Believe it or not, insurance companies have a legacy of not being very good at listening to customers. Although some are better than others. Some still call their customers policyholders. They are not very keen on contacting their customer beyond the occasion of sending them policy statements or premium notices.
With 80% of consumers saying they are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences, insurers are leaving money on the table if they do not take personalization more seriously.
By the time you finished reading this post, you will have twelve actionable ideas to jumpstart a year-round personalized marketing campaign.
What is Personalized Email?
First thing first, email is one of the most effective ways to reach your customers. Over 46% of US respondents say they check their phone first thing in the morning and email is one of the things they look at. And Email is almost 40 times more effective than Facebook, and Twitter combined.
Personalized emails are sent to the recipients based on data collected about their personal particulars, preferences, or behavior. This can ensure relevant offers are provided at the right time, and to the right person.
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Why Are Personalized Emails Important?
While the following list highlights the benefits of personalization in general, they are applicable to email marketing as well:
- Improved customer experience: Tailored offerings make customers feel their needs are taken care of. They will appreciate and look forward to interacting with your brand.
- Increased ROI: If you master personalization in your email campaigns, you can expect your revenue to increase by 5-15%.
- Improved customer relationship: Personalized content allows insurers to better serve their customers by understanding their needs.
- Higher open rate: Generic-sounding emails are more likely to end up in the trash folder without even getting opened. A personalized subject line will result in a nearly 50% increase in your overall open rate.
- Higher conversion rate: More personalized offers drive higher conversion with relevant content. According to Accenture, 91% of people are more likely to buy from companies that send personalized emails.
- Increase customer retention: Offering something unique to your customer improves customer loyalty and turns existing consumers into your brand ambassadors.
- Lead generation: Happy and satisfied customers will certainly advocate your brand and generate more leads than their competitors.
12 Personalized Email Marketing Ideas for Insurance
If you are looking for some personalized email marketing ideas tailored to the insurance industry, you’ve come to the right place.
That said, you can apply these ideas for a year-round personalized marketing campaign at your disposal. With these twelve ideas, you can basically create at least one touchpoint to connect with your customer per month.
By putting them into practice, you are on the way to reaping the benefits of better customer relationships, increased loyalty, more referrals, and eventually more business. Let’s get to them.
1. Review of Insurance Coverage
Each client has different needs when it comes to insurance. Since life changes, so does coverage expectations. Therefore, it is essential to review these changes regularly with your clients so that they are adequately insured for anything that life throws at them.
Here are how you can approach this:
- A brief summary of current policies that the client holds – Most people don’t know what they are covered by their insurance policy. So it would be helpful to provide your client with a summary of the coverage at least once a year.
- A reminder of the importance of retaining proper coverage – Admit it, life doesn’t always turn out the way we want. And that’s where insurance comes into play – to provide a safety net in case anything happens against our plan.
Show them you care about their coverage as much as they do for themselves and their family.
- A Call-To-Action – Provide a clear and simple call-to-action. In your email, let your clients click to schedule a live chat, a video call, or a face-to-face appointment.
2. Product and Policy Updates
If there is one constant in the insurance industry, that would be change. Policy terms and conditions are constantly in flux. New products come on the market, and others are discontinued. It is a good idea to review these changes every year with your clients, beginning with describing their current policies and what changes have been made.
Here is a summary of what you can include in this type of personalized insurance marketing email.
- Inform your customer what has been changed and how does it affect them
- Tell them what follow up action they may need to do (if any)
- Provide a contact point, eg. email/chatbot/hotline, if they have questions
This is a way to ensure that your clients are always knowledgeable about their coverage types. You do not want them to be surprised when they make a claim, only to discover that you never notified them of changes that have been made.
3. New Product Launch
This is your opportunity to present new products to your clients each year. Do not just focus on the products that simply offer you the best commission potential. Instead, highlight new policies that can have the most impact on different segments of client.
With this email, make sure that you:
- Highlight the key features and benefits of each new plan or product
- Explain what type of person each new product is best designed for
- Consider providing a discount for clients that purchase a new product within a certain time frame
4. Birthday Greetings with Special Offers
This is perhaps the most logical suggestion in this list, but it is also the one that has the most potential. Everyone likes to be recognized on their birthday. At the same time, keep in mind that most of your clients will likely be getting multiple emails starting one month prior. So you need to do your best to ensure that the message from your insurance company gets noticed.
Here are some items that you will want to consider including in a personalized birthday message to your clients:
- Congratulate them on their special day
- Highlight how great you think it is that they take care of themselves and their family by purchasing adequate insurance
- Look for opportunities to promote the upselling of a particular policy, including health insurance plans
- Ask them to schedule an appointment to review their coverage via telephone, online conference, or in-person
5. Event-Triggered Messages
The purpose of this personalized email message is to identify opportunities to cross-sell various insurance products on your product shelf.
- A visit to a product page on your website: Are they looking for a particular kind of coverage? Have they clicked on the click for a product brochure? Most email service providers allow you to track users’ behavior on your website. Send them a follow-up message with similar products or price comparisons. Top it off with a button that allows the recipient to start an instant live chat with an agent or book a meeting.
- Change of home address: This provides you with a great opportunity to send them an offer or review their homeowner’s insurance needs.
- Change of beneficiary: There is also the opportunity to review existing coverage based upon a new addition to the family or a marriage.
- Change of payment method: Other items include new employment and health insurance needs.
The key here is to be creative. You will want to get insights from the analytics from various channels (e.g. website, email, social media or mobile app) to determine which of your clients should receive these emails and when.
6. Successful Insurance Claims
Many people still wonder what it is like to actually make a claim on their insurance policy. Personalize this by offering real-life stories from customers in the same segment (e.g. age group, gender, location, or family status) that will make your message more relatable to the recipients.
Focus on the feelings. Use the claim story as a case study to show how your products help customers in difficult times.
Do you know how write an effective case study? Read this post to learn more:
7. Customer Reviews or Testimonials
Not every personalized email that your insurance company sends out needs to be directed specifically toward the recipients themselves. An effective strategy is to highlight happy customers who gave your business a positive review or testimonial.
People love to read stories of individuals who are relatable to them. In this case, you will want to create an email containing examples from your existing clients about how a particular product you sell has benefitted them and their families in one way or another.
8. Seasonal or Location-Specific Personalization
You will want to use this time to provide helpful advice about what your clients can do based on the season they are entering. Clients in snow-stricken areas will benefit from learning how to winterize their homes, for example.
If it is summer, you might focus your email on how to stay safe while traveling. You might also write an email based on a particular location to give your customers something unique to read.
9. Gender-Specific Personalization
For any client who is a mother, you can send out a special Mother’s Day greeting to them. You can do the same for all of the fathers on your client list. If there is a special day coming up that appeals to a particular gender, such as International Women’s Day, then this is a great time to send out a personalized email to select clients as well.
10. Age-Specific Personalization
This type of personalized email demonstrates to your clients that you care about where they are currently in their life cycle. This can go by decade or generation.
For example, you might encourage your clients over the age of 40 to get a health check-up every five years or so. You might encourage 30 year old’s to start planning for their child’s college education.
11. Holidays or Cultural Personalization
This is your opportunity to make a simple yet meaningful connection with your clients. Examples include major holidays, such as Christmas and Thanksgiving, to name a few.
This is also a way to let you build relationships by aligning your values with your clients.
The idea is to let them know that you care to make the world a better place, as much as you do by offering insurance as a safety net for those who need it in difficult times.
Examples may include:
- International Day of Happiness
- International Women’s Day
- World Health Day
- International Day of Yoga
- World Day for Safety and Health at Work
- World No-Tobacco
- World Children’s Day
Check out more International Days and Weeks from UN’s website.
12. Company Announcements
This might not be the most personalized email you may think of. But emails that talk about what’s happening in a company work like people’s social sharing. They are authentic. And it is a good way to show your credibility and can build up trust with your client.
Things to share may include:
- Receiving industry awards
- Upgrading of systems or equipment
- Reaching a certain number of customers (e.g. 1000, or 100,000)
- Office expansion or relocation
- Signing up for new business partnership
Let your client know how hard you’ve been working to make your company a better place to work in. Or how much you care about your employee so they are able to show their best work to serve them.
What’s Next?
Your next step at this point is to gather as much personal information about your clients as possible. This will help you determine which types of personal emails would be most appropriate for your insurance business to send out. An action plan moving forward would look like this:
- Make sure your clients are opting in to receive your emails
- Choose an email marketing program
- Decide the best day of the month to send out your emails
- Create a series of personalized emails and get them set to run
So there you have it. The more of these tactics you employ, the more likely you’ll be to win higher open rates, nurture better customer relationships, and yield an impressive ROI all year round.
