One of the biggest mistakes insurance agents make is assuming they can only prospect using cold calls. However, email marketing allows you to reach out to prospects without picking up a phone.
It's one of the best low-cost ways of marketing for insurance businesses. It also has an incredibly high success rate.
What Is Email Marketing for Insurance Agents?
It is a way for you to communicate with your existing and prospective customers via targeted emails. You have the ability to segment audiences by age, gender, demographic, etc and you are able to send them personalized messages.
Email marketing is subtle and uses non-obtrusive techniques to get your messages in front of your insurance customers and prospects.
Non-obtrusive digital marketing for insurance businesses is especially essential now that 27 percent of all internet users in America use ad-blocking tools.
The goal is to build out your email list and regularly promote your services to increase sales.
How To Build a Successful Email Marketing Campaign
1. Start With a Solid Idea
You can't just jump in and start sending out emails. The way to build a successful email marketing campaign is to come up with a plan. This means you need to have goals and key metrics in place. Do you want more leads to visit your website? Do you want them to pick up the phone and call you? The key is to start small and then build out as you go.
2. Avoid Black Hat SEO
Black hat SEO refers to practices that are against the terms of service for email marketing and other SEO guidelines. It includes sending promotional material that contains anything deceptive, threatening, or considered spam to the recipient.
Email marketing will only work if you create value for your customers and prospects. You need to send out information that your clients or prospects see as valuable.
Take a step back and look at the effect of your content before sending it out; make sure it's adding value to your prospects or customers. Try to refrain from being too salesy - your goal is to inform and educate first, then go for the close.
Some of the best content for health insurance email marketing is educational. If you can be the authority to your prospects and clients and help educate them on different insurance providers and policies you can provide a lot of value.
Make sure your content is up to date. In the insurance industry, many things can change from year to year. You want to make sure you’re emailing them up-to-date information.
3. Keep Things Simple
Ensure that all your emails are well thought out before sending them out of the gate. Make sure you don’t add to many call-to-actions (CTAs) within the email. You don’t want your reader to be overwhelmed with where they should be going. You should have a concise goal for your email and the CTA should lead them there.
Don’t get too over-complicated with your design. It’s encouraged to keep a lot of white space and adhere to a consistent brand look and feel.
4. Write Great Subject Lines
The subject line is the first thing your customers and prospects see and really makes or breaks whether they open the email.
You want to ensure that the first thing they see is interesting, informative, and valuable. The subject line should be no longer than 9 words and 60 characters. Subject line statistics change month to month, but subject lines that get the highest open rate at the time this blog has been published use a single declarative word or instructional phrase followed by a colon. For example: Last Chance: .. , or Buy Now: …
Check out Quotit’s Checklist for Great Insurance Subject Lines
5. Focus on One Lead Magnet per Campaign
If you give your prospect multiple choices, you will confuse them, and it will be more difficult for them to decide.
Choose one lead magnet for each campaign and put your best effort behind it. The primary objective of an email campaign is to get new subscribers to opt in.
6. Keep Your Lead Magnets Simple
You will want to offer your prospects insurance policies directly related to their needs. The description should also be short and sweet.
7. Use an Engaging and Inviting Email Layout
The layout of your email should be consistent with your brand so that people recognize you at a glance, but it should also be inviting to encourage your audience to read through the content.
Remember that this is not the time for formal letter-writing rules. Leave out industry jargon.
Add images to your email, but don't make it too busy. Avoid using a lot of images or other visual elements and stick to only high-quality pics. Make sure the image isn’t too big, as this can slow down email loading times.
Properly format your content for easy on-screen reading. Make sure that your body text is written in proper English and is easy to read.
Ensure that your paragraphs are short so that the reader doesn't lose interest. Be sure to use bullet points, and put them within the right amount of white space.
8. Send Emails at the Right Time
You also want to consider the timing when you're sending out your emails. If you plan to send out a series of emails, send them out on different days or at different times of the day so that subscribers have time to read through them without getting overwhelmed.
