How to Increase
Insurance Client Retention
The average retention rate in
the insurance industry is 84%, with the top-performing agencies in the 93%-95%
range. Retaining customers is all about the long-term relationship you build.
It's no surprise that acquiring new clients is far more
expensive than selling to existing ones. The Independent Insurance Agents of Dallas point out a
couple key facts to consider:
·
First, the insurance
industry has the highest customer acquisition costs of any industry.
·
Second, it costs seven
to nine times more for an insurance agency to attract a new customer than to
keep one.
Think about your customer retention strategies based on what
you've already done with your "best" clients. You've taken the time
to understand their wants and needs, honed in on your customer service skills,
and have learned how to deliver. These clients trust you.
Building a relationship with a new prospect or client can take
several months or more. No matter the type of insurance or benefits you sell,
you know the importance of strong client relationships. That's why insurance
agents focus so much on client retention.
In this blog, we’ll cover three ways you can keep more clients
at your insurance agency and how you can put them into practice.
Cross-Sell More Policies
It makes sense that the more products a client has purchased
from you, the more likely you are to keep them. Take it from Arthur Middleton Hughes who shows there’s proof of
it in the numbers:
Image: Database Marketing Institute
The answer to selling another insurance product to clients is to
take a look at cross-selling. If you're maintaining a clean book of business,
it won't be difficult to identify your clients' gaps.
Hughes offers this tactic for selling another policy:
·
Offer a discount on
your client's current policy if he/she buys another. Hughes suggests that you
study your clients' purchasing behavior and figure out which types of products
they're most likely to buy.
Selling another policy to current clients is likely to increase
customer loyalty. But, you have to make sure you're doing it with the best
interest of your clients in mind. That's where AgencyBloc can help.
There are a couple of ways to identify cross-selling
opportunities using AgencyBloc:
·
Set up an email
campaign that uses cross-sell triggers to identify cross-selling opportunities
within your book of business, but also allows you to create emails right then
and there for those clients.
·
Look for specific
cross-sell opportunities within your book of business. AgencyBloc's Cross Sell Report quickly
uncovers cross-selling opportunities for you. Using this report, search your
book of business by coverage type and quickly find policy coverage gaps.
Once you identify these opportunities, reach out! If it's a
short list, phone calls might make sense. But, if your search brought up a
large list, an email campaign works perfectly.
Keep your email concise. Let them know that you noticed their
coverage gap. Give them a few quick bullet points on the benefits of said
coverage, and ask if they would be interested in chatting about it.
Then, follow up with them promptly and treat them as new
prospects.
It doesn't hurt to run these cross-sell reports a few times a
year, especially as the products you sell change. Your clients might not know
everything you offer, so point it out to them!
Communicate With Clients Often (and Do It
Well!)
The second tactic to improve customer retention is to simply
communicate often with them. Start this from the onboarding process and
continue it throughout their journey with you.
How often is the right amount? It might differ client by client.
Only you understand those individual relationships. It’s best to reach out to
clients when something affects them, specifically, or when you identify
opportunities to add value to your relationship.
For instance, a carrier change on a product they own affects
them. You'd always reach out in this situation. Similarly, a policy renewal
date approaching affects them—always have a plan in place for this.
As for more times to add value, find areas you can show you care
about the relationship. The simplest example of this is Happy Birthday
greetings. Beyond this, think about your expertise. What do you know that your
clients don't, but should? Offering this advice (and value!) will add another
layer to your client/advisor relationship.
Your clients will feel reassured that you haven't forgotten
about them and that you're available when they need you. Even better, it shows
them you're proactive and care about your relationship with them.
There are several touchpoints throughout each year that you can
make. A few examples are:
Automated Email Templates for Insurance
Agencies
Here are 7 automated emails you can set up (+ the email text
& how to automate!).
·
New Prospect - Lead
Form Submission
·
New Client Welcome
·
Policy Status Update
·
Happy Birthday
·
Policy Renewal
·
Referral Ask
·
Clients turning 65 (or
another important age)
These touchpoints could be phone calls or emails, but the main
idea is to maintain communication. Provide a customer experience where your
clients feel like a priority to you, no matter what time of year it is.
An easy way to ensure this happens is to automate! Set up emails
to go out on these dates or a few months before, depending on the
situation. Use these email templates to
help you out!
AgencyBloc's Automated Workflow helps
insurance agencies stay on top of client communication with minimal effort.
Once you identify the touchpoints you want to make, create a workflow that will
automatically trigger when the event arises.
A simple example of this is to automate policy renewals.
Set up emails to be sent 90, 60, and 30 days before the renewal date to begin
communication with your clients. You don't have to remember to send the emails;
AgencyBloc sends them for you. You can have an activity (to-do) automatically
appear on your dashboard at the same time if you prefer.
When you use automation, you're making certain you communicate
with your clients when you should and that nothing falls through the cracks.
When you chat with clients, it's also important to remember
to take detailed notes.
And don't forget the informal stuff! Take notes on how their family is doing,
their hobbies, and their vacation plans. That way, the next time you speak with
them you can pick up where you left off.
Create an Outstanding Onboarding Experience
If you don’t yet have a formal client onboarding process, now
might be the time to put one into place. Starting off your working relationship
with a client on the right foot sets both of you up for success. In fact, Forrester and Adobe found
that when a business focuses on providing a great experience to
clients, they typically see two times higher annual growth when it comes to
customer retention.
A great onboarding experience is twofold. First, onboarding
should do exactly that—onboard new clients and familiarize them with you and
your agency. But, having a great onboarding experience can
also be a powerful way to assure clients that they made the right decision
choosing your agency, meaning they’ll be more likely to renew when that time
comes.
So, what exactly makes a client onboarding experience
outstanding?
First, use automation to ensure consistent communication with
your clients. By taking advantage of automation, you make sure that nothing is
missed. AgencyBloc’s Automated Workflow feature
makes accomplishing this simple.
Let’s say you wanted to send a new client welcome email as part
of your onboarding experience. This can be automated within AgencyBloc by
setting up an Automated Workflow. The workflow can be set to trigger when a
client’s status is updated to active, which then results in the following
actions:
·
A welcome email is
sent to the client
·
An email is sent to the
agent of record to notify them
·
A task is created for
the agent of record three days later to check in with the client
Next, make sure the experience is personalized to the client.
Even if many clients purchase the same coverage, each of those clients still
has different needs and should be approached as such. That’s not to say you
can’t have a repeatable process in place—just make sure you customize it in
places where it makes sense. For example, have a kickoff meeting with your
client where you can provide detailed information about their exact policy and
what it means for them. This type of personalized touch shows the value you’re
providing specifically to them.
Another way to add a personalized touch is by sending
handwritten thank you cards to your clients. Some systems can also integrate
with services that send handwritten cards on your behalf. See if your AMS and
handwriting system can integrate via Zapier, or if they have their own integration
with these companies. You can use Zapier to
automatically send handwritten cards to clients by connecting AgencyBloc and
Handwrytten, a handwritten notes service.
In addition to Zapier integrations, AgencyBloc also offers
built-in integrations. One of AgencyBloc's integration partners is Rocket Referrals, an insurance communications platform.
Their software can help you collect and analyze NPS scores from clients, send
handwritten cards, improve your online reputation, and much more.
These AgencyBloc resources provide more information about
onboarding clients and onboarding best practices:
·
[Infographic] The Agent's Guide
to Onboarding New Clients
·
Using Automation To Streamline
Your New Client Onboarding
·
[Guide] Providing Value to
Clients: Onboarding, cross-selling, & reporting
·
[Free PDF] 6 Steps to
Onboarding a New Client
Insurance customers are relationship buyers. Your relationship with your current clients
should always come first if you want to increase client retention. And three
ways to put your client relationships first is to identify their coverage gaps,
keep the lines of communication open, and provide an outstanding onboarding
experience.
Start communicating more often with clients right now!
Use these automated
email templates to start communicating with your clients more often throughout
the year, but without extra effort from you!
This blog was originally published on 4/3/2019 and updated on
6/20/2022.
By Sarah Rosonke on June 21,
2022 in Client Retention
Sarah is the Design and Content Specialist at AgencyBloc. She
creates and designs helpful resources to support life and health insurance
agencies in growing and automating their business. Favorite quote: "You'll
never do a whole lot unless you're brave enough to try." —Dolly Parton More articles
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