Insurance Agency Marketing Services (IAMS) Website for Agents Questions ?

CALTCAgent

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OK, I am a bit behind times when it comes to web sites & technology,

Insurance Agency Marketing Services (IAMS) says they offer a website that you can use to do e-mail marketing and I guess e-mail newsletters to clients. The cost is about $30 dollars a month.

After talking to me about it, they told me I have to contract with at least 2 companies just to be able to get more information about the site.

For example, to even look at examples of it and what it can do as far as e-mails.

Does anybody have any information/examples of their(IAMS) website and e-mail marketing capabilities ?

Any other places to get a "good" web site for similar cost and e-mail marketing capabilities ?

Thoughts, ideas on this subject ?
 
OK, I am a bit behind times when it comes to web sites & technology,

Insurance Agency Marketing Services (IAMS) says they offer a website that you can use to do e-mail marketing and I guess e-mail newsletters to clients. The cost is about $30 dollars a month.

After talking to me about it, they told me I have to contract with at least 2 companies just to be able to get more information about the site.

For example, to even look at examples of it and what it can do as far as e-mails.

Does anybody have any information/examples of their(IAMS) website and e-mail marketing capabilities ?

Any other places to get a "good" web site for similar cost and e-mail marketing capabilities ?

Thoughts, ideas on this subject ?

Steve, do you not have a website?
 
Do you want a website? Or are you just looking for email marketing?

Mailchimp will do email marketing (newsletters) for free up to a limit.

A wordpress website can do both... and it does not require any contracts and it can be as low as around $10/month.

Pushing out new articles as email marketing (email newsletters) is nothing special for a website. I certainly would not tie carrier contracts to it... there is just no reason to at all!
 
Do you want a website? Or are you just looking for email marketing?

Both.

Mailchimp will do email marketing (newsletters) for free up to a limit.

Interesting.

Do they have any specific content that encourages a response ?

Or more just to stay in front of people ?

A wordpress website can do both... and it does not require any contracts and it can be as low as around $10/month.

OK, maybe that is better way to go, is it "easy" for a technology challenged person ?

Pushing out new articles as email marketing (email newsletters) is nothing special for a website. I certainly would not tie carrier contracts to it... there is just no reason to at all!

I tend to agree. They really made me feel bad for not sending back contracts in the past.

They said they have open release, so I can fill out any contracts I want. Just seems silly just to see what their site can do.

I was wondering if their was e-mail that creates a "lead", sort of like what the FMO's send to us, that gets us to call them.

Not sure that would even work well ?
 
Interesting.

Do they have any specific content that encourages a response ?

Or more just to stay in front of people ?

Both. It depends on how you tailor the email. You could do a short very targeted type email that has a link to a form or something like that. Or you can just do a generalized "weekly/bi-weekly/etc" newsletter.

They have hundreds of predesigned templets for various purposes/goals. You also can design your own.

The free service limits the amount of emails you can send per month... but it is a lot for a free service.

Just go on there and sign up and explore... its free.

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OK, maybe that is better way to go, is it "easy" for a technology challenged person ?


Wordpress is fairly easy. There is a learning curve at first of course. It is not as easy as some other website CMS systems but the ones that are easier suck (such as weebly). Imo, wordperss has the best mix of ease of use and features available. There are TONS of youtube/blogs/articles/etc tutorials about WP on the web. Plus the wordpress.org site has tons of help content and a very good community forum to ask questions. Also, if you choose to hire someone for help it is by far the most inexpensive type of site to hire someone to work on (because of its mass popularity).

There are tens of thousands of predesigned themes out there for wordpress sites. Some are free, most are not. But most are not expensive. You can hire someone to tweak the theme or even hire someone to design a completely new theme.


Wordpress also has "plugins" that add certain functions to your site... like a MailChimp plugin that syncs your site with your mailchimp account... there are probably 50 other email marketing plugins available for WP... some are standalone, others sync with an outside program like mailchimp or constant contact.

Its important to note that I am talking about wordpress.org , not wordpress.com. The .com version is self hosted through wordpress and does not have all of the features of a normal wordpress.org site that uses a 3rd party Hosting Service (hostgator is a good cheap one, you can buy the domain and hosting from them, their tech team will even help you install WP if you cant figure it out)

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I tend to agree. They really made me feel bad for not sending back contracts in the past.

They said they have open release, so I can fill out any contracts I want. Just seems silly just to see what their site can do.

I was wondering if their was e-mail that creates a "lead", sort of like what the FMO's send to us, that gets us to call them.

Not sure that would even work well ?

They sound like as$holes to me if they tried to guilt you into contracting with them just to preview the site.

Anything "special" that an insurance outfit claims their website service can do is complete bullsh$t. There is nothing that they can do that you cant do on your own (and keep complete control of YOUR site). Sometimes the things they claim are special actually are terrible ideas (such as canned "prewritten" content).

This is just my opinion, but having your website tied to a certain IMO is a terrible idea. What happens when things go south with that IMO? Way too many unnecessary variables. Its like having 100% of your leads tied to one single IMO... plus giving them complete control over those leads... and I already know what you think about that lol.
 
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They sound like as to me if they tried to guilt you into contracting with them just to preview the site.

Nice post, very helpful stuff in there!

Now the "open release policy" has changed. It comes with where the other FMO must sign a reciprocal release agreement.

In other words, the new FMO must agree to release agent(s) back to IAMS. No mention of if it is a one for one, or just a general agreement.

I asked to see the release agreement, he sent me the release he sends to the other FMO to get the agent over to IAMS. I told him that is not the one that applies to me "going", it applies to me "coming" to you.

He said if I wanted more than that, he was done talking as I have taken up too much of their time.

They send me 5 e-mails a week, for a while, the same one twice for 10 e-mails a week, of course we have talked, just didn't work out so far.

Sounds to me they don't have much to offer, otherwise why make someone contract to get a look ?
 
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Wordpress is great. Easy? well that is a relative term. I think it is easy but if my dad's life depended on it he wouldn't be able to make a website on it. If you were willing to spend $360 a year with those IAMS yahoos then I would just pay someone to do it. Especially if you are not wanting to try and rank on Google. $300 bucks to a high school kid should be plenty and he can set up your mailchimp.
 
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