Use Your Agency Management System to Streamline Your Marketing
Arthur Middleton Hughes recently wrote an article for The Database Marketing Institute called “Increasing Insurance Customer Retention.” Many studies, he said, show that $1 paid towards customer retention increases profits by more than $5 spent on new customer acquisition.
Steve Anderson, who publishes the monthly “Anderson Agency Report,” cites that customer retention is the first priority of an agency’s marketing execution plan for creating a profitable book of business.
Communication is Critical
Effective communication with your clients is one of the keys to keeping them satisfied. As you know, you cannot write the policy and then forget about it until renewal time rolls around. In order to truly develop the relationship with the client, the renewal process should start immediately after the first process is sold.
Social media is all the rage these days, and, yes, it is a good strategy for keeping in touch with customers and prospects. It is not, however, the only strategy. It is a part of the big picture, which includes more traditional methods of communication – mail, email, and, of course, the telephone.
Using Your Insurance Software Makes it Easy
Fortunately for you, your Partner XE agency management system automates a lot of the activities required to send mailings via e-mail or traditional mail methods. With a few clicks of your mouse, you can run queries using any number of parameters (from clients with birthdays in the month of February, to clients with homeowner insurance but not auto, or clients who have homeowners insurance, but do not have earthquake coverage). You can also print letters, print envelopes and export email addresses directly from the system. Want to use an outside service provider to send your materials out? No problem! Simply export your targeted lists out of XE by right clicking on the grid and selecting the export function. Best of all, everything you do can be tracked within your agency software for measurable results.
If you need assistance in maximizing the marketing potential of your Partner XE agency management system, just give us a call at 800.747.7005, Option 2.
Over the past few years, there has been a surge in insurance agency management transitions. Mergers and acquisitions specifically are on the rise, with an estimated 550 deals, up 12% from the previous year, in the first quarter of 2021. While these transitions can be profitable for owners, they can come with significant trepidation and worry from employees and customers.
As an owner, you need to start thinking ahead about how to prepare your agency for its eventual ownership transition. Whether you plan to perpetuate internally or externally, it’s essential that you prepare. That preparation includes setting your agency up for its highest valuation, prepping your team, and investing in tools and processes to bring your agency into the future.
Financial Prep
One of your top goals should be to set your agency up to gain its highest valuation. Whether you’re selling internally or externally, it’s beneficial to add the most value possible to your business. Spend time defining the methods you’ll use to determine your worth and focus on how to boost them. One of the best ways to increase your value is to focus on a niche market. Carve out a few areas that you specialize in, and capitalize on that exclusivity.
Tech Prep
Part of increasing your value is equipping your agency with the tech it needs to stay competitive in the market. Invest in critical insurtech like a cloud-based management system and integrated accounting. Successful agencies have turned their focus to customer tech tools like a client portal and branded agency app. You’ll also need marketing automation and a customer relationship management tool to stay on top of valuable data to inform your marketing and service plans.
Beyond the technology itself, you also need to train all of your team on each new tool. Even if you don’t anticipate a particular team member or group will frequently use a new piece of tech, they still need to know what it is, how it works, and why it’s valuable. Keeping your team educated is part of setting your agency up for a successful future.
Staff Prep
As you create a perpetuation plan, keep your staff involved in the process. You need to be aware of how each department and team member is performing as part of your valuation process. The more open and connected you are with your team, the better they’ll perform since they’ll be more invested in future success.
Open communication also helps ease any anxiety around change. Change is uncomfortable in any context, but especially when it comes to one’s job. Continual training on new technology and a slow introduction of process updates can help normalize change in your office.
Partner Right to Prepare for the Future
Who you partner with has a significant effect on your agency’s future. We at Partner Platform know how important it is for our agencies to be well-equipped with the best technology and training to stay competitive in the market.
That’s why we invest in tech and training for all our Partner Platform agencies. And our technology partners help us stay ahead of the curve for the best insurtech to serve both our agencies and their customers.
Good partners and partnerships are critical to success in any business, but it’s crucial in technology where the pace of change and breadth of innovation is high. Insurance tech is growing fast, and it’s critical to look to progressive partners to keep up with the pace.
Why Partnerships Matter
Innovations happen everywhere, every day. Things like electric cars, an increase in IoT, the interconnectedness of tech systems in healthcare and our own homes, and other innovations significantly impact our industry. These tech advances inform how insurers can gain data to inform policies and process claims.
The pace of change is exceptionally high in this digital age. No matter how good your team is, you can’t do everything, and finding the right partner with the right complementary specialty can make all the difference in getting your customers what they need.
What We Look for in Our Partnerships
Who you partner with is incredibly important. Just as you take time to find the right employees, you need to be discerning when working with outside organizations.
When we at Partner Platform know we need a new partner in a specific arena, we look for Partner Allies that commit to innovation and excellent client experience. There are plenty of potential solutions out there, but we look for ones that simplify the experience for the customer and the effort needed to deliver it. That’s what innovation means to us – a total solution that is simple to use and easy to implement.
In the end, our partnerships are about shared values. Those core values are a shared perspective on client success and how easy it is for the client to implement something new in their everyday job. If the solutions aren’t easy or super compelling, it’s not going to happen throughout the agency.
Who We’re Partnering with Today
We regularly add to our insurtech partnerships, growing our Partner Allies list. Some of our stand-out partnerships include:
Semsee Comparative Rater: helps streamline the details of the sales process that frequently slow things down, such as packaging coverages, obtaining prices, and delivering quotes or proposals.
BlueJay Reviews: ensures our agencies have a positive online reputation and maximizes the value of agency marketing spend.
Rpost/RSign: provides email security as one of our longest-standing Partner Allies with fast, easy, and secure e-signature and encrypted email.
Lightspeed Voice VOIP: fosters a tight communication integration, including a pop-up screen when a client calls an agency.
Where We’re Headed with Partner Platform
Our goal is to have the best agency management system suite for today and tomorrow. A stagnant system does nothing for our customers in a world of quick innovation and rapid advances. That’s why we’re focused on growing our partnerships to better our systems, bringing the best in class to our Partner Platform agencies every day.
Find out what our Partner agencies have to say about their experiences on our Client Stories page, or view a demo to see the system for yourself. We look forward to growing our Partner Platform community and hope you’ll join us.
Innovation is key to longevity in any industry, and
the insurance industry is no different. Insurance revolves around people and
relationships, making it an inherently dynamic field.
Digital insurance demands seem to change by the
day to keep up with evolving customer and agency needs. That’s why we at
Partner Platform partner with various tech partners to stay up to date with
changing conditions. We as an organization can only be experts in so many
areas, so we recognize the need to partner with outside specialists to fill our
gaps.
We work with industry groups and tech companies to cover areas like digital document processing and cyber security, among others. Below are a few of our recent posts highlighting these valuable tech partnerships.
Our Digital Insurance Partner Posts
Remote Work and Agency Cyber Security: During the COVID-19 lockdowns, all our agencies and their customers needed to move to remote work rapidly. We leaned on our tech partnership with Archway Computer and the workflow expertise of consultant Mary Belka to equip our Partner Platform agencies – fast. In this post, we recap an impactful webinar focused on how to keep agency data safe during remote work and best practices for external and internal communications during that time.
Business Insights Partner Exago BI: The value of data and analytics has skyrocketed over the past few years, causing the Partner Platform team to seek a business insights partner to help our agencies stay well-equipped. Exago BI offers both canned and custom reporting for our agencies, allowing them to gain, manipulate, and analyze agency data easily.
Encrypted Email and eSignature Partner RPost: We’ve worked with digital document processing partner RPost for years, giving our Partner Platform agencies access to seamless and secure document sending, signing, and processing. What began as a HIPPA-compliant secure email service has grown into a fully digital, encrypted document processing system.
IT and Cyber Security Partner Archway Computer: Our partnership with Archway Computing is one of our longest and most valuable. The IT professionals at Archway have specialized in helping insurance agencies install, run, and update essential software for decades. The cyber security services Archway provides for our Partner Platform agencies are invaluable.
VoIP Partner Lightspeed Voice: One of our most recent partnerships is Lightspeed Voice, a VoIP provider that seamlessly integrates with our Partner Platform agency management system. Lightspeed brings a live switchboard, call recording, and real-time performance metrics, among other benefits.
Marketing Partner BlueJay Reviews:Online reputations are extremely important to any business or organization today. Every agency has an online reputation, regardless of whether they investigate or manage it. Our partner BlueJay Reviews focuses on online reputation management and makes it easy for our Partner Platform agencies to solicit and manage their online reviews, bolstering their reputation.
Find Out More About Our Tech Partnerships
These partners have been invaluable as we strive to improve our Partner Platform agency management suite every day. Especially during the COVID-19 lockdowns, we relied heavily on these partners to help us quickly adapt and provide secure, remote access for our agencies and their customers alike.
As the insurance industry grows more competitive, the particulars of your specific insurance agency management will make your business stand out. Those particulars could be location proximity, ease of doing business, or even something as simple as how your website looks. Though price still matters, changes in cost can only go so far.
The true test of what makes your agency the best choice is the overall customer experience. Seemingly small touches that make each interaction easier, more personable, and leave each customer with a positive feeling have a real impact. Today it’s about more than the best price and the latest tech; it’s how you use these tools to empower, differentiate, and create the best experience in your agency.
Stick with the Fundamentals
Whether your agency has been around for five years or 50, there are some fundamental core elements your customers value. Those are:
Knowledge
Service
Relationship
An old adage says, “You lose a customer for the same reason you won them.” These three areas are those reasons: your agency stands out because of your niche knowledge, speedy and effective service, and the personal relationships you build with customers. Big-name providers simply can’t offer these to the same degree as you, an independent agent. Focus on holding fast to these fundamentals, and you’ll gain more customers than you lose.
Blend Tech with Human Interactions
One of the biggest mistakes newer agencies make these days is to rely too much on technology to get work done. Though insurtech has its place in increasing efficiency, it doesn’t replace the power of human interactions.
Focus on finding that balance between using tech
for its speed and accuracy while keeping human-driven avenues open for service
and support. Look to tech to streamline routine claims and policy processing,
but leave space for in-person meetings or phone calls to walk customers through
more complex issues. The tech/human balance is an essential chord to strike to
keep your agency growing.
Grow Your Expertise
Your deep knowledge of the industry and its nuances is why customers choose you over big-name providers. However, the insurance industry is changing due to technological advances, new ways of doing business, and changes in regulations. You need to keep your team up to date on the latest in the industry with regular continuing education sessions and by gaining additional professional accreditations.
Streamline and Personalize Communications
If your agency has been around for a while, you likely grasp what it means to personalize your communications. Yet, it may become more difficult to keep up that personal touch in your usual ways as you grow. Tech can help by leveraging data to customize your email, social media, and text outreach. Look into tools like marketing automation and an integrated customer relationship management (CRM) to get the personal connection and efficiency you need.
Expand Ways to Get Service and Support
Your customers’ service experience is vital to your agency’s reputation. As a new generation of individuals enters the insurance market, they have different service expectations. Though all your customers will want personalization and a human-driven experience, they’ll also want the option to communicate in different ways. Expand your communication offerings with texting, a branded agency app, an easy-to-navigate website, and an online customer portal. The more choices customers have when it comes to service, the better.
Stay Nimble to Stay Relevant
In a recent conversation with one of our Partner Platform agencies, we talked about the importance of being flexible in order to respond to unexpected changes in the market. Disruptors like the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2008 financial crisis can be hard to prepare for, but you can react quickly if your agency has a culture of trust and flexibility.
Equipping your agency with more tech efficiency is
part of that nimbleness. When you have systems that can automatically operate
without much effort, you create the time and space to think about what
adjustments you need and how to make them happen – fast. Large, complex
agencies simply cannot make the quick adjustments your agency can to provide speedy,
personal service and communications during uncertainty.
Partner Platform is the Independent Agency’s System
When we created our Partner Platform agency management system suite, we designed it with the independent agency in mind. The easy-to-navigate system has room for personalization bolstered with the latest tech efficiency. We regularly consult with our Partner Platform Community to find ways to make our system work better for our independent agents.
Discover more about our system, community, and commitment to independent agents. Visit us at sispartnerplatform.com and get in touch with our team today.
Our next “Behind Our Insurance Agency Software” series focuses on encrypted email and signature provider RPost. Based in Los Angeles, CA, the team at RPost operates in the U.S., the U.K., and more than 100 countries worldwide.
Formed in 1999, RPost filled an emerging need in online communications. While the convenience of email made it the dominant form of business communications, the team at RPost saw a worrying trend in email security. Organizations were sending sensitive information via the web and needed to protect it.
RPost stepped up to fill that gap between convenience and security, adding legal verification to email content and attachments through encryption technology. I talked with RPost’s VP of Business Development, Jake Finnell, about how RPost brought its powerful encrypted email and esignature services to SIS and the Partner Platform community.
Comparison quoting, esignatures and e-doc processing, and other digital insurance software tools have vastly improved personalization and customer service in insurance. It’s also becoming clear that these tools are also making agencies more vulnerable to cyber-attacks. According to the Identify Theft Resource Center, cyber-attacks increased by 42% in the first quarter of 2021, affecting an estimated 51 million people.
As a community-minded, independent agency, you can’t afford to expose your customers to that risk. Not only would it affect you financially, it would also damage your reputation in the community. How can you keep your customers and agency protected?
The evolution of sales as a software (SaaS) has dramatically changed the software landscape. Thanks to their easy-to-integrate nature, more businesses use SaaS applications over desktop software to improve operations. A 2019 report found that companies with less than 50 employees had, on average, 47 SaaS apps in use across their organization.
This SaaS revolution takes shape in the insurance industry with insurtech. Based in SaaS, insurtech provides streamlined operations through integrated solutions. While agency owners recognize the benefit, many ask how to incorporate insurtech – do they implore their management system providers or take on the integrations themselves? The answer lies in what it is you as an owner want for your agency.
