Email – the Good the Bad and the Unaddressed Simple Tips to Make Email Your Friend

The Good
Go ahead and take a stop watch to work today. Use it to time phone calls through out the day. If yours is like most businesses, you’ll find the average is in the 10 – 12 minute range. Then bring the stop watch in the next day and time how long the average email exchange takes. You’ll find it’s about 1 minute. If just two phone calls a day were handled by email you would save about 2 hours per week per employee. In a four person office, that adds up to a day’s payroll for an employee. Email is good you say.

The Bad
Of course we have to consider the number one bane of all in-boxes: spam. Spam is irritating at best, forcing you to delete unwanted offers for pharmaceuticals, ‘personal’ products or worse. Sometimes we lose track of legitimate emails in the clutter. At worst, spam can slow down mail servers and bring us to our communication knees.

Fortunately, protecting yourself from spam requires only a few simple measures. First, never give your email to anyone if you don’t know what they might do with it. Check out web sites for privacy policies. When in doubt, use an alternative email address. Those can be set up for free through Google, Yahoo or MSN, among others.

Never leave you email address ‘out there’ on your web site. Spammers use crawlers or bots, just like the search engines do. Spammers use bots to crawl web sites looking for email addresses they can add to their spam directories. Try to keep your email address behind a veil the bots can’t see through. Requiring a log in is one way to do that. But if you don’t have a way for users to automatically retrieve or reset their IDs and passwords you may end up with a lot of frustrated customers.

Lastly, you may want to consider using a spam filters. There are several on the market, some are free and most are inexpensive. They all work a little differently but most spam filters employ rules to score an email and mark it as ‘junk’ or ‘legitimate’. The better filters will catch nearly everything with minimum to no ‘false positives’. A false positive is a legitimate email that gets categorized as spam. If you use a filter, you should check your junk or bulk mail folder regularly to make sure legitimate emails aren’t missed.

The Unaddressed
In order to benefit from the time saving and efficiency email delivers, you need email addresses. How do you get them? The short answer is, as with most things, you don’t get something for nothing. Email is a convenience and expense saving for your agency, but what’s in it for your customer?

What is not intuitive is that you need to have a website worthy (from your customer’s point of view) of parting with an email address. A website that has meaningful content, security and sits at the center of client agency communications is the key to capturing email addresses. You can allow nearly free and unfettered access to your website but saving results, customizing content and preferences should be reserved only for registered users. And registration should include an email address. To see a demo website that will help your agency reap the benefits of email, go to http://www.confluencysolutions.com/cscoact/demo.php or choose the Demo Log In link at www.confluencysolutions.com.

Here are a few email collection tactics for your consideration.

Tactic 1: Ask for email addresses but provide assurances about how it will be used and how your customer or prospect will benefit. A privacy policy on your web site is a good place to start with assurances about how customer information, including email, will be used. Email should be required to access secure information on your website; that alone can be reason enough for a consumer to part with their address.

Tactic 2: Use email to link back to your website for efficiency and security. You can embed links from content at your agency website rather than retype information, that saves your employees time; it also saves your customers time. Using a link back to secure area on your website also avoids the inherently unsecure nature of email. Emails and attachments are like postcards – they are easy for many people to read. So there’s that security benefit again.

Tactic 3: Use contests and campaigns to gather emails. The contests and campaigns can be internal – small rewards to employees for gathering a certain number of emails (like Friday afternoon off). Or contests can be external – prizes based on random drawings for customers who register on your website; part of that registration should include a valid email address. Of course, you can’t really contemplate a email gathering campaign until you have addressed the assurances and benefits we noted in Tactic 1. But once you have, you should absolutely consider an email gathering campaign; an effective campaign can capture 30% to 50% or more of your customers emails in a several week burst.

How Do You Get and Keep More Profitable Customers? (Hint: Customers that Fend for Themselves are Good for Your Agency)

For the answer to that question (and it isn’t obvious), we have to look to the retail, banking and cell phone industries. By combining some of what has been learned about consumers there with what is known about consumer insurance needs and expectations we can sketch out a roadmap for growth and profit in 2006.

Consumers really would like a local provider for their insurance, in fact, Progressive Insurance learned in a 2002 survey that 92% of all consumers would like to be able to do business locally¹. But that’s not all. Most consumers would also like the option of using the internet, at least sometimes. A 2005 study of the retail industry by Adjoined Research put this number at 80%² and growing.

The banking and cell phone industries have learned something else about those consumers who want to customize services for themselves: they are more satisfied, profitable and stay with their service provider longer. Verizon Wireless has one of the highest online, self-service usage levels and one of the lowest customer churn rates in their industry³ and that’s no coincidence. Bank of America noted that 50% of their customers who use online banking rate their service satisfaction a 9 or 10 out of 10 vs. only 41% for the general customer population⁴.

But back to the insurance world. What insurance consumers want, overwhelmingly, is peace of mind. In a 2002 survey by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners 90% of respondents said that is the biggest benefit of insurance. What that means is consumers want to know they have the right level of insurance protection for their particular circumstances. That same survey found that 72% of consumers felt they did not understand their insurance program very well and that was a major reason why 83% of those surveyed felt that an annual review was a good idea. Online services that let customers address these concerns for themselves result in more product sales, enhanced retention and promote higher referral rates. One more piece of good news: services delivered online typically only cost 1% to 5% of those same services delivered in person⁵.

So with online service everyone wins: happier customers stay with their agent longer, buy more products and refer others and agents dramatically cut the cost of delivering customized service. Confluency Solutions has a variety of web modules that can be dropped into your agency web site to make your customers happier right away. This a good time of year for annual reviews for personal lines customers. Three tools to make that easy and profitable are highlighted this month: The Personal Property Wizard helps estimate replacement cost for contents and possessions without requiring a tedious inventory. The Personal Risk Wizard provides customized guidance for appropriate levels of insurance protection. The Annual Review Wizard walks users through changes that may have taken place that might require an update in their insurance program. All modules take no more than a few minutes of a customer’s or prospective customer’s time, can be used in a variety of ways and can be installed on your website in minutes. To access evaluation versions or a flash demo of these tools go to http://www.confluencysolutions.com/store.

1. http://www.progressive.com
2. Business Wire, March 16, 2005
3. Dom Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D. November, 2005
4. Tom Van Horn and Robert Wollan, November, 2005
5. Dom Peppers and Martha Rogers Ph.D., sas.com magazine, Third Quarter, 2005,

How to Make Your Website Work – The missing piece of Independent Agent Magazine Online’s feature on why most agency websites don’t generate revenue or reduce expenses. IA tells you what to fix, we’ll tell you how.

Does Your Agency Need a Website and How Do You Make One Work?

The November edition of IA Magazine Online (see the technology section http://www.iiaba.net/iamag/index.html) presented the idea that most independent insurance agency web sites don’t work. How do you know if your website works? Does an independent agent, particularly a local agency even need a website? If your agency website doesn’t work what needs to be done to fix that? How would you do it? This newsletter addresses these questions in two parts. Part 1 tells you how to make your website work once you have a solid foundation. Part 2 tells you what you need for a solid web foundation.

First, the question of whether your agency needs a website that works. A 2001 study by the IIABA revealed that 75% of consumers researched insurance online before buying. That number is almost certainly higher now. A 2005 survey performed by Adjoined Research showed that 80% of consumers wanted the ability to switch back and forth between using the web and doing business face to face or locally. Consumers no longer see those options as distinct ‘channels’; they prefer their insurance provider to have both available. Finally, the banking and wireless phone industries have discovered that customers who perform online self service are more satisfied and profitable than other customers. So clearly, an agency that doesn’t have an effective online presence is missing a lot of opportunity and is at significant risk of customer defection.

--Part 1--

Building on a Foundation and Making the Web Work

Just because you build a better mouse trap doesn’t mean you will be able to sell it. The same is true for your agency website. In part 1 of this article we explore the four things your agency needs to address so your website will contribute to bottom line results: getting people to your site, keeping them there once they visit, getting them to explore your website getting them to bring others.

Objectives should be set in these areas so you can evaluate your website’s effectiveness at contributing to your bottom line. Confluency Solutions has a guide that is closely related to this called 7 By 4 Principles:

• You have 7 seconds or less to keep someone on your website
• You need a site visitor to visit 7 areas on your site to fully appreciate all the value your agency can add
• You need a visitor to return to your site 7 times so that your website becomes a habit
• You need 7 website referrals per customer using your site

We need to start with the assumption that you have a solid website foundation laid with professional appearance, ease of use and good content (for more on this, see Part 2). Next, it is crucial you get your customers to your website. Recently published statistics indicate an average agency can expect 35% - 60% of their customers to have high speed internet access at home. An additional 30% - 40% will have high speed internet access at work. This group will comprise 50% – 75% of most agencies customers and is the group most likely to expect web service options. A modest starting objective is to have 30% of your customers regularly visiting your agency on the web. For some ideas on how to bring that about check out the tips in Show Your Customers The Way.

7 Seconds or Less
That’s the most time you have to engage a visitor before they click their mouse and move to another website. You engage someone by getting them to click something or enter information right away – interaction is the key. Text laden pages without a good reason for interacting are a common mistake. There is an acronym for the balance that needs to be struck – MALT – More Action Less Text. For a good example, check out the cFluent Personal Property Analyzer. There is plenty of explanatory text but there is also an offer to get an answer to an important question: is underinsurance placing your personal property at risk? The Personal Property Analyzer (PPA) is actually an application, as distinct from content. Applications give your agency the advantage of customizing content and information for site visitors.

7 Areas Visited
Ultimately you need all the services customers want out on your website. As you build content and add applications you will have that. For example, the currently available cFluent Tools provide four distinct areas for customers to visit with frequency (Glossary, FAQs, Claim Manager Personal Property Analyzer). Others that can be added are newsletter type articles (you don’t necessarily need a ‘newsletter’), annual review and other checklists and forms. You can ‘feature’ sections each month as part of your recorded on-hold message, as a footer in print communications or as separate mailing campaigns to customer segments. When more of your site is utilized by visitors the habit of visiting your site becomes more ingrained. This is important because you want your agency website to be the primary resource for the pre-purchase research customers and potential customers will do.

7 Return Visits
Return visits are part of making your website a habit. Ideally you want those return visits to be concentrated in a shorter period of time. Several months is OK but weeks are better. There is a concept Confluency uses with the cFluent Tools called PUSH-PULL. Snail mail can be used for this but email is better. Once you give your customers a good reason to give you their email address (so you can notify them when you have fresh content, or for setting up a secure online area to keep customized information, for example) you can use email for PUSH-PULL. The concept simply means push email out to pull visitors in. Email pushes are free of postage, print and handling costs and can include links back to your site to exactly the areas you want to have visited. It is a best practice to get consumers to give you permission to send them email (opt in) or at least make opting out obvious and easy.

7 Website Referrals for Each Customer Using Your Site
Seven referrals per customer may seem wildly optimistic but, in fact, it is very realistic using the web, email and the principles of viral marketing. viral marketing is word of mouth on steroids. By using viral marketing principles an agency can facilitate rapid and exponential referral growth. The key principles are these:

1. Provide something of value (your website content and applications)

• Make it free
• Make it easy to transfer and share that free, valuable something

If you do that you will get referrals that grow across each successive referring ‘generation’, just like a virus. The first generation is your customers (see illustration). Email makes the transfer across generations inexpensive and fast. Confluency embeds elements of viral marketing in all the cFluent Tools and you should make sure any valuable contents or applications on your website can be easily referred to others.

If you can embed the Principles of 7 By 4, MALT, PUSH-PULL and Viral Marketing throughout your website you will see a dramatic increase in revenue. At the same time, the greater proportion of customers doing business with via your website and email will drive costs down. Both of these results should be easy to measure and relate back to your website changes.

--Part 2—

Most of the Best Agency Websites Don’t Work but They Have a Good Foundation

It’s worth the redundancy to repeat the question: how do you know if your website works? The simple answer is if your website contributes to income or reduces expenses in amounts greater than the investment and upkeep of your site. In order to answer the question though, you need to be able to measure the contribution your website is making. That measurement can be sophisticated if your website includes traffic reports and a database that monitors user activities on your site. Or the measurement can simply consist of correlating ‘hits’ to your website with sales increases. Either way, if you are to honestly assess if your website works you need to be able to measure some contribution. (For an idea of how to calculate contributions of website components take a look at the cFluent Claim Manager online calculator at http://www.iiaba.net/iamag/index.html).

What needs to be done to fix a website that doesn’t work? The Independent Agent Magazine article cited three areas to focus on: appearance (or design), ease of use (site navigation) and content. However, even if you address each of these areas your website may not produce much in the way of measurable results. These items are just the foundation. How to build on the foundation and generate income or cut costs is covered in this section.

The IA article makes the case that, if your website doesn’t look professional it will reflect poorly on the image of your agency – a visitor making a judgment on amateur design is probably going to move on. Fortunately, professional looking (if unsensational) design is not very expensive – but you shouldn’t rely on an IT generalist for this. Instead engage a web designer and preferably one who knows the insurance business.

Ease of use simply means that a website visitor can get what they want without confusion, excessive mouse clicks or getting forestalled by needless flash animations. Ease of use is really part of good web design and that’s why it is important to use a designer who knows your business. They will know how to lay out a website that works for your agency; if you can’t find a web designer who knows your business then plan to take the time to teach someone about your business.

Content is a little trickier but not difficult. The IA article suggests a number of valuable tips for website content and we won’t revisit them here. But the article does not make a distinction between ‘content’ and ‘applications’. The difference is important when it comes to customizing content and keeping visitors at your site. Customers who use your online facilities and customize their content usually will also have an excellent ratio of commission to service expense and very high rates of renewal.

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind is that your website needs to be about the consumer. Content that is too heavily weighted toward information about your agency, your companies or your products will prevent your website from working. What do consumers want? First, consumers want peace of mind that their insurance program is right for them - 90% see that as the primary value of insurance. Other surveys indicate that 70% - 75% of consumers don’t understand their insurance program very well. 99% of consumers surveyed by Progressive Insurance said they wanted to able to have their needs met 24/7. So content needs to be primarily concerned with educating consumers in their areas of interest and providing peace of mind. And the content and applications that satisfy these needs should be available on your website 24/7 – an email form won’t do.

Hopefully this newsletter has given you a good idea for how to make the web work for your agency. Additional information is available through free online webinars or by contacting Confluency Solutions (info@confluencysolutions.com or 877.351.2600)

Show Your Customers the Way

Many agencies rely on the search engines like Yahoo and Google to bring visitors to their site. Search engine traffic is free but increasingly competitive. You can use content, key words, title pages and site maps to optimize your site. This gives your site the best chance of getting found in key word searches but bear in mind that search optimization (SEO) has become much more sophisticated and costly. Expect ongoing annual costs of $5,000 for quality SEO. A better and far less expensive place to start is with your own customers.

To abdicate or not to abdicate (claim handling), that is the question.

Direct reporting to carrier and restriction of claim draft authority have led many independent agents to remove themselves from the claim process unless presented with a problem. A study published by management consulting firm Accenture shows why not keeping tabs on the claim process and not monitoring your carriers’ service can be dangerous. Among adults filing a claim in the last 5 years:

• 94% said quick resolution was important
• 82% said being aware of the process beforehand was key
• 74% said the amount of the settlement was important
• 41% were unsatisfied with how they were kept apprised of claim status

The proportion of clients likely to stay with their current insurance provider and likely to refer other customers varies by satisfaction component, but is uniformly high – 65% to 90%. Abdicating the claim process means abdicating control of client retention and growth through referrals.

Very few agencies today have claim specialists and those that do are usually focused on claim service for specialty programs or large accounts. Most claims are handled in such a way that the agent is the last to know what is happening with a claim. One alternative is to require service staff to monitor the claim progress by checking with the claimant and company at regular intervals. This is not usually viable since the hours in a typical account representative or CSR’s day are pretty well filled up.

The good news is that most small claims can be easily grouped by line of business and, once that is done, many characteristics are homogeneous across 80% or 90% of the claims. For instance:

• Most personal automobile and homeowner claims settle for under $10,000.
• First payment of loss happens within 7 to 10 days for most personal auto and homeowner claims.
• The steps in the claim settlement process are generally the same.
• The intervals between the steps in the claim process are typically uniform.

Understanding which claims are similar and in what ways they are similar gives an agency a chance to set up a controllable, repeatable monitoring process that is cost effective, ensures customer expectations are met and maximized retention and goodwill referrals.

Remedy: Develop a process that educates customers about the claim process and allows your agency to monitor carrier performance so you can intervene before delays or problems result in dissatisfaction. The claim monitoring process you implement should also allow you to collect the data necessary to help your carriers identify performance weaknesses and improve them and validate your agency’s value proposition.

More information on the Accenture study at:
http://www.bettermanagement.com/library/library.aspx?libraryid=12437&pagenumber=1

View a recorded demo of the cFluent Claim Manger Tool for Agency Websites at:

http://www.ConfluencySolutions.com/cats/cm

1) Web solutions aren’t ‘one size fits all agencies’.

By now most of us have heard that our agency needs to be on the web. That’s a little bit like saying everyone needs a pair of shoes. What style? What color? What size? What material? Those questions need a context: there is no one right answer. Where will the shoes be worn and with what, who will wear the shoes and for how long are all relevant considerations.

In much the same way, your unique agency, your vision, budget, staff and target market are all contexts that need to inform what to do with the internet. It is true that nearly any agency can benefit by using the web but how to use it depends on your agency context.

Management follows a certain hierarchy from general to specific. For instance, a Mission Statement is necessarily general, allowing for a business to adopt different objectives and strategies in different time frames as conditions change. As Jim Collins pointed out in his book Good to Great, Mission Statements should change very infrequently.

At the other end of the scale are tactical elements like Procedures. These can change quite often as business conditions require. Guiding changes to procedures are higher level management directives like Mission and Strategy.

Internet tactics and agency web sites are no different. There is no right answer to what kind of web site you should have and how you should use your web site except in the context of your individual agency. Consider the two following agencies.

Agency A is a large, well established agency which has chosen to concentrate on risk management solutions. As a follow on to that strategic choice, the agency has also elected to target medium to large, complex commercial accounts. This allows them to have relatively few accounts that are produced and managed by highly compensated employees. Agency A has not been blind to the fact that every single one of their commercial account contacts is also a personal lines prospect. That has been a source of concern because there is commission revenue on the table and more important, some other agent is writing the personal accounts creating a retention vulnerability. Agency A, to be consistent with their mission, would need to provide highly interactive, high quality risk management tools via a web site before going after the missing personal accounts. They would then need to develop a communication and promotion program to tie those tools to other agency practices and begin the growth cycle.

Agency B is a small agency that specializes in hard to place personal property and auto risks. Their mission is to quickly provide insurance coverage for consumers who have an immediate need and limited options. They have a number of relationships that they rely on for referral business and also do some broadcast advertising. Agency B is at a crossroads and needs to decide whether to develop business with those clients who have now ‘graduated’ from the immediate need group or whether to expand their promotion programs to get more of the same kind of business.

Both agencies can benefit from the internet but need very different solutions to line up with their unique situations and strategic decisions. Web decisions need to align, from the top down, with Mission, Management Philosophy and Operational Style (PDF).

2) Budgeting for the Internet

There are really two ways to think about the internet as a business expense. Your approach to the internet may be to generate leads and write business and in that case you would think of the internet as a business development expense. Alternatively, you may want your web site to provide service to current customers. These could be new or existing services you are migrating to the web. In either event you would think of the cost as an operations expenditure.

More specifically, you could think of the web as advertising and promotion expense or an information technology expense. The truth is most of the time costs are actually a blend between the two. According to IIABA’s 2005 Best Practices survey, agencies spend between 2.0% and 5.6% of revenue for these two expense areas combined. Money you devote to a web site, tools and content, internet promotion really come from this pool.

There are some additional expenses that you should expect to incur when doing business on the web and those are in the area of promoting what you have to offer. The costs should be small and web site promotion can often be incorporated into other campaigns and activities. But, unless you have a plan to promote what you are doing on the internet you are not really using the internet. There is a difference between using the internet and having a web site and that difference is the difference between business results and lack thereof.

Done right, a web site and internet activities should not include hidden technology costs. Outsourcing hosting can shift the burden of support to professionals who are dedicated to internet technology and can be advantageous since a good hosting company will have added security and redundancy for disaster situations.

Web marketing investments can deliver very high returns; internet marketing campaigns also can be tracked far better and more easily than most traditional programs. Just the same, your agency may not be in a position to shift budget money from lower pay-off initiatives at the present time. In that case you might want to start small and scale up. Different stages of web use have different characteristics, costs and paybacks (PDF). Three things should be kept in mind if you take this building block approach. The first was covered in the first part of this newsletter: make sure what you want to do with the web is consistent with the kind of agency you have. The second is to make sure that each step moves you closer to achieving whatever strategic objective you set for your self. The third is to be sure that early solutions can be built upon, that you do not have to start over and incur expenses anew.

Common Web Site Myths and Mistakes

1. I'll get my IT guy to build me a site.
2. I need to display links to my carriers and the weather on my site to make it more interesting.
3. I'm ahead of the game because I have a web site and my customers can get ID cards and certificates.
4. My customers don't use the web.
5. People want a relationship, not a web site.
6. I have a web site and nobody uses it.

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1) I'll get my IT guy to build me a site.

The web is first and foremost a business tool and you need to make it work for your business by earning or saving you money.

Technologists are trained to make technology function, they usually don't understand what it takes to be more profitable and competitive in your business. You need to supply clear business requirements to technologists and those requirements need to have a direct tie to business results. Examples of results you might measure include number of site visits, number of quotes generated without missing information, growth in use of specific services, etc.

Remedy: Direct and manage your technologist; it's the only way to avoid a cool looking internet billboard that collects dust and cobwebs.

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2) I need to display links to my carriers and the weather on my site to make it more interesting.

Links, especially logos, can clutter a web site making the message and navigation confusing. Worse, consumers will exit your site. Links to third party sites need to be used judiciously.

Remedy: Avoid, wherever possible, third party links on main pages. Extract the most relevant information and make it your own. Before displaying links, consider if the convenience to consumers outweighs the loss of visitors; think through how third party links support or dilute your value proposition and brand message before placing them on your site.

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3) I'm ahead of the game because I have a web site and my customers can get ID cards and certificates.

You get little credit for doing transactions or fulfilling simple service requests. Completing basic transactions accurately, quickly and conveniently are simply table stakes. Fail and you find yourself out of the game, deliver transactions well and you can continue to play but you have not won. Consumer expectations are constantly growing due to technology advances and adoption and experiences they have with other, world class businesses.

Remedy: Constantly stay in touch with changing consumer expectations and evaluate ways to meet and exceed them. Be prepared to adopt new business tools and processes at any time.

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4) My customers don't use the web.

There are pockets of consumers who do not use the web but those pockets are dwindling. As long ago as 2001, the IIABA Future One Study noted that, 75% of consumers research insurance online. More recent studies, at least where personal auto insurance is concerned, suggest that that number has nudged above 85%.

Fact: Not having a web site that allows consumers to research their needs, satisfy concerns about protection and easily obtain quotes is a growing business vulnerability.

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5) People want a relationship, not a web site.

A relationship has two components: contact and value exchanged during those contacts.
A recent survey conducted by Confluency Solutions revealed this information about customers contacted by their agents:

• 12% received a newsletter of some type within the last year
• 6% received a calendar, holiday card or some other generic contact during the previous 12 months
• 82% had not heard from their agent at all within the last 12 months

Other surveys make clear what consumers value in a relationship with their insurance agent:

• 83% want their needs analyzed and reviewed, at least annually
• 95% want expert counsel, specific to their needs
• 90% want the assurance that they have the right protection

These relationship components are often missing because most agents simply don't have enough time.

Fact: A web site can fill the customer relationships void if web services are designed to deliver what consumers value in a relationship.

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6) I have a web site and nobody uses it.
This is what happens when we fall for the 'build it and they will come ' myth. The first step is to make sure a web site provides the kind of value consumers a looking for (see Myth Number 2.). You can't count on the search engines to get people to your web site. Google on 'insurance' right now and your search will return 152,000,000 possible matches. Google with the name and state of a small town and you will likely still get over 30,000 possible matches. Google 'insurance', your town and your own agency name and you are lucky if you come up in the top 50 or 100 matches.

Fact and Remedy: If you provide valuable web services consumers will use your site, if they can find it. Making sure your site is found requires a combination of strategies. Make sure you promote your site at every opportunity, find ways to seamlessly integrate web tools with your other service operations so your staff can rely on them, register with the Yahoo Local, etc. and make it easy and worthwhile for site users to refer your tools and services.