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We’ve been working with Insurance Newsletters to make it easier for AgentMethods agents to launch and manage an email newsletter program (more on that later). Joe Totah, owner of Insurance Newsletters, isn’t just an experienced marketer and entrepreneur; he’s also a former agency owner who has seen firsthand the power of email. So when Joe offered to explain some of the less-understood benefits of email newsletters, we jumped at the opportunity. We’re excited to offer this guest post directly from Joe Totah of Insurance Newsletters. Enter Joe….

You probably don’t realize just how valuable your insurance newsletter is when it comes to prospecting, Account Rounding, Coverage Gaps, Client Retention and Referrals. Let’s look at each stage to get an idea of just how much difference an insurance newsletter can make.

Prospecting
Prospecting is never a fun task. Trying to find qualified leads, marketing yourself and buying lists can be expensive, time consuming and hit-or-miss in terms of your success rate. Newsletters are best used for your warm prospects; those who know you but are not ready to make the switch to move their policies for one reason or another. Having these prospects on your newsletter list helps establish yourself as the expert, changing your role with these people from salesperson to consultant, a much easier way to both sell coverage and close the deal. Articles can also trigger a prospect to call you about specific concerns, such as the E&O policy that they know they need, but didn’t know who to turn to until they read about it in your newsletter. Warm prospects are the absolute best potential clients; they are truly the people you want to make the most effort towards to put on your books.

It is difficult to determine the exact amount of sales directly attributed to your newsletter campaign. Often, that is because sales are made for many reasons—not just because of one single part of your sales process. But when you have a newsletter to use as a leave-behind that shows your knowledge of a subject matter, your authority within the industry and your dedication to keeping your clients informed, it can definitely be that final push that encourages prospects to pull the trigger.

Account Rounding
One-line accounts will sooner or later consolidate all their accounts with one agency, and they will do it with the agency they believe is better suited to handle their insurance. An Agency Newsletter can actually help round these types of accounts for you. Choosing the right articles can introduce them to insurance products they never realized they needed or knew you offered. Competition is fierce, and the competing agency is looking to round out a mutual clients account with their agency, but which agency has the image of being more well-rounded in the client’s mind – your agency or the competing agency? Who is the expert and who is talking about different insurance products?

Coverage Gaps
Newsletter articles are also a great way to point out coverage gaps without applying any sales pressure to your client base. How many clients do you know that should have an umbrella policy, but don’t? It is also a good way to point out what may not be covered, such as exclusions for flood incidents. Without newsletter articles, your clients might never know about or ask about gaps in their coverage.

Client Retention
Finding a client and making a sale is one step. Client persistency is another. When you have dedicated clients who want to keep you as their agent, not only do you have less to worry about in terms of commission chargebacks, but you also get word-of-mouth referrals that put a gigantic foot in the door of your clients’ friends and family members. Every well-managed agency knows they need to keep their name in front of their client. Newsletters are great for this because it tells the client that you want keep them informed, and it also helps build your professional image. Many people do not even know who their agent is, so a newsletter not only keeps the name recognition in front of your clients, but the professional image helps make your agency bullet proof from the competition.

Referrals
Why would any of your clients want to refer business to you if they barely know you or they don’t see your name too often? Well-managed agencies are always keeping their name in front of others, and a newsletter does this plus a lot more. Clients can refer you with confidence, rather than just passing a name along. People also pass your newsletter along and this can go a long way when it is associated with a referral.

Learn more about how you can set up a newsletter for your insurance agency at:
http://www.insurancenewsletters.com

This is a great opportunity for you to reinforce your message, the value you bring, and build trust with your prospects.  Make sure you are proactive about managing your online reputation. Even if you aren’t actively using social networks like LinkedIn or Facebook, make sure you and your agencies have a presence there so your prospects can easily find you. Over time, you can gradually enhance your presence.

Once you have your profiles up, there are some simple things you can do to maximize their benefit. With very little work, you can control the title tag, meta description, and header tags of most profiles. Some even offer “dofollow” links back to your site with anchor text you control. To learn more about making the most of your social media profiles, take a look at this great article “How to Optimize 7 Popular Social Media Profiles for SEO“.

Give it a try!
Log in to your AgentMethods account now to give it a try! Once you log in, look for the “leads” icon to access the Leads Quick Access, and click on the Leads tab to see the Recent Activity page. We hope you find this useful!

New Coverage Options Articles:

• Umbrella Insurance
• Flood, Earthquake and Mudslides
• Commercial Umbrella Insurance
• Errors and Omissions

New Resource Center Articles:

• What are the costs if your business is closed
• Prepare for your financial needs in retirement
• Retirement Planning

We will continue to add more content, so log in to your AgentMethods site and visit your News Tab for a list of the latest additions.

New Home Page Callouts
Based on recent requests and to accompany the new content we’ve also added lots of new small and large home page callouts, so this is a perfect time to update your site. We also will be adding more callouts in the next few weeks to complement so stayed tuned for these upcoming additions.

We can’t wait to see your updated site!

Sincerely,

Your AgentMethods Team

• Video 21 – Choosing a domain for your insurance website
• Video 22 – .com vs .net vs…
• Video 23 – Putting keywords in your domain of your insurance websites
• Video 6 – What is a url?

• Video 16 – Title tags
• Video 11 – Optimizing for different terms
• Video 15 – Internal linking and long tail keywords
• Video 89 – Getting your site indexed
• Video 14 – Link juice

• Video 3 – Estimating Search Volume for a Keyword
• Video 4 – Estimating Competition for Target Phrases
• Video 5 – Dive Down the Keyword Pyramid

• Video 9 – 5 ways to get people to your website
• Video 7 – Add your site to an email signature
• Video 32 – Diversify your site’s traffic
• Video 37 – crazy ideas from other industries
• Videos On PPC – Pay per click campaigns