A Guide to Email Marketing for Insurance Brokers
The UK’s insurance industry is amongst the most vibrant in the world. According to the latest stats, the UK was ranked third for life and non-life premiums written globally, behind the U.S. and China.
Taking advantage of the UK’s vast insurance industry means it’s time to get smart with how you build your brand and market yourself. Email marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tactics because of its low barrier to entry and proven effectiveness.
Today, we’re going to discuss how insurance brokers can use email marketing to grow their businesses.
What is insurance email marketing?
Email marketing means sending messages from your brand to a consenting subscriber. It’s a type of direct marketing that allows you to welcome new customers, educate your subscribers, share interesting news and deliver promotions.
In all cases, the goal of email marketing is to change how you engage with your audience and drive more sales. With four billion people globally using email daily, it’s a marketing channel that makes sense to utilise.
How can insurance brokers benefit from email marketing?
Insurance brokers are no exception to the rule. Any industry benefits from email marketing because it’s such an effective channel for getting your message directly to a consumer who’s already consented to getting messages from you.
In short, global results demonstrate that for every $1 spent, email marketing returns an average of $36. What other marketing channel provides a return like that? The answer is none.
Plus, UK consumers are highly receptive to email as a marketing channel. A report published in Mobile Marketing Magazine found that 54% of UK consumers made a purchase directly because of an email they received in 2023.
Other than the straight monetary returns, there are other advantages to incorporating email marketing into your brokerage, including:
- Building brand awareness
- Keeping your audience engaged
- Up-selling/cross-selling opportunities
- Driving web traffic
- Creating personalised engagement
Creating an email marketing strategy for insurance brokers
The beauty of email marketing as a strategy is that the principles of a great strategy work across industries. It’s all about getting the basic principles in place to build your strategy, regardless of what you want to achieve from individual campaigns.
Here’s how all insurers can build the exoskeleton of a successful email marketing strategy:
- Build Your List – Begin by building your list. Every insurance broker starts small, but you can start with your existing customers before expanding into lead magnets. For example, if you sell auto insurance, you might offer a free guide on saving money on your auto insurance.
- Choose a Platform – The platform matters because of the features that come with it to aid your email marketing efforts. For example, many platforms come with marketing automation to help you save time.
- Set a Goal – What are your goals and lines for success? For example, an insurer might set the goal of using email marketing to increase lead engagement via their Facebook page.
- Learn and Test – Start creating emails to send and then test. Not every insurance brokerage is the same, and neither is their audience. Practice segmenting your list to provide more personalised communications.
- Optimise and Repeat – Take the time to analyse your email metrics, such as the number of emails opened, number of clicks and number of responses. Use these numbers to tweak and optimise every future campaign.
Regardless of what you want to achieve through email marketing, it depends on building a list and using data to give your audience what they want. The ingredients of great email marketing never change.
Email marketing best practices for insurance brokers
Insurance agents face several challenges to success in email marketing. The most common include getting your emails marked as spam, educating new customers, retaining policyholders and understanding what your customers actually need.
How do insurers address these challenges? It’s all about creating value from your messages and generating consistent engagement.
Follow these best practices for creating better insurance emails:
- Double Opt-In – Alongside complying with anti-spam laws, you want anyone on your list to actually want to be there. All major email marketing platforms require double opt-in as standard. Yes, you’ll lose people who can’t be bothered confirming, but a small, engaged list is better than a large, uninterested one.
- List Segmentation – Break your list into chunks based on consumer behaviours and buying preferences. If you sell both life insurance and auto insurance, what’s relevant to life insurance customers won’t be relevant to auto insurance policyholders.
- Engaging Subject Lines – Brainstorm engaging subject lines and A/B test them. Over time, you’ll determine what stands out in your recipients’ inboxes.
- Personalise Your Emails – Through segmentation and data analysis, you can produce messages that interest your target audience. Remember, consumers expect and demand personalisation.
- Real–Time Triggers – Deliver real-time marketing by setting up email triggers. Whether that’s an abandoned purchase page or visiting a particular product page, you can set emails to trigger based on behavioural metrics.
- All in the Data – Data is the hub of everything, including the messages you send, who you send them to, and what you do after sending that first message. Set aside time to analyse every campaign before moving on to the next one.
Again, you’ll see that the keys to success are essentially the same as divining your overall strategy. It’s about knowing who your audience is, finding out what they want, and then giving them it.
Best email marketing software for insurance brokers
The best email marketing software is the one that works for your insurance brokerage. Whether you’re looking at cost, no-code options, AI features, or integrations, it depends on what you prioritise the most.
Here are our top three picks for insurance email marketing software:
Types of emails to send as an insurance broker
Emails an insurance broker might send differ from those another business might send because of the differences in the audience. Generally, we can split emails into nine separate categories:
- Welcome Emails – Welcome emails should be sent the moment someone signs up for your list. They may even form part of an automated sequence introducing your brokerage and what it does.
- Educational Emails – Educational emails focus on teaching your audience something. It could be how a specific life insurance clause works or what the government’s latest laws mean for your auto insurance policy.
- Policy Updates – Policy updates are designed for customers who’ve already made a purchase. Examples of policy updates necessitating an email may include modifications to existing cover.
- Reminders – Sending timely reminders about upcoming renewal dates helps your customers prevent their policies from lapsing. These are usually personalised and designed to trigger at a specific time, such as one month before policy expiration.
- Claims Process Guide – These guides focus on the claims process. Guide your customers through filing an insurance claim. These emails are ideal for including interactive features.
- Product Recommendations – Send out product recommendations for upselling and cross-selling. For example, you might mention that certain policies can be bundled for a lower cost.
- Holiday Emails – Unlike an eCommerce business, holiday emails usually relate to seasonal greetings. It could also form a happy birthday message if you have that information about a subscriber.
- Milestone Emails – Similar to holiday emails, milestone emails show that you value your customers. These could be sent in response to a successful claim or a policy anniversary.
- Survey Emails – Garner feedback from your customers to show that you value what they’ve got to say. Sending out surveys also provides a valuable cache of feedback data you can incorporate into future emails.
Knowing which emails to send and when to send them is part of becoming a master email marketer. However, rather than going through a costly trial-and-error process, why not outsource it to the experts at Tao Digital Marketing? To learn more about how we set your insurance brokerage up for email marketing success, contact us today.