Automating aspects of your insurance agency can be an excellent strategy to save time and improve efficiency. Your agents and other team members won’t have to spend as much time on repetitive tasks, freeing up agents to deliver better client service, whether that means researching policies, interacting with clients, or even just continuing their insurance education.
With the right tools and strategies, it can be easy to get started with insurance agency automation. Here are a few processes that any insurance agency can easily automate.
Automate the Lead Workflow
Automating the lead workflow will be a priority for many insurance agencies. Automating tasks for lead generation and nurturing will ensure that new leads receive a prompt response from someone on your team. That is crucial, as that quick response time from your agency will likely give you the edge over any other insurance agencies the client reached out to.
Something as simple as sending lead information to the next available team member can make a big difference in lead conversion.
Automate Welcome Emails
One of the simplest ways to introduce automation into your insurance agency is in email workflows, like welcome emails. This is especially easy if you use an insurance agency management system like Jenesis, which includes email automation and marketing.
Sending welcome emails to new clients helps you make a good first impression and your customers feel welcome. Start with an email thanking them for choosing your insurance agency. Then, use the next email to encourage them to sign up for your newsletter, follow you on social media, get a free quote, or perform another action.
You can also include a third welcome email asking for some basic information about your clients. Be sure to explain that you will use this to better serve their needs, such as by offering customized quotes or segmenting your email list.
Automate Transactional Emails
Every insurance agency sends many transactional emails every day. These include confirmation messages for purchased policies and other payments made. Automating these transactional emails is simple with the right insurance agency management system, and it saves your team time.
You can even use these transactional emails as an opportunity to cross-sell, upsell, or get feedback.
Automate Texts
Email may be the traditional option for reaching out to your insurance agency clients, but it is far from the only option. Many of your clients likely prefer texting over email. Luckily, you can easily set up automated texts just like you would automated emails.
You can even ask your clients whether they prefer texts or emails during the onboarding process. That will ensure the best open rate and boost client satisfaction.
Automate Timing for Lead Touchpoints
You know that it takes about six or seven touchpoints to convert a lead into an insurance client. You may not realize that you can automate these touchpoints. We already mentioned that you can automate texts and emails with ease. But you can also set up automatic reminders for your team to call leads at a certain time. This will ensure it doesn’t get lost on their list of responsibilities.
Automate Renewal Reminders
Renewals are one of the most important times to reach out to your clients. You can automate reminders that you send to clients as well as reminders within your management software, so your team remembers to call clients.
Automate Segmentation
Segmentation lets you automate emails and other messaging without having to worry about overwhelming clients with information that is irrelevant to their needs. For example, it prevents you from trying to sell home insurance to a client that doesn’t own a home.
You can do some of the segmentation yourself, but there are also ways to automate segmentation. Click segmentation is one example and it is incredibly common in email marketing. It segments your audience based on the links or buttons they click in your email, letting you categorize clients according to their interests and behavior.
Automate Social Media Marketing
With the right program, you can also automate your social media marketing to some extent. For example, you can plan your posts for the next several weeks and then schedule them. From there, the automation software would automatically post content for you.
Automate Collection of Client Feedback
Collecting client feedback is another excellent use case for automation in insurance agencies. For instance, you can include feedback links to the transactional emails you send to clients. These links may lead to a survey about your products and services.
Use Automation to View Metrics
A bonus of automating processes is that there will be a digital record of those processes. This gives you the chance to look at data for insights. Use that data to see what marketing strategies work well and what needs improvement. Or use the data to spot top performers, so they can share their strategies with others on your team.
Depending on the automation you use, you can find a range of metrics and insights. For example, the best insurance software can generate customizable reports that include data on renewals, production, the source of business, and more. Or you can look at data on employee tracking and transactions to see how individual employees are doing. You can even track and manage commissions.
Set Realistic KPIs
As you track metrics, make sure to set attainable goals. They should be based on the starting point of each metric as well as what you can reasonably achieve within your chosen timeframe. The following are some smart KPIs to automatically track:
- Monthly bind rate
- Quote rate
- Contact rate
- Cost per bind/acquisition
- Cost per quote
- Cost per premium by lead source
- Cost per bind by lead vertical
- Cost per item by producer
- Cost per item by lead vertical
- Producers dials and talk time
Conclusion
You will want to automate aspects of your lead process early on, but many insurance agencies find it easiest to start by automating emails. The more you automate, the more time your team can focus on more important, revenue-generating tasks.