In recent years, social media and in-app advertisements have garnered a good chunk of marketing attention, shifting insurance carriers’ perception of email marketing from “effective” to “old-fashioned.”
To those who know the ins and outs of email marketing, however, the contrary is true, as email remains not only practical and widely used but it is also the most profitable marketing solution across all insurance verticals.
Email marketing has a return on investment of $42 for every $1 spent.
Backed by data, this claim suggests that email marketing automation is inevitable, hinting at the fact that at the receiving end of emails, there are plenty of customer engagement opportunities that can streamline any digital PR agency’s outreach efforts.
Wondering if email marketing can drive sales? A report conducted by the Direct Marketing Association found that about 66% of email marketing campaigns have resulted in sales.
Before diving into the why and the how of email marketing, here’s a breakdown of what an email marketing service is and how it can support your insurance marketing efforts.
What Is An Email Marketing Service?
Email marketing refers to the act of sending commercial content and emails to a group of past, current, or prospective clients with the intention of getting them to make a financial commitment to your company by purchasing the goods or services you market.
Email marketing campaigns usually involve advertisements paired with gated or ungated educational content, as well as personalized deals and proposals. So, to succeed at email marketing, agents need to generate and nurture a robust email list consisting of high-intent insurance leads that will help you spread the excellence of your insurance services far and wide into the rest of your target audience.
How Can Email Marketing Automation Support My Insurance Business?
Unlike manual email marketing, automated email platforms allow marketers to send out campaigns according to schedules and filtered triggers defined by the marketer. In addition, automated emails are usually facilitated by email delivery platforms, such as Phonexa’s E-Delivery.
In many cases, email automation ensures that campaigns run smoothly as insurance marketers try to get their message across to a targeted audience of insurance-seekers.
Get to know Phonexa’s E-Delivery email and SMS marketing platform to find out how it can supply your outbound campaigns with better front-end functionality to increase customer engagement and overall earnings.
Email Campaigns: Where Automation Excels Beyond Metrics
The benefits of email marketing are immeasurable, and understanding its effects will give you the confidence to reinvest your time and money where it counts the most: helping your customers.
When your campaigns are client-centric, you will begin to see an increase in communication, brand awareness, increased brand loyalty and business, and ultimate customer retention.
Here are a couple of types of email campaigns that allow for more personalization:
Trigger Email Campaigns
These are personalized emails created based on your target audience’s behavior and position within the sales funnel. But, first, let’s dive into the real-world value of email marketing to understand trigger emails using a typical marketing example.
Suppose you have sent a newsletter sign-up form to a client, but they haven’t responded to your call-to-action, and you’re seeking high response rates on your newsletter. In this instance, the automated trigger emails will catch the client’s inactivity and send follow-up emails to encourage them to engage.
Drip-Email Campaigns
Drip-feed campaigns follow a sequence of emails sent out according to a schedule defined by marketers. The key with drip campaigns is to keep lines of communication open with your prospects, all while you provide them with valuable information to gain their trust.
For instance, you can send an ‘introductory’ email with a link to exclusive content on your firm’s website. Then, after some time, if your metrics tell you the client has engaged with your initial communication, you can push a follow-up email with a call-to-action to sign up for your insurance firm’s newsletter.
How Can Insurance Companies Benefit From An ESP Platform As Their Main Email Marketing Tool?
ESP marketing tools are popular as they improve any campaign’s deliverability while optimizing them with an approach that gives experts unrivaled control over their emails.
With features like multi-channel distribution and behavioral segmentation, email service platforms equip marketers with all essential insurance marketing tools to leverage the full potential of email conversions to reach high ROI.
Here’s a look into some of the capabilities ESPs provide:
Multi-Channel Distribution
This tool can maximize your campaign’s efforts by measuring the deliverability of your email marketing channels by sending emails through multiple delivery methods and comparing the data in your inbox.
Behavioral Segmentation
Email segmentation allows marketers to refine and manage email lists by categorizing them according to how recipients respond to these emails or their place in the marketing sales funnel.
Essentially, every lead and consumer you interact with will fit into at least one segment within your campaign. By placing your existing customers within a segmented group, you can send them targeted emails, promote exclusive deals created for their segment type, or even celebrate their insurance claim anniversaries.
5 Examples Of Behavioral Segmentation
1. Prospects that were quoted but never signed up
2. Prospects you declined but want to follow up with later
3. Prospects you declined but want to direct them to your insurance partners
4. Current customers with upcoming insurance anniversary dates
5. High-intent leads you generated online
In all, with email list segmentation, complete and constant engagement is fundamental as it will help you monetize based on the insurance lead data you have at your disposal.
Final Thoughts
Earlier this summer, Phonexa CEO and CFO Lilit Davtyan spoke at the Women in Insurance Tech virtual conference. One of the most debated topics revolved around how automating insurance technology from both the back end and the front end helped agents focus their efforts on agent-to-customer interaction with existing and prospective clients.
These industry-wide conversations point to the dire need for a change toward email automation to keep client-buyer relationships strong and increase company ROI.
To do that, you must personalize the message and remember that email will bring the right traffic to your website and the right people to your PBX.
It’s equally essential to retarget individuals within your existing client portfolio by remarketing your services and extending specialized discounts and other offers. You can nurture your leads to frame conversions by creating sticky lead flows to keep them coming back.
To sustain conversion-focused brand affinity for your insurance business, make sure that every prospect that visits your website ends up finding the solution they came in searching for. Ultimately, when leads originate from your website, they will be more likely to return to you when they’re ready to commit.
Schedule a consultation to learn more about how Phonexa’s E-Delivery can power your insurance agency’s email marketing strategy.
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