Email plays an incredibly important role in insurance marketing outreach because it’s a relatively low-cost and intimate form of marketing that has tremendous upside.
First impressions matter, and successful email marketing campaigns start with engaging subject lines.
Subject lines are the first thing recipients see when your message pops up in their inbox. As such, subject lines can determine whether your audience actually opens your message. While a great subject line increases the chances that someone engages with your email, a bad one might lead to your message being ignored—or, worse yet, marked as spam.
Consider these statistics compiled by HubSpot:
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35 percent of emails are opened based on the subject line alone.
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21 percent of recipients mark emails as spam even when they know the message isn’t spam.
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58 percent of adults check email first thing in the morning.
Taken together, these figures highlight the importance of email marketing and, more specifically, how a well-written subject line encourages desired actions (and how a poorly written one encourages undesired actions).
With that in mind, let’s take a look at five tips you can employ to close more insurance deals through successful email campaigns.
1. Personalize each message
Research shows that click-through rates increase when subject lines contain the recipient’s first name. That’s awesome! But you’re probably wondering where you’ll find the time to enter every customer’s name manually.
Great news: With the right tools, you don’t have to type anyone’s name to personalize your outreach. For example, today’s leading CRM systems provide personalization tokens that enable you to automatically address each recipient by their first name in the subject line—in just a few clicks.
Learn more about How to Choose the Right Insurance Agent CRM Software here.
2. Use emojis when it makes sense
Notice how your inbox is increasingly filled with subject lines that contain emojis? It’s not by accident. A recent study found that 56 percent of brands that used emojis in subject lines experienced higher open rates. It comes as no surprise, then, that another study revealed that the use of emojis in email marketing increased 775 percent between 2015 and 2016.
All this said, you likely don’t want to use emojis in every single insurance marketing email you send out. And when you do, use them sparingly. You shouldn’t include multiple emojis in the same message. But when the time is right and the content warrants it, emojis can encourage recipients to open messages they might otherwise ignore.
3. Avoid the word “newsletter”
You shouldn’t spam your email list with constant updates. But you should keep your contacts in the loop. A monthly newsletter is a great way to do that.
But you probably shouldn’t actually call it a newsletter. Research suggests that including the word “newsletter” in your subject line decreases open rates by 18.7 percent. You’re best off avoiding the word altogether and naming it something else.
4. Keep your subject lines short
The longer a subject line gets, the less likely it is that the recipient will open the email.
Emails with subject lines of 6-10 words are most likely to be opened, the data suggests—so keep it short. Here are some examples:
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Your personalized insurance plan is here
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Are you and your loved ones insured?
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An easy way to protect your future today
Bottom line: Don’t write a novel. Your audience won’t read it.
5. Create a sense of urgency
Scarcity is influential. When there’s a finite amount of something that we agree has worth, we place an increasing amount of value in it. Look no further than gold, bitcoin, and tulips.
Building on this principle, urgency can encourage desired actions—even in email marketing. Use wording like “act now,” “three days left,” or “this deal ends soon” to grab your audience’s attention.
When we think we might miss out on getting a great deal by waiting too long, we may be more inclined to act affirmatively.
To this end, effective email subject lines often hint at scarcity. One study, for example, found that email subject lines that create a sense of urgency or exclusivity have a 22 percent higher open rate. Keep that in mind when you launch your next campaign.
Use these insurance sales tips and take your agency to the next level!
The right email marketing approach provides a relatively quick and cost-effective way to close more deals and grow your insurance agency.
Take your time and keep these tips in mind as you create your next email campaign. Want to push your email marketing to the next level? Use A/B testing to see which versions of your content are best received.
Armed with that information, you can continue refining your messaging—getting even better results along the way. That’s the ticket to a stronger insurance business and a healthier bottom line.
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