types of emails insurance agents can use in 2022.
11. Newsletters
Use these to provide updates on your company, content, and initiatives, including:
- Client Celebrations: Find creative ways to celebrate your clients with competitions, or birthdays.
- Promote Charities: Highlight the charities you work with and what your business is doing to support them.
- Celebrate Feedback: Receive a good review? Share it with your contacts to help retain clients and promote future feedback.
12. Testimonial Requests
Positive reviews are fantastic for business. And by using your email contacts, you can acquire more.
To do so, write a request to your clients. Show appreciation for their business and tell them the benefits of a review. Then, make writing one easy for them. Make sure you have a Google My Business established to provide a catch-all and improve your website’s SEO.
13. Cross-Sell
Many of your clients may have only one type of insurance with your business. Tap into this contact as an opportunity to share your other products.
Be sure to show the value of your offer and include personalization when possible.
14. Customer Onboarding
A customer onboarding process helps establish expectations for new customers – improving retention and demonstrating appreciation and value.
Here’s an example on-boarding process your agency can use:
- First Email: Tells the customer you’re excited to work with them and provides expectations
- Second Email: Reinforces the agent’s role and recommends a communication schedule
- Third Email: Provides tips for filing claims and further reinforces the agent’s role
15. Lead Nurturing
Lead nurturing campaigns are campaigns that slowly “drip” on prospects to convert them to customers.
Like other emails, these should be personalized and share relevant content to show the benefits of your products and services.
When possible, utilize data to make your message more powerful. For example, what emails have your prospects opened and read in the past?
16. Account Review
These emails show your recipients that you’re up-to-date on their needs. Doing so helps retain customers while potentially selling more products and services.
Of course, you don’t want these emails to feel spammy, so they won’t be sent very often. For example, this email could be triggered at 5 and 10 months after account activation and repeated yearly.
Improving Your Email Marketing
Ensuring your emails are relevant, timely, trustworthy, and personalized can take a lot of time. But with the right marketing automation tools, you can set yourself up for email marketing success.
Upgrade Your Email Marketing with Fuse
Using Fuse™ marketing automation, insurance agents can tap into their management system’s data to craft and deliver an array of relevant, personalized emails.
With built-in analytics and pre-made content and campaigns, it’s easier and faster than ever to delight clients, sell more policies, and streamline your operations.
Click below to learn more about Fuse™ marketing automation, and discover how it can help your agency leverage the best practices above.