In the February issue we suggested some low cost ways to optimize your website and capture visitors searching for answers on the internet via Google or Yahoo. That article pointed out that quantity of relevant information is a key to capturing increasingly specific and idiosyncratic search queries 
(e.g., 'do I need rental car insurance?' vs. car insurance). Having pointed that out, it bears mentioning that rich and relevant content may not necessarily drive vast quantities of traffic to your insurance agency web pages the way optimizing for generic terms might. And it turns out, that may be OK.
Given a choice between ten website visitors that come and go vs. one website visitor that requests a quote, most of us would happily accept 1 for 10. The distinguishing characteristic of quality traffic is conversion. Conversion can be defined in a variety of ways: website quote requests, off-line phone requests for quotes or information initiated on the web, newsletter subscriptions, or sometimes just clicking on link to move deeper into your website.
Quality traffic, almost no matter how you define it, is highly correlated with specific search queries.
Here is an idea for constantly adding to your website content without adding to the burden of your staff workload. (For a separate, but related idea, check out the article in this issue on True Stories). Every week, someone in your agency is researching a customer question or digging a little deeper into a technical coverage matter. Some weeks, it just seems like you field the same question over and over. What happens when the week is over?
Usually, everyone moves on to the next backlog item. The knowledge gained answering questions stays resident, at least for a little while, in the heads of individual staff members. But that additional 'intellectual capital' isn't necessarily captured and made an asset of the agency as a whole. If those moments are captured as an FAQ and added to your website each week, just think of the tremendous growth of quality content on your insurance agency website.
The work of coming up with, and answering questions, has been done already, so you are not layering another task on your busy people. And there are multiple side benefits to adding FAQs in addition to capturing more quality search traffic.
High volume questions can be preempted by using your on hold message to point out common inquiries that are now answered by your website FAQs. Email blasts can be pushed out, with embedded links to a popular FAQ, for the same, preemptive purpose. Your staff will save time by not answering the same question over and over, and your customers who opt to use the FAQ will appreciate the convenience and information. And the email recipients will have received one of those 5 - 7 'touches' that maximize retention, account sales, and referrals.
An evolved library of FAQs can be a terrific training tool for new employees as well as solid support for less technically proficient staff. With a rich, varied (preferably search ready) cache of questions already answered, the intellectual capital locked in the head of your best insurance technician suddenly and simply is added to the collective consciousness of your organization.
If you set up an FAQ of the Week contest, with a modest prize like a gift card, name a on a plaque, etc. you can add a little fun to the agency routine. A contest like this will boost morale and help your staff take ownership of your website; and insurance agency producers and account managers will come to see the agency website as a relevant communication tool rather than a detached electronic brochure.
A Tale of Three Agencies
Here's a question for everyone in your agency: What business are you in? The easy answer, and the one you will often get from busy employees, is insurance. You might also get a roll of the eyes that implies a certain
opinion of the question, but that is beyond the scope of this piece. Insurance may not be the right answer, but it is easy to stop at the connection between agency income and insurance policy commissions. But assuming the way you get paid defines the value of your business to your customers can be limiting in ways you might not think about.
Take claims for example; let's look at two real life claims from the perspectives of an insurance business, a risk management business, and a sales organization specializing in risk management. An agency in the insurance business would concern itself with fast, fair claims service for all claimants. That's as it should be. But an agency in the business of helping customers identify and manage risk exposures would go a step further. And an agency that saw itself as a sales organization with an imperative to impress a legitimate value proposition of safety, security and economy for its customers would go further still.
Following are two claim situations recently shared with us. As you will see, an agency with a more expansive view of their business mission will look at the claims, not just as the fulfillment of an obligation, but as an opportunity.
Claim Story Number One - 'Welcome Home, Care for a Swim?'
An agency customer came home from an extended out of town trip to find their nicely finished basement submerged in four feet of water. The cause was a rusty, ten year old hot water heater. The agent involved in the claim realized his home was about ten years old, which would mark his hot water heater the same age. So he had it checked. It too was rusted right to the bursting point. The claim was settled quickly and fairly; end of story for the insurance agency.
At this point you might say the real cause of loss, and near cause of loss, was the mineral content of the local water, coupled with the age of the hot water heater; you might also note that the finished basement put more property value at risk than might normally be the case. Finally, you might reasonably conclude that a number of your customers are at risk for a similar loss, but are currently ignorant of the exposure. An agency in the risk identification and management business might reach out to customer segments that could be affected.
The first step would be to add an overview of what happened as an article on your insurance agency website. The piece might include a sketch of the claim, risk factors like hot water heater age, maintenance and placement. The article would go on to note factors that might increase the amount of damages: finished basement, extended out of town trips, storage of valuable items in the basement, etc.
A simple query on your agency management system customer database will identify at-risk customers; for the sake of simplicity, in this case - customers with homes 10 years old or older. Copy for a quick alert message might go something like this:
One of our customers recently suffered a loss due to a burst hot water heater in the basement. We are sending you this message because you share some of the characteristics that may have caused the loss. If you would like to learn more, this link on our website has details: www.youragencywebsite.com/article_name. But we recommend you at least have your hot water heater checked, if you have not done so recently. Please feel free to contact us if we can answer any questions, or provide more information.
If you have customer email addresses, you can complete this entire risk alert process in a few minutes, at almost no cost. Even if you do not have emails, you may want to send the message out via a postcard. Copy similar to the above is compact enough for a postcard format; the details reside on your website.
The sales organization agency might use a third party program, like Agency Resources' Radius Marketing*, to send essentially the same postcard to the claimant's 50 closest neighbors. Sharing this information is a powerful, inexpensive, and highly differentiating competitive tactic.
Claim Story Number 2 - 'Oh, Toto! I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!'
This claim story might be classified by an insurance only business as an Errors and Omissions situation avoided, and it is. But again, quick consideration of the risk factors might suggest there are a lot of your customers, and potential customers, who would benefit from an alert.
In this case, an agent was asked to bind homeowner coverage. The agent's personal knowledge of the property led them to suggest that the standard Coverage B limit of $27,000 might not be enough to replace a tool shop/garage outbuilding. A suggestion was made to double the amount to $54,000. The customer initially resisted, on the basis of cost (premium) containment, but eventually went along with the suggestion.
That turned out to be a good thing, because just a few days later, the entire outbuilding was blown away by a tornado - the house was relatively unscathed (this brings to mind the danger of viewing insurance 'cost' only in premium terms, but that is another article). So we have a reasonably happy ending. The outbuilding is replaced because the insurance is adequate, Errors and Omissions claim is avoided, and life goes on for the 'insurance' agent.
The Risk Management agency would immediately update their website with information about the limits on coverage for outbuildings, referencing this story - names changed to protect the innocent, etc. The article might reference those things that contribute to underinsurance: multiple outbuildings, structures not normally thought of as other structures (pools, fences), large or custom outbuildings; and even though this is not an 'Other Structures' issue per se, the property stored in outbuildings.
They might craft an email or postcard with copy similar to this one:
Structures not attached to your home are particularly susceptible to wind damage, and often the standard home insurance coverage limits for sheds, garages, fences, pools and similar detached structures is not enough. One of our customers recently experienced a total loss of an garage. Happily, coverage had been customized to meet the need. We have more information on our website that might be of interest at www.youragencywebsite.com/article_name. Please contact us if we can answer any questions or provide more information.
The email or postcard would have applicability to any homeowner customer in your agency, and could be sent in flights throughout the year.
The sales organization Agency might assign a high school or college student to do a quick survey of a few neighborhoods to find out which homes, currently insured by a competitor, might be a good candidate for this type of message. (And an enterprising high school student might just save on the gas money by sitting at home with Google Earth to get the same information.)
The point of all this really does go back to the kind of agency you are or want to be. We all have the claim stories; most of us have websites and easy means of pushing information out by electronic or snail mail. Whether or not your agency uses claim details for customer development or new business sales is a matter of how you think about your agency's mission.
*Confluency Solutions is not affiliated with, or compensated by Agency Resources or bk2 Marketing. We have chosen to draw your attention to this service because of its uniqueness and value.
*Radius Marketing will send a mailer to the 50 closest neighbors of the claim or new business address for only $39.50.
All the work is done for you: list, print and mail. Direct Mail. Target your customer with the click of a button!
Neighbors talk and why shouldn't they be talking about you? As soon as that policy is bound, why not see if the insured's neighbors would also like a quote?
Simply log on to our website and enter the address and 50 customized (full color) postcards will be sent to the closest homeowners. Our expert design team will work with you to create the perfect piece. Each card uses variable data to personalize the piece and even calls out the street name of the neighbor you just helped.
All this for $39.50 - yes that includes printing, postage and the list of homeowners surrounding your client. The entire process will take less than 15 seconds. Ask one of our representatives how to further reduce this already low price and they'll share one of our best kept secrets. Why shouldn't you be the talk of the neighborhood?
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PDF stands for Portable Document Format, and is an electronic version of text or images, that will preserve the format of the original document. Many websites use PDF documents as a way to beef up their
site content. But because a PDF is not a web page, per se, there are a few Do's and Don'ts when using them on your insurance agency website. We will cover the Do's first, and then move to the Don'ts.
Bear in mind that PDFs are image documents. The content they contain will not be available to the search engines or via site search on your website unless the files are tagged with descriptions and keywords.*
Insurance Agency Website PDF Do's
The 'Document' in PDF is a good reference point to use when thinking about how to use a PDF on your agency website. If a document is likely to be used as a stand alone document, that is, printed (or if you want to encourage printing), then a website PDF might be a good approach. Here are some examples:
Long or Complicated Forms... some insurance applications are long, complex, and designed for use between insurance companies and agents (i.e., ACORD). Expecting a business owner to complete a long detailed form, including supplemental schedules and questionnaires, just isn't realistic. Placing business insurance PDFs on your website, so they can be downloaded by a prospect, allows an agency producer to complete the form with the prospect over the phone.
Supplemental Forms... as noted above, if these forms are long and arcane, a PDF might make sense. Another time when a Supplemental Form PDF might make sense is when they are used sparingly. Electronic forms can bypass the information supplemental applications require, if that information is superfluous to most policy change or quote requests. The PDF can be downloaded as needed.
Reference Materials... your website should contain key contact information, but these could also be included on a PDF for printing and posting by a customer at a location that might not have internet access. Accident and claim instructions intended for vehicle glove boxes are another situation where a PDF might be a nice touch. Checklists for work place or home safety are also worthy of conversion to PDF.
Promotional Materials... your website visitors may open or download your agency PDF brochure, but is there a good reason for them to do so? If your producers and account representatives can capitalize on directing someone to print an agency capabilities brochure from your site, that is a good reason to use a PDF. If there is nothing to be gained by having the brochure printed, then a PDF may not be a good choice.
Referral 'Cards'... that can be printed and handed out by customers to friends and associates who may not be comfortable with the internet are also good candidates for the PDF treatment.
White Papers... documents that are more than quick reads, and may require some thought and re-reading, are good candidates for the PDF treatment. Newsletter articles are usually quick, undemanding reads and using PDF to make them accessible online may not be the best choice. White papers and case studies usually contain a lot of keywords that help with search, both on and off site. You should always try to tag this type of document for search, or provide it in searchable html format as an alternative.
Be sure to include your agency name, phone, and email as footer on PDFs. Once a PDF is printed, it leaves your website; including this information on a PDF provides a way back to your website and your agency.
Insurance Agency Website PDF Don'ts
People read documents on a website quite differently than they 'navigate' a newspaper, book, magazine or other printed document. Newspapers recognize this, and while their daily print editions contain much the same copy as their online editions, the online version is laid out very differently. When you force someone to open or download a PDF, you are creating an inferior website user experience.
PDF as Web Page... almost all the misuse of website PDFs boil down to using it as a web page. As already noted, PDFs are image documents, with navigation limitations. Unless you have a good reason to preserve document format for printing, using a PDF to substitute for an html web page can be counterproductive.
Documents Scanned to PDF... be careful of the image quality. Low resolutions scanners, or scans of low quality paper documents are going to look amateurish on your insurance agency website. Also, bear in mind that scanned PDFs aren't tagged and won't help with site, Google, or Yahoo search.
Websites that are collections of PDFs and html pages... can be confusing and suggestive of a low budget effort. If PDF content is worthy of your website, and if there isn't a good reason to encourage printing of the document, then it should be converted to html and made into a true, searchable web page.
*Adobe Pro (www.adobe.com) is the granddaddy of all PDF creation and editing tools. But it is expensive at about $450 retail, and may not be necessary. One alternative is to license Foxit PDF Creator, at about $35 per user license (www.foxitsoftware.com). Creator will create a PDF from any printable file type (e.g., MS Word, MS Excel); use the File?Properties in the source (Word, Excel) document to establish a searchable title, subject, keywords. Creator will preserve any character encoding so the PDF can be searched. Another alternative is to download the free office suite, Open Office (www.openoffice.org), which is an alternative Microsoft Office; basic functions in Open Office are similar to functions in Microsoft Office so there isn’t much of a learning curve. Any MS Office document can be opened in Open Office. Use the File?Properties option to establish the title, subject, and keywords and then use the one click option to write the document to PDF.
Foxit Reader, a free download, is a good alternative to Adobe Reader. It is about 10% as large as Adobe Reader, and does not automatically connect to the internet in the background, so it loads far more quickly.
posted by cfluent at 3:15 PM
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