Confluency Solutions

2008-08-28T10:13:00.001-04:00

2008-08-27T16:05:00.001-04:00

Is Your Insurance Agency Website a Super Hero?

First, Define Super

How do you determine website 'effectiveness'? It is tempting to only count quote requests and policies written through your website. Sometimes we just want a quick look at traffic counts. But doing that oversimplifies and understates the value of your agency website. You will have a number of key objectives for your agency, and those objectives will frame the way your website can add value, and suggest what you should measure. For instance, if one of your goals was to receive more policy change requests via the web, then you would measure total policy changes submitted through your website. If you want to track your website's role in bringing you new customer relationships, then you will need to measure a combination of things: website quote requests, and website contact request, phone call inquiries which originated from your website.

The general idea is to assign a value for certain actions, and then to measure the number of times each of those actions occur. A combination of the listings in your Insurance Zone and statistics provided by site analytics will let you measure just about anything. Following is a short list of actions you might think about measuring. One type of action may be more valuable to you than another, and you may want to 'score' your websites performance over a week or a month. Assign values of 1, 2, or 3 to different actions, multiply by the number of occurrences, and total for the week or month as a way to gauge your websites effectiveness from one month to the next.

Online quote requests Contact requests via your web forms
Email address acquired
Policy change requests - total
Annual Reviews or other Wizards completed
Newsletter links 'opened'
Calls originating from your web (see article on call tracking from the web)

Use Your Insurance Agency Website Resources for Customer Development

Customer development - more policies per account, improved retention, and referrals - requires 'touching' your customers and adding value to your relationship. Your website articles and videos, and the bulk email tool give you the opportunity to do that at virtually no cost. The change of the seasons offer opportunities to use information relevant to your customers' activities and concerns of the moment. Below is a list of web resources you could employ this month and next in a customer communication campaign, and of course you can add your own articles on the fly using the Risk Alert editor.

Articles - Personal Risk and Safety

Videos - Personal Risk and Safety

Small Business - Risk Management and Business Planning

If you want a quick refresher on using the Email Tool, or any of your website resources, sign up for one of the weekly training sessions on the Webinar section of www.cfluent.com.

Tracking Web to Phone Activity

Last month we talked about a pervasive dynamic that goes like this: Consumer sees information about your agency in print; Consumer goes to the web to validate and learn more about your agency; Consumer picks up the phone and calls you. For certain print ads or mailings, it may be worthwhile to register a separate domain name (e.g., www.agency.com for your everyday use address and www.agencyonline.com for print advertising). The two domain names would point to different 'home' pages that differ only in one way: the agency phone number.

Print ad effectiveness could be measured in two ways: the number of hits to www.agencyonline.com, and the number of calls to the special phone number for that url. Registering a separate, distinct domain name for this purpose is quick and easy; and getting a phone number set up can be similarly easy and inexpensive. Here are a few alternaitives

Google Grand Central - calls can be automatically rolled to any number (like your normal agency phone line). The service is free, but is not widely available. grandcentral.com

Vonage - Small Biz Basic from Vonage at $40/month (1500 minutes, $0.039 per min after), - You can also get area codes and exchanges for ads you might be running in different market areas. vonage.com

Skype - This service has been around as a computer-to-computer (Skype user) type of VOIP for a long time. More recently Skype added the ability to call land lines and cell phones, and to register a traditional phone number to your Sype account so you can receive calls from land lines and cells. The cost of a traditional phone number is $60 a year; calls can be automatically be forwarded to your regular phone line at the rate of $0.021 per minute. skype.com

*Prices are based on each companies advertised rates. Prices may change; please visit the VOIP companies website for up-to-date pricing.

You might be tempted to just use a separate phone number on your regular home page, but be careful. Customers will be used to seeing your phone number in other places, and your agency may have had the same phone number for years. Broadly displaing a different phone number on your website will confuse some customers, especially since a large number of your customers will look up your website just to get or verify your phone number before calling.

2008-06-25T14:55:00.004-04:00

Communicating With Generation Y... And Everyone Else

But How Will the Kids Reach the Dinner Table?

How many people in your office have a phone book at home? If the answer is something approaching 100% then the average age in your office is probably north of 45 or 50, and your staff may be missing the profound and fast moving changes in communication patterns. What are those changes, and how can your agency contend with them?

Here are some statistics to think about¹:

16% of U.S. households have cell phones only
13% of households have land lines, but get most of their calls on a cell phone
(If you are keeping score: Landlines are irrelevant to nearly one-third of the population)
34.5% of adults aged 25 – 29 live in wireless-only households

Communication is the life blood of any organization that depends on long term relationships to profit. If we are using only communication mediums (land line phones, snail mail) that are increasingly marginalized then we can expect several things to happen:

Agency growth and profit will suffer because we are not 'touching' customers, even though phone calls are made and mail is sent.
Our agency books of business will get older and older, and will ultimately shrink.
Our agencies will have limited appeal to younger potential employees, negatively affecting agency value and perpetuation.

The disappearance of land line phones has resulted in vanishing phone directories, a household fixture for generations. There is no such thing as a cell phone or email directory. So how will people get in touch with the growing legions of the un-tethered? Do the growing legions even want to hear from us?

Let's take the last question first. One thing that has not changed in this sea of change is the clear correlation between improved account results and number of touches; retention, additional account sales, and referrals all improve as a result of systematic contact and development programs. Recent surveys show that 85% - 90% of consumers want to have their insurance program reviewed at least annually. That number has not changed in similar surveys performed for at least 20 years, so at least some things stay the same - customers do want to hear from us. The challenge now is how to reach out to customers and prospects.

Wall Street Journal staff writer Jason Fry offered some well reasoned and instructive insights about how to reach out in a recent article. "...wireless-only adults are reachable... through their homepages, blogs, MySpace and Facebook outposts and of course through their email...as phones get smarter...we're more likely to use them for text messaging or accessing our email, reserving voice calls for friends, family members and important colleagues...".²He is pointing out that not only are there a lot more alternatives for distance communication, but that more people are using them at the expense of landline calls.

Here are some things your agency needs to be doing right now, before it's too late...

If you don't have a twenty-something on staff to help seasoned employees understand the communication culture bubbling around you, hire one. Another alternative may be to contract out to a 'culture consultant' (consumer product companies do this sort of thing all the time). Use a customer, the children of customers, your son or daughter, the waiter or waitress at your favorite restaurant, the college intern working in your office, or anyone young enough to think about the world differently than you do. Listen to them and pay them for the information they provide.

What you want to hear, and what you want your staff to hear, is how they buy insurance, interact with their insurance providers, how they research and buy other products and services, and how they use the web, land line phone, cell phone and email to communicate with friends, families, and others. I say 'what you want your staff to hear' instead of 'what you want to find out' because the information about how twenty-somethings communicate is already out there - your challenge is driving home to your staff the importance of changing your communication methods.

Most agencies are still gathering email addresses. The time for that is long past. If you don't have them, make getting emails a priority by contacting all customers to update their records. And then start using the emails to communicate risk and safety information, to communicate changes in office hours or emergency procedures and to deliver annual reviews. Start using email as a deliberate, integral piece of your customer communication mix.

Can your agency communicate through your website? If you don't have a functional, interactive website get one, and get one that can function on a cell phone or handheld device.

Finally, you could experiment with a Facebook or MySpace page or blog for your agency. You may not find these experiments to be a smashing success in terms of traffic or business written. But being out there in these venues will send a message to prospective customers and potential employees: we understand how you want to communicate and we are trying.³

A recent survey makes a clear connection between the insurance industry’s use of technology, and our attractiveness to Generation Y. Take a look at the numbers and join the discussion.

1: Results from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Semi-Annual Survey, conducted during the last half of 2007.
2: Real Time: The Case of the Missing White Pages, The Wall Street Journal, June 16, 2008
3: Accounts at Facebook, MySpace and most blog services are free and easy to set up: www.facebook.com, www.myspace.com, www.blogger.com, www.wordpress.com

SEO, Smesh-E-O, People Still Read the Papers

The title might seem dismissive of website SEO - the practice of optimizing your website for search engines. SEO is increasingly important to the acquisition of new customers, but there are alternatives to generating website traffic that should also be considered.

There has been a recent spate of articles about SEO in industry forums. SEO is appropriate for local, independent insurance agencies; but often articles about optimizing websites for Google or Yahoo search can create the impression that search engine optimization is the one, single silver-bullet for generating web traffic and business.

As is usually the case, there is no silver bullet - it's a mix of traffic generating tactics that pay off. And among options available in that mix, print media and direct mail are viable means to get web traffic. Also missed in many SEO recommendations is Local Search registrations, a high ROI tactic because there is no cost to register (see the Local Search overview video at the end of this article).

What needs to be addressed first is that today's independent insurance agency needs a secure, interactive, information rich website that can be (and in fact is) easily updated with some frequency. If your agency isn't there yet, save your time ruminating about SEO and get your agency website updated. If you have a website that measures up to the Millennials, then read on.

All websites should be tuned for search engines, at least to some degree. At the risk of redundancy, here are a few of the more practical optimization practices already noted in other forums:

Provide a lot of content. Content can be text, images or videos. For images and videos to be searchable, they will need to be tagged and titled for the search engines. If you don't have time to write articles or FAQs, check for third party sources that will permit you to use their content with attribution.
Update and refresh content on a regular basis. Third party content is fine, as long as you have permission and follow guidelines for using the content.
Don't cram a bunch of content on one page. Organize site pages thematically and link pages together where it makes sense. Keep page size under 75k.
Make sure each page on your insurance agency website has a title tag relevant to page content; that is, use a few key words in the title that match words that show up with some frequency on the page.
Make sure your agency website has a site map. Search engines love these. The site map will also help you make sure your website is logically laid out which is good for human usability as well.
Stay away from 'splash pages'. These are those introduction pages consisting of images, animation, and sometimes audio with an 'enter site' link. These pages make it difficult for search engines to index your site. They are a bit like those songs that would be really great if that excessive guitar solo was cut out.
Minimize the use of 'frames pages' (framing your website design and navigation around the page of another website). Frames pages are difficult for Google's or Yahoo's web crawlers to index.
Register with the Local Search services for each search engine (see video at article's end).

Whether your insurance agency goes beyond the fundamentals and positions SEO to play a dominant role in your agency's overall marketing and your web traffic tactics mix will depend on several things. Here a few of the more important considerations:

What is your overall insurance agency marketing budget? (Note: SEO is a continuous, ongoing activity; legitimate SEO will often start at about $500 a month).*
What are your options for alternative marketing and communication programs?
Who is your target audience, and how can they best be reached? (see the first article in this newsletter)
How effective are competing marketing programs (and how will you measure effectiveness)?

We at Confluency are often asked if we optimize the websites we provide for insurance agents. The answer to that question starts with another question: optimize for what? The glib answer is often 'insurance'. By itself, 'insurance' as a search term is highly sought after and oft used in search queries. There are two implications to this.

First, other large competitors (e.g., GEICO, State Farm, Nationwide, etc.) are competing and optimizing for 'insurance'. That means you will need to spend more time and money optimizing for that term and other generic terms (auto insurance, homeowner insurance, e.g.). The second implication is that the high volumes of traffic you might get if you could optimize for 'insurance' probably would be counter-productive. That is, you might do a bunch of quotes, but not write a lot of policies or keep those policies on the books. Think in terms of a full page Yellow Pages ad that promises CHEAP INSTANT INSURANCE. It might not speak to your target market and might generate the wrong kind of activity.

You should also be thinking of your insurance agency website as a place to 'land' for direct mail recipients and ad readers. It is important that you consider this website role, because consumers are already going to your website as a result of what they see in print.

Consumer research recently conducted by Google found:

67% of consumers who research a product or service they see in a print ad do so using the web
69% of those consumers end up making a purchase

Even more to the point are some auto insurance survey results released by comScore in late 2007:

75% of consumers would go to the web after seeing an ad for auto insurance
85% agreed that website quality is an important factor in earning consumer trust

Use home page thumbnails related to your ad and special landing pages for direct mail and print advertising to track the effectiveness of these tactics. Positioning interactive tools and other website resources in print ads or direct mail pieces allows you to expand your value proposition and call to action. And you'll have answers to the questions that for each dollar spent, how many clicks, how many quotes and how much new business (and profit) was generated.

Hopefully, this article has allowed you to think of SEO, not as the Holy Grail and a solution to all your web traffic and new business challenges, but as a another weapon in the broad arsenal available to you. If you would like to learn more, you may download free PDF versions of these Confluency publications:

Insurance Agency Websites: Elements for Business Success(PDF) Sales Tools and Tactics for Independent Insurance Agents (PDF)

How the Local Search Video was Done

Add Local Search to Your SEO Article

Lights, Camera, Action! On Location... In Your Office

I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume you have both a digital camera and internet access. That means you have ability to produce short, quality videos, and render them for internet access. The cost of doing so is virtually nothing. In fact, if you use YouTube to render and store your video, the production cost is exactly nothing, and takes less time than scratching out a few paragraphs of text.

We used video to introduce this newsletter, and you can do the same. Digital and web videos are commonplace communication options for younger generations and a great way for your agency to appeal to potential employees and to communicate with customers.

You can use videos as a newsletter supplement by producing a short video series on safety; you could produce a welcome to new customers from the agency owner; a quick video could be used to explain resource and service options available on your website. The possibilities are almost limitless.

Here is a brief introduction to four services that you can use to get started right away.

YouTubeBy now, everyone knows YouTube. The service is free, and you can upload videos up to ten minutes in duration. The service transcodes your video to a Flash format suitable for playback in the YouTube player. Embed HTML code for your video is also generated so you can paste the video and player right into one of your insurance agency web pages.

EyejotEyejot exists primarily as a video email service, and has other applications for the creative minded. The email aspect allows you to record a quick video using your webcam and instantly push an email (or emails) out with your video automatically embedded in it. If you would like to see what one of these emails looks like, click here, provide us your email address, and we will send you a video mail. There is a free version of the service that allows you to record and send videos of up to one minute in duration. For $25 a year, you can upload videos recorded on your digital camera and the maximum duration is increased to five minutes, which is plenty for most purposes. Email the uploaded Eyejot video email to yourself, and the video will be saved in your in box. Once there, Eyejot will generate embed HTML code, like YouTube, which will let you paste the video and player into one of your agency web pages.

BloggerBlogger has been around for years (it's now a Google service) and allows you to set up your own website. Of course, the primary purpose of Blogger is to enable blogging. You don't necessarily have to use it that way, though. If your insurance agency website provider is unresponsive to your maintenance requests, you may want to create your own Blogger site and have the link to that site included on your agency website. Even if your website provider is responsive, you may still want a separate site for video (and maybe even blogging). The service is free, and adding text, images or video to a page couldn't be easier. Just remember to monitor the site you set up for comments and weed out any that aren't appropriate.

WordpressAnother popular, free blogging service. Everything said about Blogger applies here.

For more information about adding video to your insurance agency website, visit our new blog page: www.poormansplayground.blogspot.com

Resources:

Why We Are Different (Flash demo with audio)

Contact Us

2008-04-08T15:15:00.000-04:00

More on Search Engine Optimization for Your Insurance Agency Website Share Your Intellectual Capital through FAQs

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.

True Stories and Your Agency Website, or
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?

Call 1-866-214-7448 Today to Get Started

Visit our web site to see how the program works & view samples

Insurance Agency Website PDF Do's and Don'ts

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.

Resources:

Example of an insurance agency website
Example of a mobile insurance agency website.
(View it on your phone by going to: http://demo.cfluent.com/m
More information on mobile web pages for insurance agency websites
Contact Confluency about your agency website
Send this to a friend

Why We Are Different (Flash demo with audio)

2008-01-31T17:45:00.000-05:00

Search Engines and Your Independent Agency Website

We don't talk a lot about website Search Engine Optimization (SEO), not because we think it is unimportant, but because too many of us focus only on this tactic for generating site traffic. Generally speaking, SEO is the practice of tuning your insurance agency website so it ranks highly with search providers like Google and Yahoo. There are numerous other traffic generation techniques, and we have discussed several in this forum, that put insurance agents in control of costs and results. It is true that Google and Yahoo regularly change their relevance scoring, competitors for keywords are too numerous to count, and include some big budget Goliaths (e.g., GEICO, State Farm, Nationwide). But in spite of that there are a number of low cost, fundamental SEO tactics that will pay off for your insurance agency.

It is important to understand that web page design is a little schizophrenic. On the one hand, pages need to be laid out for people, and take into account all the idiosyncratic ways a person might look for information on your agency website. At the same time, your web pages need to appeal to machines called crawlers, or bots that are deployed by the search engines to index your site and determine relevance to specific keyword searches. People and machines will see the same page differently. If you are curious to see how a search engine crawler ‘sees' a particular page on your insurance agency website, you might want to try out this free analysis tool:

Analyze Your Insurance Agency Website:
http://www.confluencysolutions.com/tools/seo.

Here are a few general tips to keep in mind as you review the results of the analysis…

Content is the key to keywords. The more content your site contains, the more likely one of your website pages will be found for a given search query. (And by the way, search engine users have become much more specific with search terms. A Google user is more likely to type in ‘How much business interruption insurance do I need for my law office?' than something more general like, ‘business insurance'.)

Be hospitable to visiting bots. Make life easy for the search engine crawlers by providing a site index, and at least title or description tags, usually called Meta tags. The more you can tell a search engine what they are looking at, or where to look for something, the higher relevance ranking your pages will receive.

It doesn't pay to fool Google, at least not for long. Search engines take the responsibility of determining search relevance seriously. There are a number of practices that are designed to trick the search engines (for an example, see the article in this issue on Landing Pages and Doorway Pages). When a search engine realizes it has been tricked strict penalties may be imposed, up to and including death (i.e., blacklisting your insurance agency website).

Landing at the Doorway (Page)

There has been a lot of interest and press devoted to website Landing Pages recently, even though Landing Pages have been around for some time. Landing Pages can be very effective when used the right way, but should not be confused with Doorway Pages, a generally deceptive technique that can result in search engine penalties. We will discuss both here.

For those of us who haven't lately come across an article or blog on the topic, a Landing Page is a place for website visitors to, well...land. In short it is a specially designed page for one idea, service, or product. Landing Pages are most commonly thought of in the context of Paid Search (AKA, Pay Per Click - PPC or, Search Marketing). In a paid search campaign, you bid on, and pay for key words. When your bid is accepted, your ad - a very brief description of your product or service - will display in a special area on a search results page along with a link to your specially constructed Landing Page.

Landing Pages will often employ a simplified address that is also easy to use in a print, or radio message. Consider this landing page, which was used recently in a National Public Radio broadcast about global warming:

http://www.npr.org/climateconnections.

That's a lot easier to say, read or remember than the actual address of the page which is:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9657621.

And that's where the confusion with Doorway Pages comes in.

A Doorway Page is also a narrowly designed page optimized for one or a few key words. But these pages are typically used to fool search engine crawlers, and there is no balance in accommodating the human user. That's because the human user never really sees the page. A nearly instantaneous page redirect takes the visitor to another page on the website. The Doorway Page exists only to trick a search engine into generating search traffic. And search engines hate being tricked. Just ask BMW. A few years ago, their German website was blacklisted by Google for deceptive practices; that is, using Doorway Pages.¹.

The important distinction between Landing Pages and Doorway Pages is that the first is designed for both human users as well as search engine bots while the latter is designed only for search engines. Landing Pages are great for use with traditional advertising campaigns, to highlight a particular service, or to provide an individual producer with a personalized 'home' page. Just be sure that the Landing Page has legitimate content, not just a bunch of keywords for search engine consumption, and you should capture more traffic without risk of penalty.

1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4685750.stm

Ten Second Tip – Turning Lost Business into Business Growth

One counterintuitive and often overlooked source of new business is lost business. Ironically, most accounts might not have been lost if the incumbent agent had a chance to intervene. One insurance company study showed that, when an agency has a chance to save an account, they are successful 86% of the time. The key to getting that chance is systematic client communications, but that is another article. The important thing to note is that most customers who leave your agency are not so disaffected that they wouldn't return as customers, if only they are asked. Reacquiring lost customers isn't as cost effective as keeping them in the fist place, but getting them back is almost certainly less expensive than acquiring new customers from other sources.

You have a great deal of information about lost clients - after all, you did write their insurance at one time. You know their policy expiration dates, driving histories, business inventories, and more. If you had to pay for all that information, you would only be able to afford a small number of leads. So if you aren't making use of the free lost account information in your possession, and going back for your former clients, you should be.

Think about an agency with 2,000 customers and a 95% retention rate. Even this agency will lose 100 customers in a year. If this hypothetical agency had a lost business recovery program in place, they would no doubt pursue the lead for three consecutive renewals.² Over time, as the business recovery program matures, the agency will have 300 'leads' in any given year from the lost account source. A 33% conversion rate means 100 new-old accounts - a nice way to firm up the bottom line.

The first step is to perform a quick, monthly review of the lost accounts. You may not want all of them back. Once you have determined you want an account back you should let the client know that and try to find out why they left. A systematic survey is a good way to do that.

The twist on this old program is to use your website. After the survey has been performed you should continue to communicate with this group of prospective clients using the same program you use to communicate with existing clients. Be sure to include references to website articles and checklists in your print newsletters, and use email where possible to send direct links to your website. It is likely that the competitor who took your client is not promoting their web resources very effectively, if they have any. If you can get or keep your former client in the habit of using your agency website as their primary insurance resource you will have an easier time converting them back into a client. In their mind, and in fact on the web, they will never have left your agency.

2. For most sales programs, conversions are actually better on the second attempt then on the first; there is a drop off on the third (renewal) try, but conversions are generally good enough that leads should be worked for three consecutive renewals.

Lost Business Recovery Program

You may use the survey form below, in whole or part, as a tool in your lost business recovery process. You should keep track of the data captured and append information like total account commission, client longevity at the time of business loss, number and type of policies the account is comprised of, etc. This data, collected over as little as six months, will help you make better business decisions and zero in on at risk accounts before they leave.

The survey should be sent out by the agency owner, or failing that, by the business unit manager - not the producer or account manager. If the survey response indicates the relationship is salvageable, the client-turned-prospect should be added to your prospect communication program.

Download an Example Survey for Lost Business

Resources:

Example of an insurance agency website
Example of a mobile insurance agency website.
(View it on your phone by going to: http://demo.cfluent.com/m
More information on mobile web pages for insurance agency websites
Contact Confluency about your agency website
Send this to a friend

2007-12-09T16:20:00.000-05:00

Sun Tzu's Art of War and GEICO^®

Sun Tzu's military treatise, The Art of War, suggested a progressive hierarchy of conflict strategies. The much studied writing on statecraft and military
planning suggests the very last option for battle is the full frontal assault. Attacking your opponent head-on means a lot of casualties for both sides,
and if a victory can be extracted by avoiding losses (particularly your losses), then an alternate strategy should be employed.

In particular, it is always a good idea to avoid direct confrontation with a larger and better equipped opponent; say, for instance, GEICO. GEICO's pervasive and scattershot advertising campaigns² hint at a take all comers approach; that is, they will write auto insurance for pretty much anybody. Saving money and ease of switching are also integral messages in their campaigns. An independent agent promoting the same value proposition is taking a large, formidable opponent on in a full frontal assault.

Saving money, convenience and time-savings resonate with all consumers and should be part of an agency brand message. Agencies should also shore up their ability to meet customer expectation with 24/7 availability starting with their web site services, and if need be, expanding from there. But agency messages to the market place also need to include traditional, independent agency strengths that exploit GEICO's (and other online marketers') vulnerabilities. Here are two ways to do just that.

Testimonials – What Went Missing in My GEICO Policy

Sure, you can get a quote, online, in 15 minutes or less. Sure, it's so easy a cave man can do it. But the needs of most consumers, their lifestyles and what they have at risk have evolved past replacing a trusty club that has been gnawed to a spindle by a Sabre-Toothed Tiger. What insurance agents know, and GEICO's massive advertising budget obscures, is that what is most important is making sure the right things are protected the right way. And maybe not even a cave man could go it alone and get it right.

The agency testimonials we see most often are the 'I saved a bunch of money', or the 'you have been great to work with' variety (the same as GEICO uses). Those are important but what is missing – and agents tell us this happens all the time – is the 'I got my own insurance online…I had no idea what coverage I did not have'. There is a vulnerability to be exploited there, not only by including appropriate testimonials, but also by making sure the 'protecting the right things the right way' part of your value proposition, is heard loud in clear in all your communications to customers and to your market.

GEICO Admits the Value of the 'Middleman'

In many areas of the country, GECIO actually recruits what they pejoratively refer to as 'middlemen' in their advertising. Consider this excerpt, advertising for agent positions, from the careers section of their web site:

"Geico Field Representatives are independent contractors exclusively writing business for Geico… (as a Geico Field Representative) you are the local sales and service representative for GEICO "³

Need we say more? GEICO's hiring of local contractors to act as middlemen belies their advertising to the contrary. They know consumers prefer to have a local advisor help them with their insurance needs. Of course, GEICO's local advisors represent only one company and do not have the flexibility of selecting the right combination of company, product and coverage options to fit individual budgets and risk profiles. Another vulnerability easily exploited by most independent insurance agencies. Viva! The Middleman!

1. GEICO^® is a registered trademark of GEICO an indirect, wholly-owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc.

2. Slate, http://www.slate.com/id/2123285/ 07.25.2005

3. http://www.iiaba.net/IAMag/NewsViews/062305.html 06.23.2005

Your Agency Web Site is not an Art Project

We have said this before here and in other places: your insurance agency web site is a business tool and should be constructed (and evaluated) on the basis of business results.

Tools are meant to be used, and not just collect dust on a shelf; so you also need to consider the most appropriate ways for
your independent agency to employ your online tools. Too often though, we let costs and project timelines spiral out of control because we become distracted by the visual possibilities for agency web sites.

Web site aesthetics should accomplish three things: the design and layout of your web site should make you look professional; your agency web site should be consistent and supportive of other marketing collateral and your agency branding; and your site design should help visitors get what they want quickly and easily.

We have all been conditioned by You Tube and are tempted to succumb to the allure of directing our first movie with videos or Flash animation on our agency web site. But You Tube is You Tube, television is television and your agency web site is a business tool. Even GEICO recognizes that and refrains from employing videos or a lot of animation.

Here are a few other web sites that get a lot of use and avoid the use of distracting or slow loading animation or design:

www.verizon.com

www.bankofamerica.com

www.wachovia.com

These companies have budgets plenty large enough to do just about whatever they want with their web sites. But they have not been distracted by the pursuit of Wow! Cool! They have very specific objectives and they employ their web sites in the achievement of those bottom line sales and cost-management goals. You should do the same with your agency web site.

Web Mobility Comes to GEICO

GEICO recently added mobile web pages to their range of access and convenience options.

(See: http://geico.com/about/mobile.htm). Independent insurance agencies need to get ahead of the competition,
instead of just playing catch-up; and this is one area where agencies with sites hosted by Confluency were able to do just that.

Resources:

Example of an insurance agency website

Example of a mobile insurance agency website.
(View it on your phone by going to: http://demo.cfluent.com/m

More information on mobile web pages for insurance agency websites

Contact Confluency about your agency website

Send this to a friend

2007-12-09T16:17:00.000-05:00

Advertising Alternatives for Your Agency – Paid Web Search

A recently released search marketing survey noted an interesting, but not surprising, correlation between search advertising and natural search. Those companies that engaged in paid search campaigns also saw an increase in web site traffic from traditional search, that is, web site visits coming form keyword searches launched in Google or another search engine.¹

All the search engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN (Live Search) and Ask, etc., provide a paid search alternative. Paid search is really a simple concept. Rather than relying on a search engine to score your web site pages for relevance to a particular search term (organic search), you pay to have your page summary (advertisement) appear in the paid search area, usually on the right hand side of the search results page. You can set your budget for the month and decide what a click is worth to you by bidding on the words you want. This kind of advertising is often called Pay-Per-Click (PPC) since you pay only if your ad is clicked upon.

There are some advantages to PPC over organic search. With PPC the tedious, ongoing, and expensive trial and error approach of page optimization (for search engines) can be minimized. Learning if organic search optimization tactics work often takes months, because the search engines will re-index your web site on their schedule, not on the schedule of your sales campaign. This is true even if you resubmit your site to the search engines.

With PPC you will see your results right away and can increase or decrease spending, suspend the campaign, or make changes to your key words or ad copy. PPC allows you to focus on niche business, specialty coverage or consumer needs. For example, you might bid on words like 'business income insurance', 'special events insurance', 'disaster recovery planning', 'earthquake insurance homeowner', and so on. You can be narrow in your keyword selection and run several campaigns at one time to test keyword combinations.

Just because PPC is a World Wide Web option doesn't mean your search ads need to be viewed by web surfers in Europe. You can easily narrow down your potential viewing audience to cities or regions.

Your search ads will appear in more than just search results, an important aspect for local agencies. Through a feature called contextual placement, your ads can also appear on web sites that permit display of sponsored ads. Most often, the placements are based on a match between site content that displays on a particular page and your chosen ad words.

Launching and managing a campaign takes very little time, there is virtually no up front investment and you have complete control over your spending day-to-day. You will need an effective 'landing page' that will accomplish the goal of your PPC campaign. Simply dropping an ad word clicking visitor off at your agency web site home page won't pay off.

A landing page can be part of your existing web site or a micro web site can be used for PPC purposes. A landing page should contain a call to action that engages the visitor and furthers your agency's objectives. Use landing page for soliciting quotes, permission to review programs and needs or use free PDF guides as a way capture opt-ins for future email marketing campaigns like a prospect newsletter (e.g., http://www.insuranceagencymobileweb.com). Guides with topics like "Managing Insurance Costs", "The Most Common Mistakes in (fill in the blank) Insurance Programs", etc., can be emailed after the site visitor provides some basic contact information (For an example of such a form go to: http://www.insuranceagencymobileweb.com/book.contactus.php).

Because PPC is easy and so affordable, we think all insurance agencies should be at least dabbling in it. In our experience, Google AdWords is the easiest to use and is a good place to start. Google provides excellent how-to documentation on their web site at https://adwords.google.com/select/Login.

1. Source: Marketing Sherpa, Search Marketing 2006 Benchmark Guide

The Old Fashioned Emergency Number and New Technology

Remember the good old days when insurance agents gave out their home phone numbers in case of emergency? There weren't many emergency calls placed to those numbers but the reassurance of knowing the contact option was available was huge and a big selling point for doing business locally. It still is.

Fast forward to 2007 and we find ourselves in an environment where, particularly in a larger town (or on our web sites), we may not be so willing to share our home or cell phone number. Many larger agencies might want to spread the 'on-call' duty around to a rotation of employees. Publishing personal phone numbers for multiple employees is not a good idea in and of it self and comes with the additional challenge of letting insurance agency customers know who is on call at a given moment.

Inexpensive and easy to implement technology provides a way around this. VOIP services and virtual receptionist options allow you to inexpensively set up a special emergency number just for those middle of the night large losses. A web interface is usually provided that allows you to instantly make changes and route calls to any number. Google's Grand Central, currently in beta but available for use and very reliable*, provides similar options and is currently free.

Nobody wants a wake up call in the wee hours but those agencies that promote their emergency number get enormous brand credit for doing so, in exchange for very few sleep interruptions. And the testimonials that result for those infrequent emergency calls can be more compelling than any your insurance agency is likely to receive for any other reason.

Why We Are Different (Flash demo with audio)

Contact Us

2007-09-26T14:40:00.000-04:00

Ten Second Tip – Sales Touches and Your Insurance Agency Value Proposition

How many contacts does it take before you close a sale and capture a new customer for your agency? Take a look at your most successful sales people and you will find that they systematically finesse a prospective account with multiple contacts. They use those contacts to build buyer confidence through an incremental process - each conversation or email reinforces or the agency value proposition until finally the prospect wonders why they didn't consummate the buying decision sooner.

The right number of touches will vary with account complexity, whether you are dealing face to face or through cyber space and familiarity of the prospect with your agency. Eighty percent of all sales happen after the fifth touch but a purchased lead will require more than five reinforcing contacts. You can't make everyone in your agency a top producer but you can improve close rates for all by providing a system for follow up and by making proactive contacts easy and non-threatening for the more timid.

Delivering a requested quote, the first contact, is easy. You can make the next two to four contacts just as easy by using email to introduce other products and to create an awareness of less obvious exposures (recognizing and solving a problem). Those emails should include links back to your agency web site where prospects can access various resources and sample the convenience and expertise your agency provides. A phone call to make sure the prospect got the email and to see if they have any questions removes the sales pressure from additional contacts.

The key is to prepare email copy ahead of time and to define a standard contact schedule when prospects are quoted. You can view a sample flight of emails for a personal auto insurance prospect byclicking here. Feel free to use the email text as you see fit.

Mobile Web Pays Off For Google - Others Follow

Google has come to expect a drop off in traffic during the summer. Vacations and outdoor activities have traditionally kept people away the internet access that consumers need to get to Google's productsand applications. But this summer was different. A big boost in use of Google's mobile web products like search and Google maps offset much of the summer slump.

Between May and June of this year Google's mostly US based mobile traffic increased 35%. Other sites have recognized the demand for mobile device formatted pages and especially for cell phone and PDA based browsers. Just days before this article was published the social networking web site Myspace announced a version of the site especially for cell phones. In their struggle to prevent defections to rival FaceBook MySpace understands that accessibility in more places than just the desk top or lap top means more users.

Several of the more popular mobile web destinations are listed at the end of this article. Your insurance agency web site could and should be among them. What a great way to demonstrate to customers and accounts you quote that your agency is dedicated to customer convenience and accessibility.

(These sites are best viewed with your cell phone or PDA)

Sample insurance agency mobile website:http://demo.cfluent.com/m

Other popular mobile web sites:

Wall Street Journal
http://mobile2.wsj.com/device/index.php

Edmunds New and Used Car Information
http://pda.edmunds.com/

Business Week
http://pda.businessweek.com/index.html

Traffic.com
http://mobi.traffic.com/traffic/

Google Maps
http://google.com/gmm/index.html

Orbitz for flight updates and hotel reservations
http://mobile.orbitz.com/

Do Customers Want Alternative Distribution or Just Alternatives?

IBM released a study late this summer suggesting that a minority of policyholders feel their insurance program is tailored to their specific needs and less than 50% believe they are informed about new products and services available through their provider. The study goes on to assert that insurance carriers need to diversify their distribution channels if they are to drive organic growth, a glaring issue, and meet the demands of baby boomers and younger consumers.

That may be. But the phrases 'alternative distribution' and 'diversify distribution channels' are almost always code words that have come to mean 'market directly via the internet'. Insurance consumers do want choices for fulfilling insurance needs but they don't necessarily desire an alternative distribution. Insurance companies, once rate increases wane, historically become desperate for growth sources. But as long as independent agents can provide what consumers want during and after business hours and continue to be a compelling provider of insurance services there is no need for consumers or carriers to look elsewhere.

Insurance companies have a responsibility to find ways to help their agents supplement their service capabilities. Many companies have done that by providing service center alternatives and web based transaction capabilities (billing, policy document access, etc.). Continued company investment in supplemental sales and service alternatives is vital to the health of the independent agency distribution. But independent agents cannot rely on the companies to do everything. Insurance agency exploration and investment in sales and customer development programs will stave off a carrier migration toward direct distribution.

As an alternative to going direct many companies will increasingly differentiate compensation and support, providing the highest levels of both for those agencies that are most responsive to market place demands. Your agency, particularly through councils and personal relationships, can have an influence on individual insurance company distribution decisions. By demonstrating a commitment to sales and product promotion and using 'alternative channels' to find and service new customers your agency will stabilize income. And you just may prevent a key agency partner from becoming your competitor.

2007-08-20T12:26:00.000-04:00

Customer Development for Profit and Growth

The real estate market cool down has quieted the phones in many insurance agencies. Fortunately, the old adage ‘there’s gold in those files’ is still valid today - even though the old paper file is fast becoming a quaint memory. Customer development as a means to increased sales and profit is receiving renewed attention. But what customers want and value is shifting as evidenced by results from two recent studies.

33% of consumers who shop insurance because of price switch but…
75% of consumers who shop because of service end up switching
Over half of auto insurance shoppers also get quotes for other kinds of insurance

- 2007 J. D. Power Insurance Shopping Survey

The single most important service an insurance provider can deliver continues to be a knowledgeable agent.

25% thought so in 2003 but…
27% felt that way in 2007

The importance of 24/7 and on line accessibility also increased between 2003 and 2007 from 20% to 22% of consumers citing this as the single most consequential accommodation. Other service dimensions that were considered less important in 2003 have either remained constant or have actually declined in importance (e.g., courteous customer service, prompt claim payment, easy to understand billing).

-2007 Customer Focus Insurance Study, Vertis Communications

Files may no longer be manila folders, services necessary to customer development and the means for delivery may have changed but some things remain the same. There is still gold in those files. The three articles in this newsletter focus on different facets of service and and approaches to customer development. If you haven’t decided how you are going to manage declining revenues and increasing expense ratios then this issue of Act cFluent may be a good place for you to start.

Strategic Customer Development

“Coach treats us all the same – like dogs.”

-Quote attributed to former Green Bay Packer Jerry Kramer on Coach Vince Lombardi

Do you treat all your customers the same way or do you ‘treat’ them at all? That is, do you communicate with your customers proactively and systematically? Most agencies have at least a few large or influential accounts that demand attention and get it. But often the majority of accounts go unattended and any interaction is at the initiation of the customer.

One reason for the lack of attention is scarcity of available time. But the consequences of not touching customers are profound. Account retention, which may look acceptable on the surface, will be lower than it could be. And remember, a 1% improvement in retained accounts means that 1% more of new income actually contributes to revenue and profit growth instead of just holding the line.

Account sales will also be far lower than they should be. Additional coverage or policy sales may not seem as glamorous as a new account but they bring commission dollars to the bottom line that are just as valid as new customer income. And customer and account development are actually better for the bottom line because business development expenses and loss ratios (read as profit sharing) are lower for this type of new business.

Deliberate, systematic customer development is an often overlooked solution to improved growth and profit. First let’s define customer development. The Cynic’s Dictionary might define customer development as focusing such lavish and constant attention on the customer that you get all, instead of just some, of their money. That definition is indeed cynical but it is also exactly to the point. Your customers have needs for a number of insurance products. Why should those needs go unfulfilled, or worse, be fulfilled by a competitor?

Next let’s consider what we mean by ‘systematic’. A program is systematic if it can run even in the absence of a key employee or during disruptions to normal routines. Technology is often fundamental to making something systematic. For instance, running a report from an agency management system and uploading a file of contact information to a direct mail, email or phone contact service requires only common technology and should not require the expertise of a key employee. Without technology, sifting through customer files and preparing and sending communications by hand would be prohibitively time consuming and expensive.

Being systematic also means being deliberate in defining your customer segments and your objectives with each one. How will you define your top tier, most profitable customers? Will it be in terms of net income, policies per account or a ratio of service to income?

Once you have defined your most profitable customers the next task is to establish criteria for the next most valuable tiers, on down to the least. ‘Customer Development’ will have a somewhat different meaning within the context of each customer segment. That is, your development goals with each segment will differ.

Your objective with the top tier will be to absolutely maximize retention and encourage referrals to the greatest extent possible. The next groups will generally present opportunities for additional product sales and so that will be part of your objectives with them. Finally, the least profitable (probably unprofitable) customer segments require a minimum level of service and contact to avoid errors and omissions exposures and to avoid missing those occasions when one of these accounts evolves. But if these bottom tier accounts cannot be made profitable you do not want them absorbing staff time that could be lavished on accounts with more potential or profit.

"As a key driver of consumers' future purchase intent, customer advocacy is becoming a higher priority for firms that realize how important organic growth is. The top-rated firms recognize the importance of improving the customer experience so they can deepen relationships with existing customers."

- Bill Doyle, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, in a statement related to Forrester’s survey, “Customer Advocacy 2007: How Consumers Rate Banks, Brokerages, Insurers and Credit Card Issuers”

The objective will drive the message behind your communication campaign and the profitability of the client segment will determine the delivery vehicle. Very large, profitable accounts should get some ‘face’ time and by definition, that face time is affordable for these accounts. As you move down in profitability frequency of communication may need to be reduced and you may need to limit those communications to more affordable channels like email, the web and voice broadcasting.

Being strategic means you have considered all these elements prior to putting a systematic program in place. Once that program is in place, let it run, evaluate and tweak it periodically and watch your income and profit grow.

Direct Carrier Service and the Agency Value Proposition

What criteria does your agency use when making decisions about which insurance companies to represent? Factors like product-market alignment and price competitiveness are common starting points but ease of doing business, as shaped by insurance company technology, is looming as a larger consideration for many agencies. But there is an important aspect to insurance carrier technology that is often overlooked and provides the dual advantage of customer service improvement and cost cutting efficiencies for your agency.

Revenue per employee as a productivity measure would seem to indicate that many agencies have been gaining ground. But with the recent cycle of rate increases behind us it is becoming apparent that those agencies have in fact experienced a decline in productivity when measured as a ratio of accounts and policies per agency employee. A big reason for that decline, as we all know, has been the movement away from single entry solutions afforded by comparative raters and the proliferation of companies who require policy maintenance via their proprietary systems.

This negative business trend has rightly led agency groups like ACT and AUGIE to energize around real time initiatives. Download, carrier integration with comparative raters and inquiry via one agency management system log in are all important tactics in the effort to regain lost productivity and move profit margins ahead. But what is often overlooked are the advantages to be gained, both in productivity and customer service satisfaction, when insurance company technology allows customers pay bills, retrieve policy declaration pages or ID cards on line for themselves.

That’s why it is becoming necessary to add direct customer web services to the carrier evaluation matrix. Those services can be presented through the agency web site and provide a valuable middle ground between an agency performing non-value-added transactions and moving all transactions to a company service center. Important questions to ask of your carriers include not only what kind of on line customer services are supported now but which ones are planned.

Different insurance companies offer different on line services and carrier web site organization varies tremendously. Organizing log in links, 800 service numbers and other information in one common format on the agency web site makes it easier for agency staff to direct customers to those services. It also reminds customers that their first relationship is with the agency and allows independent insurance agents to respond to competitive service options provided by direct writers and internet marketers. Those options are becoming a standard expectation among consumers that most independent agencies can meet. It is simply a matter of paying attention to direct services provided insurance companies and presenting those options as an extension of your agency.

24/7 - Going Mobile

What do The Weather Channel, USA Today, the Bank of America and your agency all have in common? The first three in the preceding list have recognized the emergence of the mobile web as a force to be reckoned with. And they have developed content and functions specifically for users surfing the internet with a cell phone or PDA.

The mobile web has been with us for a number of years but recent changes in technology have made it a more practical and widely used communication vehicle. Currently, 2.6 billion surf the web on mobile devices and over 4 billion people – 59% of the world’s population – will be doing so within the next three years.

Your agency can join other enterprises making themselves accessible to mobile web surfers at little cost. The benefits are many. Consider how much more accessible and convenient your agency will be in these situations:

A customer buys a new car over the weekend and wonders, while on the car lot, how her insurance policy will cover the new vehicle.
A producer in your broker network is meeting with a client on site and needs to know what information is required for a submission.
Your customer is out of town and suddenly realizes his insurance policy will cancel tomorrow if he doesn’t pay the bill.

Creating mobile web pages for an insurance agency involves first recognizing what information or functions will be useful in a mobile context. After that the related pages need to be stripped of graphics and images that would clutter a small mobile device screen. Finally, the remaining text needs to be reorganized in narrow columns. And that’s it. Those simple and inexpensive web site alterations will add one more value differentiating weapon to your agency arsenal and allow you to sit comfortably alongside those cutting edge companies meeting emerging consumer demands.

2007-05-01T12:35:00.000-04:00

Successfully Sending Emails to Your Customers and Prospects

Getting Your Emails and E-Newsletters Read

Marketers have long understood the challenge of getting a direct mail piece noticed and read, steps that necessarily precede any sales activity. The unique challenge of marketing through email and e-newsletters is less widely understood but recent case studies and surveys provide some insights that will make your e-marketing ventures more successful.

Many marketers include html images as part of emails they send. Using these images provides several advantages. They make an email look more visually interesting and allow you to connect with other branding your agency may do. Just as importantly, when the images are downloaded in the email, you are able to substantiate that the email was actually opened. An ‘open' doesn't guarantee that your email was read, of course, but it's a pretty good surrogate measure.

But there is a downside to using html images in emails. Many email clients, including the pervasive Outlook, will block images in emails but allow the user to permit them on a case by case basis. Unfortunately, spammers will also use html images in their emails. When a recipient downloads the image it validates the email address for the spam sender which results in …even more spam. For this reason, many people will accept images in emails only reluctantly.

A recent survey and a separate case study conducted by Marketing Sherpa point out another short coming of html images but also the path to more effective emails and e-newsletters. The survey distinguished between business email users and consumer email users. Business users likely rely on Outlook for their email client while home users probably get and send email via a web mail service like Yahoo, Google, AOL or Microsoft's Live.

Most Outlook users actually never open many emails instead viewing them through a preview pane as they scan through their inbox. Depending on whether the preview pane is a horizontal or vertical (user defined options) some of an email will be obscured and may never seen. Email real estate set aside for images not yet downloaded often push text out of the viewing area. The result: Your message doesn't get through.

The lesson for B to B communications is that you need to design emails, that's right - design, for both kinds of recipients: those that preview in horizontal panes and those that preview in vertical panes. The first few paragraphs need to be compelling enough to make a reader want to go further or click on links in the email because your key message will need to fit in the upper left corner of an email. In fact, just to be on the safe side and account for preview panes that are sized on the small side, you should make the first 2 to 4 sentences count because that's all that may get read.

The lesson in the B to C (business to consumer) e-communication arena, as it turns out, is the same one. Recent upgrades to web mail services at Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL make those free mail services feel and perform much more like a desk top application. And they include the ability to scan and preview emails in panes.

The Marketing Sherpa case study provided some results and tips from a company that achieved open/click through rates of over 70% for e-mail newsletter mailings to a house list. Here's some lessons they learned that you can apply right away:

Provide a summary of your newsletter or the full email in 2 to 4 sentences with a link (for newsletters) to the full content.
Make sure your content is compelling and concise. You may get click throughs once but if your content is not to the point busy recipients may not come back.
Manage your frequency to once every one to two months. Respect your reader's time.
12 page Word document contains copy examples for email, post cards, stuffers, on hold script and traditional newsletter copy for several campaign themes.
(Free download)
44 page Word document contains copy for 27 individual communication campaigns.
(Free download until May 20)

Too Busy to Keep Up with News? Try RSS or a Newsletter Email Account

With the explosion of blogs and online publishing it seems harder than ever to keep up with all the news. If you aren’t taking advantage of RSS feeds to organize and bring the news you want to your desktop you may want to look into it.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Basically, it allows you to subscribe to multiple news sources (blogs, online newspapers and magazines and just about anyone providing an RSS feed). Providers deliver headlines to an RSS reader on your desktop allowing you to scan and choose which articles or content you want to read. We were going to provide a more in-depth explanation of RSS and how to set up a reader but then we came across this 3:30 video that does a far better job of explanation than we can (and it’s entertaining in its humorous spin on PowerPoint): http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english.

You may also want to set up a separate email account for those newsletters that don’t provide an RSS feed. Sign up for a free email account using Yahoo Mail, Gmail or another free service and let the newsletter emails pile up there. It will keep your work in box clear of distracting clutter during the busy work day. Then, on Saturday morning, when you have poured your coffee and before the rest of the house wakes up, you can sift through the accumulated reading or dump it all to the trash bin.

Customers Who Don't Own Computers Are Often E-enabled

Some of us make the assumption that our customers don’t have computers at home and therefore don’t use email or the web. But what about computer and internet access at work? A 2003 (that’s a long time ago) survey by the US Department of Labor found 50% of the employed used a computer at work. For some income and age groups, that number ranges between 60% and 84%.

And consider this quote from a 2006 court case in New York, pitting an employer against an employee over personal use of employer provided internet access: "The internet has become the modern equivalent of a telephone or a daily newspaper, providing a combination of communication and information that most employees use as frequently in their personal lives as for work." In the case the judge made the observation that the employer allowed employees to use the work phone for personal needs, making appointments, checking in at home, etc. As long as the employee was doing their job, the ruling found little to no distinction between using work internet access or phones for personal needs.

This underscores the simple reality that people surf the net and check personal email at work and will continue to do so. Assuming that customers that don’t have home computers or internet don’t use email or the web is an assumption that just doesn’t hold up.

2007-03-27T16:44:00.000-04:00

Are Self-Serve Quotes on Your Agency Web Site For You?

In Utopia, prospective clients would come to your agency web site, quote their own coverage needs, purchase their policy on line and you would pocket full commission. In hell, you would have to cold call for all your new business, take all rating information by hand, enter information in individual company raters; when policies get purchased you would have to finish entry of rating and underwriting information in an insurance company policy system. The reality today is somewhere in between but it is easy to understand why, in the quest for Utopia, we want to make it possible for customers and prospects to get quotes on our agency web site.

A number of vendors and companies support on line, real-time quoting but the multiple options available are not the same. Neither is the philosophy and target market of your agency the same as every other agency. Before you select a vendor or company to deliver quotes on your web site, here are some things to consider.

Are the premiums accurate? This one seems obvious and something most of us would check out up front. But periodic checks will be necessary as companies change rates, underwriting and rating factors. If the web site engine is the same as the one used in house or if the consumer is rating directly with the insurance carrier this bit of due diligence will be easier.
What is your agency philosophy regarding your price-service value mix? Some on line raters don't rate on line – on purpose. They load captured information in a rating system and notify the agent that a quote request is ready. This allows agents to de-commoditize what otherwise might be a pure price comparison by introducing advice and guidance. Over and over again we have agents tell us that customers who show up with a cheaper premium via an on line rate quotes almost always unwittingly end up with less coverage. The same thing can happen to people quoting on your web site. If your intent is simply to provide a 'ball park' quote maybe unguided rate comparisons are OK. But it's something to think about.
Is your agency ready to deal with 'internet' customers? We have said it before in these pages: internet quote requests do not have a shelf life. If you aren't prepared to follow up quickly, whether to provide a final quote or just make contact, you likely will not convert the request to a policy. Turn around times for internet sourced business should be monitored in terms of minutes or hours, not business days.
Will the quote option take consumers away from your agency (web site)? Comparative and company rating is usually a third party, web service application. Information capture and rating are frequently done on the vendor or company web site. Will it be obvious to the consumer what they need to do to get back to your web site? If not, additional business opportunities may be lost and the value proposition promoted by your web site may be missed (i.e., the non-price portion of your value proposition). In some cases, the consumer may end up on a web site where they can quote and purchase products directly that otherwise could be provided by your agency.
Who will be getting quotes? Do you want to provide what-if capability to current customers who may be shopping for a car or to whom you are proposing they place all, instead of just some, of their insurance with your agency? Or will your web site rating function be a purely new customer sales tool? Those are different objectives and may require different rating capabilities.
How 'user friendly' is the quote interface? When you evaluate the screens and entry fields provided by a vendor you need to step out of your agent's skin. That can be hard to do. You are probably better off getting someone you know, who does not work in insurance, to go through the rater while you watch and take notes. Did they understand the coverage information they were inputting? Was there on screen guidance when terms or selections were unclear? Did the screen flow make sense and did they move through the application at a pace that seemed about right or did they become frustrated?
How many people will really use the capability? If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? Put another way, if you have rating capability on your web site but get no visitors, is that rating capability really benefiting anyone? You will be paying some amount of money for the rating capability and it will need to be used a certain number of times to validate the expense. Do you get satisfactory web site traffic now? If not, what will you do to get people to your web site and make them aware of your rating capability?

There are some other considerations but we hope sorting through this short list should help you decide whether you want to provide rating capability on your web site. It should also make evaluating vendor alternatives a little easier when you do decide to take that step to add direct consumer rating to your web site.

Web Relevance, Part V – Your Privacy Statement

(Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV)

Financial businesses that are required to have a privacy policy are also required to send a statement of that policy to customers once a year. If your insurance agency has a web site, that privacy policy should also be available there. If it is, sending your privacy statement out can be as easy, painless and inexpensive as a few mouse clicks. Emails with links back to your web site privacy statement can be quickly sent large numbers of customers without the attendant expense of printing, postage and handling. If your agency hasn't put a program in place to capture customer email addresses and begin communicating with them through that medium this one benefit alone will justify the small extra effort of getting those addresses.

2007-02-27T11:23:00.000-05:00

Part IV :: Buying Business and Bad Weather

Purchasing Internet Insurance Leads

We have had conversations galore with independent agents on the topic of purchasing internet generated leads and have yet to hear of any unequivocal success stories. Just the same, we are sure there are some and would love to hear about them via our blog or the contact link below. In the meantime, here are some things to think about before you jump in or even if you already have.

If you have already bought leads…

You know what you paid and you know how many leads you received; you probably also know how many policies you actually wrote and you certainly know what the leads cost you. That information alone may be enough to let you know if your lead program is successful. But it costs money to process new business and to service it. Usually you need to keep an account for a few years before it is truly profitable and the more policies per account the more quickly an account becomes a profit bearing account. It probably would be a good idea for you to go back and see how many internet generated customers are single policy accounts and how many of them are still with you after the first renewal.

If you are thinking about purchasing leads…

There are several considerations for you that should make your decision easier. A good place to start is by comparing the value proposition of your agency with the value proposition of the quote aggregator. If they don’t match then purchasing quotes may not be a good idea. If they do line up then check out the other considerations a few paragraphs on.

How do you glean the value proposition posited by a quote aggregator? One way would be to ask what key words they bid on when doing search engine marketing. Understandably, they probably won’t tell you. But you can get an idea by doing your own key word searches in Google or Yahoo. If you Google ‘low cost auto insurance Denver’ or ‘free automobile insurance quotes Dallas’ and your search aggregator shows up in the paid ad area you will start to get an idea of the value proposition they are promoting via the key words they purchased. If your agency’s value proposition is something like ‘we take time to analyze our individual client’s needs, suggest alternatives and prepare a unique, effective insurance program for each customer’ then you have a value proposition mismatch and purchasing leads may not be a good idea.

Suppose the quote aggregator’s value proposition aligns with your agency’s? The next consideration is whether you are equipped to deal with the quote opportunity. All evidence suggests that these opportunities do not have a shelf life. Along with the internet comes an expectation of immediacy. If you are prepared to follow up with prospects, preferably by phone, within an hour then you have a much better chance of converting quotes to policies. That doesn’t mean you have to necessarily provide a quote within an hour but you do need to make contact. If you are going to apply the pre-internet standard of ‘one or two business days’ follow up then purchasing internet leads probably isn’t for your agency.

Finally, you should think about other expectations internet generated customers bring with them. For instance, it is not unreasonable to assume that, if a quote was solicited online, there may also be an expectation of being able to have questions answered, policy service requests handled or the ability to do other transactions on your agency web site. If you cannot fulfill this expectation then, again, internet leads may not be for you.

These considerations are not by any means all inclusive but they do provide a baseline structure to help you think through your decision. If you have other considerations, success stories or lessons learned, please share them with us.

Winter Storms??? Website Relevance – Part IV

Part IV of a multi-part series (Part I, Part II, Part III) that explores what you can do to make your website relevant to your agency, your employees, your customers and your prospective customers. These articles focus on agency strategies and initiatives apart from the internet and then suggest ways to make your website tools pay off in the context of those initiatives.

Global warming? Maybe for a few months but winter finally arrived with a vengeance as we knew it would. And ice, sleet, snow and freezing temperatures visited some unusual places (as we never would have guessed). In most cases harsh winter weather ratchets up anxiety as employees pensively watch out the windows for clues as to road conditions and listen for school closings and early dismissals. Those who can think ahead to the following days imagine the phone lines lighting up with claims for fender benders, downed tree and power lines and leaky roofs.

It’s hard to think of a winter storm as a customer development opportunity but it is. Email and your web site make it possible. In fact, email and your web site make it easy and virtually cost free to communicate with your customers ‘just in time’ and add some more value to your relationship.

Your office may close or you may be operating with reduced staff. If a winter storm causes enough damage it may result in your insurance companies issuing special claim phone numbers or procedures. Do you have information about what to do when the power goes out or safe winter driving tips available to send to customers? Now is a good time to send it along. Better still, this information should reside on your web site and you should send customers there. It is little opportunities like this that remind your customers you are there and thinking about them and remind them about the value of your web site.

Without email addresses and appropriate web content you will miss many chances to engender those behaviors that result from the highest levels of customer loyalty: superior retention, more policy sales per account and referrals. But if you can commit to communicating with customers this way you actually have a compelling reason for them to provide you their email address: effectively helping you, help them.

Website Articles You Can License

Website FAQs You Can License

Why We Are Different (Flash demo with audio) – email and web site integration

2007-01-30T07:51:00.000-05:00

Web Relevance - Part III

Part III of a multi-part series (Parts One and II) that explores what you can do to make your website relevant to your agency, your employees, your customers and your prospective customers. These articles focus on agency strategies and initiatives apart from the internet and then suggest ways to make your website tools pay off in the context of those initiatives.

Calendars, Kits And a 10 Second Tip

Sending calendars to customers as the New Year turns over is an insurance agency and business practice that probably dates back to Gutenberg. Sometime later, independent agents starting sending road atlases to customers at the onset of vacation season and emergency medical and claim kits in appreciation for new business. More recently still, many agencies started delivering fuel and Starbucks Coffee ™ cards to customers who were thoughtful enough to refer friends, neighbors and family. So what does any of this have to do with your agency website? Plenty.

Not everyone uses paper calendars today. Many calendars have taken up residence on PDAs and laptop computers. Likewise, vehicle and handheld GPS systems have started elbowing paper maps and road atlases aside. What's the point in sending someone a calendar or atlas if it gets tossed in the trash like so much junk mail? If only you could tell which of your customers would want to receive the retro gifts and which have moved on. You can find out, if you just ask, and that's where your website comes in.

By using your website you can determine your customer's preferences and offer a choice (an appropriate subliminal message for an independent agent!). Instead of slavishly mailing off yesteryears merchandise ask your customer to go to your website and tell you what they value most from a few options - and then send the appropriate item out. You can do that by phone, mail or email. Maybe you don't have their email address; that will change. Here are some additional benefits for your agency:

You will capture an email address (if you set up the shopping cart/request form the right way).
You will reduce your mail and handling costs by sending gifts only to those customers who value them.
You will have introduced customers to your website; if there are value and convenience functions there for them you may actually start down the path to increased loyalty, reduced costs and time savings.

10 Second Tip For Your Top Five Phone Calls

What are the most difficult and frequently occurring questions that arise from phone calls? Is it why insurance premiums shoot up so much when a young driver is added to a policy? Maybe it's trying to explain the relationships between replacement cost, market value and insurance-to-value? Or perhaps you would like your staff to spend a moment explaining the need for identity theft protection, home business coverage or adequate personal property limits to renters or condo unit owners.

Does your website contain articles or FAQs addressing those important issues? If not, it should. Because if it did you and your staff could wrap up phone calls by asking for an email address so you could send a link to a value-added resource on your website. Doing so will save time and insure uniformity in the quality of explanations provided. And again, you will have captured another email address and introduced another customer to the value and convenience of your website.

Website Articles You Can License

Website FAQs You Can License

Why We Are Different (Flash demo with audio)

Contact Us

2006-10-31T17:06:00.000-05:00

Website Relevance, Big and Small :: Part II

Act cFluent Newsletter, October, 2006 - Subscribe today Subscriber benefits include early evaluation of new products and discounts. - Tell a friend

Information for independent insurance agents about issues at the confluence of technology, consumerism, marketing and agency practices. Subscriber benefits include free trial evaluation of new products and programs.

Once you have an agency website with all the tools you need what do you do to make it pay off? Read the second installment in a multi-part series on making your website relevant and learn how to get more out of your advertising programs: Ecommerce Gives Traditional Advertising a Boost
Are you doing all you need to do to keep customer information safe and secure. If you accept quote, policy change or other information via forms on your website you may be exposing sensitive information to theft. Read More
Getting customers and others to use your website doesn’t require a sea change in habits. Ten Second Tips, a new feature of the Act cFluent Newsletter brings you ideas you can use right away to get more visits to your website, save your staff time and set your agency apart from the competition. We kick things off with nine tips Ten Second Tips
View an example of a print advertising and landing page
Need a few tools to beef up your website? Check out the plug-n-play cFluent Web Modules.

Comment About This.

Part II

Part II of a multi-part series (Part One) that explores what you can do to make your website relevant to your agency, your employees, your customers and your prospective customers. These articles focus on agency strategies and initiatives apart from the internet and then suggest ways to make your website tools pay off in the context of those initiatives.

Ecommerce Gives Traditional Advertising a Boost

Nearly all of us have dabbled in traditional advertising, be it print, radio, television, billboards or mailings. You may not realize it but your website gives you a way to better measure the effectiveness of those traditional campaigns. At the same time you can extend the breadth of the brand you are promoting. More importantly, your website gives you the opportunity to turn what is typically an exercise in creating awareness into the beginning of an ongoing relationship. The path along which a consumer becomes a customer begins with awareness. But a value added relationship with a consumer is necessary before a consumer is converted to a customer. An ad campaign that culminates with a relationship pays off in new business much more quickly. And that is why your website needs to be relevant to your advertising campaign.

The dot com days are barely visible in the rear view mirror now, covered in road dust. By now we have all learned to ‘promote our website’ at every free opportunity. That includes the traditional media ads that include the obligatory “…or visit our website at www.websitename.com” That’s old dot com thinking which doesn’t really leverage the valuable resource that is your website. The new marketing reality, where the internet and traditional communication mediums complement and support each other, might lead us to create a ‘landing page’ specifically for a unique ad campaign.

‘Landing page’ is a term most often used in connection with online advertising. It is the name for the page a web surfer ‘lands’ on when they click on an advertisement. Since consumers can’t click on a magazine or television ad you can’t really use a landing page, at least not in the strict sense of the term. What you can do is create a separate web page for a traditional ad campaign and organize information and online resources on that page that are relevant to the offline ad campaign. The special page link should be prominently displayed on the agency home page and should include the same graphic used in the offline ad. Your ad tag line should direct listeners/readers to this page; e.g., “…be sure to take advantage of promotional resources available at the section on our website at www.websitename.com”. This call to action will resonate with a much larger group than the minority of consumers who are willing to let you quote their insurance at the time your ad is seen or heard.

For instance, suppose you are running an ad campaign designed to highlight the choice and customization an independent can bring to bear in designing an insurance program for a consumer’s unique and evolving needs. A landing page for an ad campaign like that could include articles and checklists that would illustrate how varied risk exposures can be different from individual to individual or business to business. Interactive wizards, review tools or calculators that help a consumer gain a grasp of their singular risk needs can be very effective. You might also provide information about your agency that expands the message of the ad campaign such as your process for evaluating and updating insurance programs, the number of companies you represent (choice); you might also highlight unique products or coverage available through one or more of your companies. (And of course you should include links for quote requests).

Measuring clicks to this special landing page will give you a good idea of your ad’s effectiveness. But arranging pages in this way also gives you the advantage of delivering value to a consumer and forming a relationship. You are providing a test drive of your agency. This is important because, without constant ads or other reinforcement, only a minority of those hearing or seeing your ad will recall your agency within just a few months.

If you have an online newsletter, review program or other service that allows you to continue to communicate with a prospective customer you will be able to strengthen and expand the relationship you have begun thanks to your ecommerce boosted ad. Only about 20% of any pool of prospects will be interested in switching their insurance at any given time. But you will have established a value-added relationship, possibly a stronger one than the prospect has with their current agent, and that will give you an advantage when the quote opportunity does present itself – your agency will be top of mind. And that is the most important objective of a blended online/offline advertising campaign: creating a relationship with a pool of near and long term future customers, not just creating awareness.

View an example of a print advertising and landing page

Privacy Protection and Security on Your Website

Are you doing all you should be to protect your customer’s information and your agency from potential litigation? We’re not lawyers and even they differ in how they view the application of privacy legislation, like Gramm-Leach-Bliley, to the business practices of independent insurance agents. But one thing is certain: your agency is less vulnerable to bad PR and litigation if it is doing something to protect customer information.

You may be using your website or email to fulfill the Trusted Choice pledge of 24/7 service, meet the expectations of today’s consumers or just to cut down on costs. News stories about data breaches show up with regularity and heighten consumer sensitivity to the vulnerability of their information. Inevitably, one of your customers will ask you if information they share with you via your website is secure. There are a few things you should know before the question arises.

Email is not secure. Email is essentially an electronic postcard. And as with a postcard, anyone who comes into physical contact with information contained in the email can read it. Email passes from sender to recipient over a series of servers, the path can vary depending on internet traffic, so you can never be sure which servers are on the communication path and who has access to it.

Quote, policy change and other forms on your website may pass information to your agency via email or maybe by directly updating a database. Unless that data is encrypted and the database server is secure the information passed from customer to your agency is vulnerable to interception. (You can usually tell if a form is protected by a secure server by looking for ‘https’ at the beginning of a web address or url in your browser address line vs. ‘http’).

A simple solution is to use a secure server for all online forms and discourage customers from using naked email for sending sensitive information to your agency. Servers can be secured by installing a certificate from Verisign or other provider. Once done you’ll be able to differentiate your agency from the competition by letting customers know that, not only do you provide legitimate 24/7 service, but you have also taken measures to protect their private information.

Ten Second Tips

This new feature of the Act cFluent Newsletter brings you quick, simple ways to get more out of your website. Ten Second Tips brings you ideas you can use right away to get more visits to your website, save your staff time and set your agency apart from the competition. We kick things off with nine tips…

Follow up on quotes, in person and preferably with a phone, call within one hour of receiving the request. Your conversion rate will increase dramatically. You don’t have to prepare a quote, just a follow up letting the prospect know you are working for them.
The email leave behind – end a service call with an email including a link back to your website to content or resources relevant to the service or sales conversation. You get an email address and your customer starts using and referring your website. Costs go down, business goes up.
Be prepared – and by that we mean ahead of time – to respond to internet requests in a variety of formats. Just because someone initiates a relationship through the internet doesn’t mean that a phone call or fax might not be the best next step.
You’ve heard it before – never send out mail without a stuffer. In this case, pick a different resource on your website and use a monthly stuffer to draw attention to it.
Don’t let your web policy change or quote forms be dumb ‘order takers’. Be sure to capitalize on opportunities to mention other products or coverage and offer to review your website user’s insurance program.
Be specific. Calls to ‘check our website for valuable flood safety tips’ get a lot more response than a bland ‘be sure to visit our website’. Answer the question, ‘why should I?’ before it is asked.
Make your staff aware of the content and resources at your website and help them use those resources to make their jobs easier and your customer’s experience richer. A regularly updated desk top reference is a good idea.
Always include the 24/7 convenience and information on your website as part of your value proposition. Remember, value is an equation that is part price and part service. The stronger your service component, the less a factor is price.
If you have a ‘welcome package’ for new customers, be sure to include a website orientation as part of it. Let them know what they can do on your website.

2006-10-19T20:48:00.000-04:00

Dear Confluency Solutions Customer,

On October 18^th Microsoft released a new version of their Internet Explorer browser. Anytime a company releases a new browser it is important to test each web page in the new browser to make sure they look the same as they did in the previous version.

Confluency Solutions has verified that your web site works fine in Microsoft’s new browser.

Testing web sites like this is a FREE services provided by Confluency for all of our hosted sites.

Why is this important?

The two most popular browsers are Internet Explorer (IE) and Mozilla’s FireFox. Recent studies show that IE is used by about 85% of internet users followed by 12% using FireFox and the remaining 3% going to miscellaneous browsers.

More resources:

http://www.cfluent.com/security

2006-08-19T23:05:00.000-04:00

August, 2006 Act cFluent Newsletter

Once you have an agency website with all the tools you need what do you do to make it pay off? Read the first installment in a multi-part series on making your website relevant: Company Service Centers – Opportunity Lost?
Want a fast an easy way to assess staff and assign activities and new job requirements to make the decision to move to a service center really pay off? Try CSRSelect.
Are you displaying logos for your insurance companies on your website? Is your website hot linking back to carrier home pages? Nearly 50% of agencies linking to their carriers are providing a direct line for a customer or potential customer to be quoted elsewhere with business going to a competing agency or a direct channel. Read more.
Does spam have you teetering under the sheer weight of unwanted pharmaceutical offers? Or maybe you’ve taken the bunker mentality: nobody is going to get to your email address, not no how, not no way. You can be accessible without being spam-able.
Need a few tools to beef up your website? Check out the plug-n-play cFluent Web Modules.
Purchase the Company Information Pages for Your Website

Part I

Part I of a multi-part series that explores what you can do to make your website relevant to your agency, your employees, your customers and your prospective customers. These articles focus on agency strategies and initiatives apart from the internet and then suggest ways to make your website tools pay off in the context of those initiatives.

Company Service Centers – Opportunity Lost?

Moving policy changes to insurance company service centers has obvious benefits but often results in lost opportunity. Shifting requests like change of address, mortgagee and lien holder changes, vehicle additions and deletions to a service center typically makes good sense when viewed from a spreadsheet point of view: commission paid to the company can be less than the salary, training, management and related costs of keeping these transactions in house.

But more than a few agencies have noticed a drop off in additional policy coverage sales, account development sales and referrals. Many policy changes create exposures that call for a needs review and insurance program recommendations. This kind of contact keeps agencies top of mind in a positive way and often results in policy upgrades, account sales and referrals. So what to do to get the opportunities back? Cancel the service center contract?

The problem is not the company service center but rather the absence of customer contact. Most agencies, because they are so busy, do not have time to initiate customer contact. As a result, contact that does take place is at the volition of customers, often when they need a basic policy change. When that contact is moved to a service center a void is created. The answer to recovering lost opportunities is not cancelling the service center contract but instead filling the void with proactive customer communications.

One way to do that is to take agency account managers and give them some new job requirements that include outbound calls. We have to remember though, that our service staff may have been conditioned by years of reacting to customers and initiating contact may make many uncomfortable; overcoming resistance to change may require more management time and energy than an agency owner or manager has available.

The trick to managing the kind of culture change a service center decision should engender is to identify the path of least resistance. Don’t expect to turn all your service staff in to sales staff or customer consultants. You’ll kill yourself trying. Instead, pick those most likely to adapt to proactive service and sales. You can use any one of a number of tests available on the market, such as CSR Select, to evaluate sales staff aptitude. Then work with those employees that have the most sales aptitude to implement account review and new marketing programs above and beyond what you are already doing.

But even employees less adaptive to sales activities should have requirements for outbound contacts. But for those employees you should tailor requirements so you don’t push these employees so far that they mutiny. Outbound calls simply thanking customers for business can have surprisingly powerful results. You may require employees with sales reticence to perform a certain number of these each week.

Another way to keep outbound contacts less threatening and employees less resistant is to use calls to draw attention to agency web services. If your agency has annual review capabilities, calculators, FAQs or newsletter articles that are of interest or use to customers then use these calls as a way to get customers into the habit of using your agency website. The calls need simply point out the convenient alternatives your agency offers for getting questions answered and making sure insurance protection stays up to date. To maximize the chances customers get to your website, service staff should offer to email links to specific agency web resources.

An added benefit to this approach is the capture of email addresses for future communication programs. Additionally, you are providing exactly the kind of convenience and options more and more consumers are expecting from their insurance provider and the kind of conveniences that pay off in greater customer loyalty and lower account costs.

Loss of transactional contact to a company service center doesn’t have to mean the loss of opportunity. Implementing an outbound communication program can fill the communication void and recapture the opportunities. In fact, an outbound communication program built around the aptitude of each staff member can create far more opportunities and result in greater sales levels than before the move to the service center. The key is to fill the communication void in a way that’s best for your customers, your employees and your agency’s bottom line.

The Trojan Horse in Your Agency

Displaying the logo and names of the insurance companies your agency represents on your website seems harmless enough. But displaying a name, logo or even a hot link back to the carrier misses an opportunity to please your customers by leveraging your website and free up staff time for sales and value added service. And hot links back to insurance company home pages can even be harmful to your business.

Free Up Staff Time

Many clients will bookmark those pages from your agency website. That in turn will promote website traffic and use of other online services you may offer. As more customers begin to avail themselves of these options your staff will spend less time on basic transactions that provide no value differentiation. Agency, company and customer all benefit through increases in the use of basic, low cost, convenient online transactions. The challenge is building and maintaining the pages for every carrier in your office. We have a solution or you at the end of the article. Read on.

The Trojan Horse

So how can displaying a company logo or hotlink be damaging to your agency? There are several issues here. First, indiscriminate display of logos of varying shapes, sizes, colors and styles can obscure and confuse any brand message you may be trying to promote through your own logo or website design. If you are not keeping carrier logos up to date you may also be diluting the brand identity of the insurance company.

Worse, if you don’t keep hot links updated you may be linking back to the wrong company. Confluency did a quick sample of agency websites gleaned from one insurance company’s agency locator. A random sample of 180 agency websites showed they contained out of date links or logos or links to the wrong site 63% of the time when carrier links were provided. Sometimes the links were ‘broken’ and went to an error page, sometimes the links went to a website for a non-insurance business, and quite often, the out of date links went to the website for an insurance company’s direct-to-consumer brand.

More than a few insurance companies compete directly with their agents through direct marketing. We’re not going to weigh in here with an opinion about that practice but we are going to suggest that your agency not hand deliver your customers and potential customers to any competitor.

Several insurance company website homepages include a blandishment to quote and buy directly and some of these are very prominent. In these cases, direct links from your agency website to the insurance company home page can cost you real money. Nearly 50% of agencies linking to their carriers are providing a direct line for a customer or potential customer to be quoted elsewhere. Even worse the average number of links to insurance companies who present website offers like these is 3.5. That’s like taking customers and prospective customers from your office to the offices of three or four competitor agencies to see if they would like a quote.

Solution

Real benefits for all constituents, your agency, your carriers and your customers, can be gained by integrating online direct service via carrier websites. But simply linking to an insurance company homepage won’t bring about customer convenience or agency time and expense saving. Links have to be to carrier site service pages specifically. Business leakage through links to carrier pages that act as a competitive siphon to your agency can be stopped by disabling those links. Finally, a periodic review of logos and links on your agency website should be undertaken to uncover out of date or inaccurate links and logos.

Confluency Solutions’ Company Information Pages

Confluency Solutions maintains a database of insurance company information and can provide pages for each company in your agency through the cFluent Company Information Pages Web Module. A first year license of $350 (renewal $175)* will get you an index page and a page for each company that can be part of your website as well as a separate index page for Claims. See the links below for examples. Purchase the Company Information Pages for Your Website.

*May be waived or reduced for agencies licensing other cFluent Web Modules or agencies representing carriers who have licensed the carrier version of the Company Information Pages

Company Information Page Example – Index Page
Company Information Page – Individual Company Page
Company Information Page Example – Claims Page
Click here to request the Company Information Pages for your agency

Accessible Doesn’t Have to Mean Spam-able

You want the contact information for key agency employees to be available for your customers and prospects. Providing intermediate contact waypoints alone, like info@ or service@ email addresses can result in communication delays that can mean lost business. A logical place to put this contact information is on the web but the downside is, unless certain precautions are taken, you could end up with a lot of unwanted spam.

Back in April we talked about how to protect yourself from spam as an individual but what about protecting yourself while making yourself accessible as a business provider?

Spammers use the same technology as search engines like Google and Yahoo to ‘crawl’ web sites and gather email addresses. One way to protect you and agency employees is to put security in place that requires a log in ID and password. But even this has a drawback: most of us have to keep up with so many IDs and passwords that we may not have them in mind when needed. The result is frustration and a phone call your customer is forced to place for a question or service. That’s the best outcome. The less desirable possibility is your customer going elsewhere on the internet to get what they want.

Another, more customer friendly way to thwart spam crawlers is to put a screen on your website in front of email addresses. Crawlers can only see regular characters like text, symbols and numbers. Shapes and images are impenetrable to them but can be seen by human eyes. Confluency uses an approach like this with a new web module, which can be installed on any website, called Spam Out Directory. To get a look at how this works visit our demo agency directory and Contact Us page. A spam screen like this both protects agency addresses from spammers and lets customers and prospects access the direct contact information they want.

That takes care of your website but what about other websites that may display your email address? You have little control over those and your address may show up in more places than you realize. Your local Chamber of Commerce may display your email address or email addresses of other agency staff. Agency locators on insurance company websites, agency association sites like PIA, IIABA, Trusted Choice and program sites like the National Flood web site can all create spam vulnerabilities. Many of these sites require the entry of a zip code, town or some other information before email addresses are displayed. This requires a level of crawler sophistication and the bots used by many spam perpetrators may fall short of this capability. But it is safest to assume that at least some spammers are able to get through. To protect yourself on third party sites it is best to use only a generic email address like info@confluencysolutions.com.

2006-06-12T12:35:00.000-04:00

Working an Agency Website to Update Insurance-to-Value

Confluency Solutions, Inc. – www.confluencysolutions.com

Why wait around for your agency website to ‘work’? Use it and get used. See a case study of how an agency website was used to improve customer convenience and service, reduce costs and generate income at http://www.cfluent.com/ins/casestudy
Sample the Resources used in a homeowner insurance to value project:

ITV Questionnaire:
http://www.cfluent.com/ins/itv

Article about dwelling replacement cost issues:
http://www.cfluent.com/ins/ra
Check out closely related website resources:

Personal Risk Wizard (to help establish the right coverage and limits):
http://www.cfluent.com/ins/prw

Personal Property Wizard (estimated home contents estimator):
http://www.cfluent.com/ins/ppw

Try all the cFluent Web modules via a sample agency website.
Register at http://www.cfluent.com/ins/demo

Pass it along:>> http://www.cfluent.com/ins/forward

Webinars: http://www.cfluent.com/ins/webinar

Pass it along:>> http://www.cfluent.com/ins/forward

2006-04-11T12:57:00.000-04:00

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.

2006-04-11T12:55:00.000-04:00

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.

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

2006-04-11T12:54:00.000-04:00

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.

2006-04-11T12:53:00.000-04:00

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

2006-04-11T12:52:00.000-04:00

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.

2006-04-11T12:47:00.000-04:00

Common Web Site Myths and Mistakes

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.