Greetings from sunny SoCal! In case you’re not one of the handful of people who were familiar with me before my speech (and highly engaging Q&A session) at the 2015 American Agents Alliance Convention & Expo a couple of weeks ago, my name is Brad Ruben and I’m the mind behind the world-famous weekly Archway newsletter…oh yeah, and president/CEO of Archway.
Archway is a growing IT support firm that works only with insurance agencies—92 of them all across the country. I like to joke we have no normal clients, only insurance agencies.
You don’t go fishing for bass with a string tied to a stick, and you don’t expand in the modern marketplace by sitting around waiting for people to find your agency. That’s right, the tech tools you use have a huge impact on the results you can expect, and so I’m going to use my debut around these parts to talk about how some of our agencies reel ‘em in.
Yesware
Yesware is an email tracking utility that lets you instantly see who’s reaching back at your outreach, showing advanced tracking analytics including open rate, link interaction and even the device used to open the email. This kind of insight gives you a clearer picture of what works and what doesn’t, helping you tailor your strategies so you can spend less time wondering if anybody is reading your emails and more time answering new client queries (www.yesware.com).
Sanebox
If you’re always losing emails or constantly dealing with an overflowing inbox, help is here. Sanebox (www.sanebox.com) is a resource designed to streamline your email once and for all, automatically creating folders and organizing incoming messages directly to them.
Sanebox compartmentalizes your email so you only check the three emails per day that are important while you’re working and not the 96 containing cat videos and vacation pictures, but does compile a daily digest so you can see them all at a less productive time.
Sanebox works with any IMAP-based email service, and even supports connection with social media sites like Facebook and Twitter so you can have those emails prioritized to your liking as well. In a world where up to 40% of staff time is wasted on email, a utility like Sanebox is kinda like adding more hours to the day (which doesn’t sound quite as good in print as it did in my head considering we’re talking about work here).
Visual Visitor
Visual Visitor is an invaluable resource for turning clicks into leads, featuring email campaign integration that not only identifies visitors to your site, but tags them to track their future visits and help you gauge the interest level of each prospect. Visual Visitor combines multiple analytics types into an in-depth profile of your client base, and best of all, there’s no logging in to check your Visual Visitor stats at the end of the day…the service sends users a real time log of actionable leads so you can concentrate on following them. (www.visualvisitor.com)
At the end of the day, success in this industry is about being proactive, and while using these tools isn’t a guarantee that your client numbers will skyrocket overnight, they’re certainly a better option than taking out an ad on the back of a local diner’s menu. I hope we’re off to a great start and you’ll continue to check in to my monthly contributions on IT news. For Archway, I’m Brad Ruben…thanks for listening.
About the Author:
Brad Ruben is President of Archway Computer, Inc. He can be reached via email: brad@myarchway.com or phone 888-361-9995.
If you’re a member of the American Agents Alliance Brad offers a generous discount on IT services for your agency. Log on with your username and password and see the details here.
