In our last post, we looked at ways to make your website stand out, showing your agency’s reliability and great service. But, no matter how great your website is, it doesn’t mean much if it can’t be found.
Most potential clients will do an online search for independent insurance agents in their area and, if you want to be on that list, you’ll need to use the right tools to optimize your site for search.
There are many ways to optimize your agency’s site, but we’ll focus on three of the most efficient ways for independent insurance agencies:
Backlinks
Search engines have different ways of judging reputable websites, and one of the most common and well known is the number of reputable sites linking to it. You can gain links by asking for them from business partners or networking groups. You can also get links by writing great content that valuable sites want to share, or by writing as a guest blogger. Just be careful about which sites pick up your posts. While gaining links from reputable sites bolsters your searchability, links from poorly-ranked sites can hurt your online reputation.
Social Media
Social media brings you a double benefit: additional links each time you post a link to your site, and presence outside of a search engine. More and more people look to social media before bringing their business to an agency, and your presence on social media shows them you’re committed to serving your clients in every way possible. Plus, it’s another place where your agency can be found online, and will help drive traffic to your beautifully designed site.
To experience social media success, ensure you are posting quality content and you’re posting often. The better and more relevant your posts, the more likely they are to be shared, bringing you even more quality links to boost your search engine ranking
Local Focus
The best way to get local search traffic is by adding locality to your website’s page titles. When search engines look at your pages, they’ll focus on these titles first, and then on the words on the page. Simply adding “Columbus” or “Ohio” to the titles of your site’s pages will boost your credibility for an “insurance Ohio” search. Also, make sure your address is included in the footer on every page of your site – the more your agency’s name and its location are found together on the web, the more likely your site will pop up when someone searches for a local insurance agency.
You should also list your website on local listing sites like Google+ Local, Yelp, Bing Places, Internet Yellow Pages, and Yahoo! Local. This will again link your agency name with your location another place
As you implement these techniques to make your site findable, you may come across more ways to build your online presence. If you’re a Partner XE users, you can share these tips with our user group. To find out more about Partner XE, its community and functionality, contact us today!
Your website is the online storefront to your independent insurance agency. When potential clients go window shopping, you want them to stop at your agency and come in. If your website looks sloppy or outdated, you’ll give the impression that your agency is sloppy and outdated as well. Ultimately, when a client sees your website, they are gathering information to answer the question: “Can I trust them?”. If you can’t be trusted to keep a good website, why would they trust you with their business?
Show these potential clients your agency is a trustworthy partner! In order to have a website that give this impression you’ll need a few key elements.
Attractive design
First impressions are important. Make sure your site has a pleasing look. Stay away from large blocks of text, and avoid clutter. Also, make sure your site is built so that it can easily adjust for smartphones and tablets, and won’t take too long to load on each.
Easy Navigation
Make sure your site is organized in a logical manner and that pages are named appropriately. This includes using valuable keywords in page titles, so they can be easily searched and indexed by search engines (read more in our next post!). If a user can’t find what they’re looking for, they are likely to get frustrated and leave. By making your site easy to use, you’ll keep them around – and research shows the longer a user is on a website, the more likely they are to make a purchase or request more information.
Valuable Information
Great websites give users exactly what they’re looking for, and none of what they’re not. You want to give potential clients access to things that make their life easier, like online quoting or claim filing. When a potential client sees these features, they’ll see you value client experience, making them more likely to bring you their business. Be careful about putting too much information in one place, however, as it can look cluttered and be overwhelming.
Strong Call to Action
No matter how great your website looks and functions, you won’t find success without giving users a clue on what to do. With a strong call to action, you bring users along in the buying or lead capturing process. A good call to action effectively uses size, shape, color, placement and wording to get the message across and compel users to take the next step.
Once you have a website that really shows off your agency, you need to make sure people can find it. In our next post, we’ll look at optimizing your site for web search and other ways to get your name out there online.
SIS knows online presence plays a big part in making your agency know, and we can help by streamlining data between your website and our innovative agency management system, Partner XE. Contact us today to find out more!
Strategic Insurance Software, creators of Partner XE, a leading agency management system for independent agents, today announced the release of Partner XE 2014. The new release will be rolled out to all users by the end of June.
The new release brings SIS’ partner agencies improved workflows and enhanced functionality.
“This release is a great advancement for our customers,” said Alex Deak, CEO of SIS. “It represents our ongoing commitment to enhancing Partner XE to meet the ever changing and growing needs and wants of our agency customers.”
Many of the new features added in Partner XE 2014 were a direct result of requests made from SIS’ partner agencies.
The new “Quick Menu” feature is designed to enable quick and easy workflows from the Quick Summary view.
Enhancements to the Client Summary and Profile are designed to bring information to the forefront of the system.
Enhancements to Search and Reporting will help Partner XE users better serve clients and track business more effectively.
The new “Policy Description” feature enables more effective policy categorization.
Partner XE 2014 includes a number of accounting enhancements, including new check formats and reports.
“The changes and additions in Partner XE 2014 were inspired by feedback from our valued partner agencies, and offer functionality designed to streamline their operations and better serve their clients” said Paul Fuller, EVP of Product Management for SIS. “We are excited to take another step forward in our ability to serve agencies of all types and sizes.”
We’ve looked at a host of ways to increase your independent insurance agency’s email productivity through keeping your inbox safe and managing when and how you send messages. Now, we turn to Outlook and your agency management system as great tools to increase email productivity. The majority of independent insurances agencies use Outlook as their email system, and we’ve compiled a few ways you can utilize Outlook to get more done, faster.
Outlook Tips for Increased Email Productivity
Use Quicksteps Quicksteps is a feature found in Outlook 2010 and 2013, located on the top ribbon. You can click the arrow to open up the Quicksteps screen and check out some of the features already set-up. You’ll be amazed to see how many ways you could save time just by using some of these built-in shortcuts. You can also set up your own Quicksteps, such a way to automatically email a certain group of people or to add appointments to your calendar right from an email with a custom keystroke shortcut. Just be sure to test your Quicksteps after you’ve set them up to ensure they work correctly.
Use folders As mentioned in a previous post, utilizing Outlook’s folder system can help you categorize your inbox and keep it clean. This also helps you keep information on one topic or project in one place, making it easier to find when needed. In addition, you can create rules to automatically move emails, such as newsletters (see our post on BACN ) or emails sent from a specific co-worker, client or provider.
Use shortcuts Just like with Quicksteps, you’d be surprised to see how many keystroke shortcuts already exist in Outlook. LifeHacker went through a list in a recent post, including the familiar “Ctrl+R” to reply to an email, but also “Alt+R” reply to all to an email. Other keystrokes included “Alt+W” to forward an email and “Ctrl+G” to jump to any date in the calendar. See the full list here.
Use templates You may find yourself writing the same email, such as a meeting reminder or a request for client info, repeatedly. Once you’ve written out your format, you can save yourself time by creating a template of your commonly sent emails simply by going to “File>Save As>Outlook template”. After creating this template, you go to “New Items>Choose Form” and select your previously created template and insert the updated information. This simple task not only saves time but will also save you from mistypes and spelling errors.
Use custom task priorities If you’re not already, you should start using Outlook to track your tasks. When you do, you can create customized prioritizations of each task through the task pane. This helps you easily see which tasks are most important or those that need to completed before other tasks in a project series. This simple visual prioritization will help you tackle things in proper order and keep up on deadlines.
Benefits of Outlook Integration
In addition, it makes sense for your agency management system to work with Outlook in an effort to streamline your processes and flow of communication. Outlook Integration, which allows you to sync Outlook with your agency management system, ensures all your independent insurance agency’s data and communications are in one place. Combining Outlook integration with the above tips on increasing Outlook’s productivity will put you on the path to a more relaxed, successful work day.
We at SIS offer Outlook Integration as one of Partner XE’s many capabilities, and consistently hear feedback like “(Outlook Integration) has made us extremely more efficient in documentation and E&O prevention” (Mark Mraz, Insurance Consultants Group). It’s feedback like this that lets us know we’re giving our clients what they need. To let us know your opinion on Partner XE, or to find out more, contact us today at 800-747-9273 or [email protected].
In this third post in our series on improving email productivity we focus on keeping out unwanted emails from your inbox. Although there isn’t much you can do to keep out your great aunt’s chain emails or your co-worker’s constant “Subject: lunch?” messages, you can keep your inbox safe from spam, and, the newly coined “BACN”. As with out last post, just by integrating these small changes you will have a cleaner inbox, keeping you safe form harmful viruses and, more importantly, keeping you on task.
Keeping Out Spam
Use your email systems’ spam filter This first tip may be obvious, but it is many times the most obvious answers that escape us. Every email platform has its own spam filtering system, and you should get familiar with yours. Look into how your email provider blocks spam, and continually mark bad messages as spam to update its settings. This may seem simple, but it is best to use all possible resources to keep your inbox safe. No single habit or tool will fix all, but a combination of all will keep you and your inbox protected.
Get a spam filter add-on Although you already have some spam filtering through your email system, many spammers have gotten sophisticated and are able to by-pass your email system’s first line of defense. You can beef up your protection with add-ons that are tailored to your email platform. As most independent insurance agencies use Outlook, one great add-on to check out is Cloudmark Desktop. Cloudmark is compatible with Outlook and Outlook Express, is easy to use and has a high spam filtering rate. It also has anti-phishing capabilities to prevent info-gathering through your email. Check out other Outlook add-on options here.
Invest in anti-spam apps As we mentioned in a previous post, there are many great ant-spam apps you can use that attach to any and all email systems, and go wherever you go. Using these apps will give you that extra layer of protection, and many will give you the added bonus of sending secure e-mail. This added level of protection means your outgoing messages can have the same level of scrutiny as those you receive, so you know your inbox is free of hazardous viruses.
Cutting Out the BACN
Unsubscribe! As we mentioned in our last post , the best way to cut back on the BACN is to unsubscribe from the newsletters you don’t read. Rather than just deleting yet another daily digest newsletter, scroll down to hit “unsubscribe” first. Although it would be better not to subscribe to new mail in the first place, taking that extra moment to unsub will drastically cut down on the amount of emails you get each day.
Consolidate your updates If there are a number of newsletters you read regularly, think about consolidating them in to one daily email with Unroll.me. This service shows you to which enewsletters you are subscribed and gives you the option to unsubscribe or consolidate them into one. If you do consolidate, have your daily digest delivered at a time when you know you can take time to read it. Similarly, consolidate your social media updates so you receive one email per day or, even better, per week with the info you need. You can do this by going to the “update preferences” or “email preferences sections” on Facebook and Twitter.
Filter your BACN Use your current email system settings, or sign up with an email filtering service, and make sure your BACN goes to a folder just like spam. This way, you can take time and read it as needed rather than being interrupted with each new message. Better yet, get a personalized email system, like Sendio, for your independent insurance agency that can help you filter these items and provide other great resources.
By cleaning up your inbox, you will be less distracted and get more done each day, leading to a vastly more productive agency. Productivity is important to keeping your agency moving and is the only way you can hope to see it grow.
Another great way to increase productivity is with an agency management system that keeps up with you. Our Partner XE agency management system works with you, providing features like mobile access, Outlook synchronization and accounting integration. We’d love to talk with you to find out about how SIS and Partner XE can help your agency run better, faster and longer. Contact us today at 800-747-9273 or [email protected] to get the conversation started!
Small businesses point to accountants as some of the most important professionals for their business. That may be because 60% of small business owners say they don’t know the first thing about finance and accounting. As a small business owner, you can probably relate. Many independent agency owners find themselves in an accounting crash-course when they start or take over their business. How can you beat the odds to get a grasp on your agency’s finances and position yourself for future growth?
This past year, one of our team’s major focuses was insurance agency marketing and how we can get the best tools to our Partner Platform agencies, helping them build and grow their agency brand. From our integrated Marketing Automation Manager to our Partner Connect custom website, app, and Client Portal offerings, we spent hours gaining feedback and perfecting our sales and marketing offerings.
Beyond these tools, we also provided a wealth of information on how agencies can build their brand and grow their business on our blog. As we start a new year, we hope you’ll benefit from some of the tips and tricks we’ve captured.
The year 2020 was one like no other: it provided individuals and businesses worldwide with some interesting and rarely seen challenges. Innovation, flexibility, and adaptation were required in increasing measure to reduce risk and make the most of the opportunities that came our way.
For the Partner Platform team at Strategic Insurance Software, the foundational service principles we practice every day were exercised in new ways and to new heights, helping us turn the many challenges of 2020 into some amazing successes. The growth and achievements of the team are truly remarkable.
We’ve looked at a host of ways to increase your independent insurance agency’s email productivity through keeping your 
In this third post in our series on improving email productivity we focus on keeping out unwanted emails from your inbox. Although there isn’t much you can do to keep out your great aunt’s chain emails or your co-worker’s constant “Subject: lunch?” messages, you can keep your inbox safe from spam, and, the newly coined “BACN”. As with out 
In our last post, we looked at ways to make your website stand out, showing your agency’s reliability and great service. But, no matter how great your website is, it doesn’t mean much if it can’t be found.