When you’re marketing insurance, you have a limited time to reach out to your leads and turn them into customers. While it’s important to connect with your customers through evergreen content on your website and blog, you also need to be able to contact people quickly, and they need to be able to contact you. How can you bring a real-time element to your customer communications?
1. Make Email Communication Into a Key Job Role
According to the Harvard Business Review’s survey of businesses regarding their communication, “The average response time, among companies that responded within 30 days, was 42 hours.” Unfortunately, people expect an answer much more quickly than that.
You need to enter the conversation with your customer while the customer is still thinking about the question. That increases the chance that the customer will find your conversation relevant. If you need to answer a question about auto insurance and you reply a day later, that person may have already purchased insurance elsewhere.
According to Shopify, “77% of people won’t wait longer than 6 hours for an email reply.” Assign the job of doing email follow-ups to specific people in your company, and make sure that there is someone on your corporate email throughout the day, even if you have to alternate this role between different people. If you find that many of your inquiries occur after hours, consider working with a call center to follow through as well.
2. Diversify Your Communication Strategies
Did you set up a Facebook account, only to forget about it most of the time? These days, many of your customers want to connect with you through social media. Devote energy to these other communication platforms as well. For instance, if you spend some time every day monitoring social media accounts and looking at your own Facebook messages, you’ll have a far better response time than if you put it off until you’re not too busy. Many of your customers will reach out via social media. Be ready.
3. Use Keyword Alerts
How do you know what requires immediate follow-up? Use a social media program to pinpoint keywords that show that the customer has a need for immediate assistance. Connect with these people more quickly.
4. Automate Your Follow Ups
Did a customer visit your website and sign up for your email list? Did she sign up for more information on your insurance products but failed to follow through with the final request? Set up automated emails that address different common scenarios on your website. As long as you have your customer’s email address you can connect with that person to ensure that at least some reminders and answers get through to that person, even when your business is closed.
5. Have an Outstanding FAQ
Just like self-serve checkouts, FAQs can be both speedy and annoying. Make sure that your FAQ makes your customers’ lives easier. If your customers are looking for answers when you’re not open, your FAQ is the stand-in for you. Make it thorough, but also make sure that it lays out the questions and answers in a logical, straightforward format. Those insurance answers must be easy for your customers to understand.
At American Agents Alliance, we help you connect with your insurance customers. We support independent insurance agencies as you work with your employees or seek new resources that will help you more easily connect with your customers. We’re your insurance agent association: contact us today.
