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Lately, I have been spending a couple hours a night on my e-mail list. It is something I should have focused on four years ago but didn’t. Anyways, here is some of what I know about starting an email newsletter that works for insurance agents and agencies. If you have any questions let me know…...
Define What you Want the Email Newsletter to Accomplish.
Do you want people to keep you and your company top of mind? Send you referrals? Grow your email list? Drive traffic to your website? Buy more policies?
Before the first email is sent the purpose needs to be strictly defined. It is also helpful to define what you don’t want to accomplish, mainly sending bad canned content that leads to nothing but unsubscribes; I know because I did this before at the urging of an IMO using Constant Contact.
You don’t want your work to only lead to negative actions against you by your clients. For most agents and agencies, a good goal would be to keep you on top of your clients mind leading to referrals; easier said than done though.
Subscribe to an Autoresponder.
Decide if you want a self hosted or hosted autoresponder. Unless there is some compliance issue, I would go for a hosted autoresponder. With that in mind I will give a short list you might want to check out.
MailChimp
GetResponse
Aweber
VerticalResponse
Constant Contact
iContact
InfusionSoft
MailChimp is free for up to 500 subscribers and is what I started with. Aweber has a $1 trial, Getresponse has a 30 day free trial. I would recommend Mailchimp, GetResponse, or iContact if you are collecting emails from “offline” relationships because they make it easy to import those names without doing a double opt-in. If you are signing people up through a web form then I would look at Aweber.
Choose Your Template.
You will most likely design your email with the templates provided by your autoresponder. You can, however, design your own in HTML or buy one that you like. I would avoid using too many images as it tips off the junk filter.
Design Your Email
Make sure that your emails look good in different email clients and browsers. The best way to do this is to download multiple browsers and open multiple email accounts from popular and not so popular email providers. Also, you will want to repeat this step for mobile phones and tablets.
If you use one of the email autoresponders I recommended, this shouldn’t be a problem but it is worth checking. Most emails are opened using an iPhone, iPad, or using a Gmail or Outlook account so at the least, make sure your emails look good with those devices and services.
Find Content for the Newsletter.
Finding and sharing content in your newsletter sounds easier than it actually is. I save anything that I think I can use in my emails. People love stories so be on the lookout for a good story to share with your readers.
Edit the Newsletter
Once you hit send that email isn’t coming back. Unlike the forum where typos can be fixed; email, once sent, cannot be. You will want to carefully read over your email before hitting the send button in addition to having two or three other people reading the newsletter closely. Surprisingly, the professional newsletter sellers often skip over this part.
BTW How are Your Copywriting Skills?
Good reading is easy, good writing, however, is hard. It is important to apply skill to your emails so your recipient will want to read them and share it with others. Or else all of your work will be for naught.
I sign up for popular newsletters and try to get a feel for the author’s style. In your emails, you want your “voice” coming through. Take some time to develop your “voice” and it will pay off. Remember, people do not want to read copy from a company, they want to read a letter written to them from a real person that they feel they know.
Choose Your Subject Line.
This may be the most important part of your newsletter. Although seemingly simple, choosing a subject line can be the difference between major success and major failure.
Of importance when choosing your subject line is avoiding junk and SPAM filters. You want to avoid saying “hello” or using the word “free.” Using your name and the date is a great way to get into the inbox and not the junkbox.
Writing a Call to Action.
Your call to action can be a call to something as varying as buying fire insurance, to responding personally, to just sharing the email through social media or getting a quote. Will your call to action be in an image, will it take them to a landing page or to your website? Which page on your website? A phone number? these are all questions that need to be answered.
Segment Your List.
Are you sending the same newsletter to consumers and businesses? Bad idea. It is much better to segment your list down to smaller groups of people. For instance, middle age families, seniors, businesses, B2C, B2B, etc. Make sure you are segmenting your list but also, you need to make sure your categories make sense.
Test
Did your subject line work? How do you know? Should your email have images? How many? Plain text or HTML? Which CTA had the highest conversion rate? All these should be tested to make sure that what you are doing is right for your audience. Sure, maybe having images of people at the beach works for Coke but is it right for your audience? Probably not. Do images of happy senior couples or of happy young families convert better? Well there is a way to find out.
Pick a Date and Time to Email
This will depend on your audience and can cause your open rates to go up or down by a good margin. You will need to decide when to send your emails and stick to that day and time as much as possible. Also, don’t look past sending mail on Saturday.
Interact with Your Audience
Will you send them quick thank you notes for reading? Will you do a giveaway? What does your list want in a giveaway? This is an area I have been going above and beyond. You want people to respond to you personally.
Talk about upcoming events in your community. Give a list of your favorite restaurants in town and ask if there are any other good places that you should know about. People will respond. After you eat at that restaurant do a little follow up with the person who recommended it; that is building a relationship.
This advice should get you a good start in email marketing for insurance. I wanted to share something that works for our field opposed to what one normally reads about email on the web.
I hope this helps.
Define What you Want the Email Newsletter to Accomplish.
Do you want people to keep you and your company top of mind? Send you referrals? Grow your email list? Drive traffic to your website? Buy more policies?
Before the first email is sent the purpose needs to be strictly defined. It is also helpful to define what you don’t want to accomplish, mainly sending bad canned content that leads to nothing but unsubscribes; I know because I did this before at the urging of an IMO using Constant Contact.
You don’t want your work to only lead to negative actions against you by your clients. For most agents and agencies, a good goal would be to keep you on top of your clients mind leading to referrals; easier said than done though.
Subscribe to an Autoresponder.
Decide if you want a self hosted or hosted autoresponder. Unless there is some compliance issue, I would go for a hosted autoresponder. With that in mind I will give a short list you might want to check out.
MailChimp
GetResponse
Aweber
VerticalResponse
Constant Contact
iContact
InfusionSoft
MailChimp is free for up to 500 subscribers and is what I started with. Aweber has a $1 trial, Getresponse has a 30 day free trial. I would recommend Mailchimp, GetResponse, or iContact if you are collecting emails from “offline” relationships because they make it easy to import those names without doing a double opt-in. If you are signing people up through a web form then I would look at Aweber.
Choose Your Template.
You will most likely design your email with the templates provided by your autoresponder. You can, however, design your own in HTML or buy one that you like. I would avoid using too many images as it tips off the junk filter.
Design Your Email
Make sure that your emails look good in different email clients and browsers. The best way to do this is to download multiple browsers and open multiple email accounts from popular and not so popular email providers. Also, you will want to repeat this step for mobile phones and tablets.
If you use one of the email autoresponders I recommended, this shouldn’t be a problem but it is worth checking. Most emails are opened using an iPhone, iPad, or using a Gmail or Outlook account so at the least, make sure your emails look good with those devices and services.
Find Content for the Newsletter.
Finding and sharing content in your newsletter sounds easier than it actually is. I save anything that I think I can use in my emails. People love stories so be on the lookout for a good story to share with your readers.
Edit the Newsletter
Once you hit send that email isn’t coming back. Unlike the forum where typos can be fixed; email, once sent, cannot be. You will want to carefully read over your email before hitting the send button in addition to having two or three other people reading the newsletter closely. Surprisingly, the professional newsletter sellers often skip over this part.
BTW How are Your Copywriting Skills?
Good reading is easy, good writing, however, is hard. It is important to apply skill to your emails so your recipient will want to read them and share it with others. Or else all of your work will be for naught.
I sign up for popular newsletters and try to get a feel for the author’s style. In your emails, you want your “voice” coming through. Take some time to develop your “voice” and it will pay off. Remember, people do not want to read copy from a company, they want to read a letter written to them from a real person that they feel they know.
Choose Your Subject Line.
This may be the most important part of your newsletter. Although seemingly simple, choosing a subject line can be the difference between major success and major failure.
Of importance when choosing your subject line is avoiding junk and SPAM filters. You want to avoid saying “hello” or using the word “free.” Using your name and the date is a great way to get into the inbox and not the junkbox.
Writing a Call to Action.
Your call to action can be a call to something as varying as buying fire insurance, to responding personally, to just sharing the email through social media or getting a quote. Will your call to action be in an image, will it take them to a landing page or to your website? Which page on your website? A phone number? these are all questions that need to be answered.
Segment Your List.
Are you sending the same newsletter to consumers and businesses? Bad idea. It is much better to segment your list down to smaller groups of people. For instance, middle age families, seniors, businesses, B2C, B2B, etc. Make sure you are segmenting your list but also, you need to make sure your categories make sense.
Test
Did your subject line work? How do you know? Should your email have images? How many? Plain text or HTML? Which CTA had the highest conversion rate? All these should be tested to make sure that what you are doing is right for your audience. Sure, maybe having images of people at the beach works for Coke but is it right for your audience? Probably not. Do images of happy senior couples or of happy young families convert better? Well there is a way to find out.
Pick a Date and Time to Email
This will depend on your audience and can cause your open rates to go up or down by a good margin. You will need to decide when to send your emails and stick to that day and time as much as possible. Also, don’t look past sending mail on Saturday.
Interact with Your Audience
Will you send them quick thank you notes for reading? Will you do a giveaway? What does your list want in a giveaway? This is an area I have been going above and beyond. You want people to respond to you personally.
Talk about upcoming events in your community. Give a list of your favorite restaurants in town and ask if there are any other good places that you should know about. People will respond. After you eat at that restaurant do a little follow up with the person who recommended it; that is building a relationship.
This advice should get you a good start in email marketing for insurance. I wanted to share something that works for our field opposed to what one normally reads about email on the web.
I hope this helps.
