When you start a direct marketing campaign, you must design the perfect pitch. Think about it, you have one shot to dazzle your potential client with your copy. With the amount of money you spend on designing the campaign, writing the campaign, printing and mailing it—that is one risky proposition and if you haven’t chosen your target market properly or haven’t crafted your message perfectly, that’s a lot of money wasted.

Instead of opting for an advertising method with such a limited scope, why not consider a newsletter as your direct marketing campaign? With a newsletter, you can reach a wide variety of prospects with a single printing. Not only do newsletters give you multiple pitches within a single mailing, they also add value to your service—can you say that about your last direct mail campaign?

Newsletters educate and inform while selling the need for the insurance products you carry. Thanks to their format and the way their content is written, they are considered more of an information tool than a sales piece. This can help you build trust with your prospects. Because newsletters don’t look like the average sales postcards and brochures, they have the power to reach those people who normally throw away direct mail marketing pieces without a second glance.

Direct mail isn’t the only way to capitalize on the advertising power of a newsletter. When you meet with a potential client, what is your leave-behind piece? How about a newsletter? Not only can it help your potential client decide to go with you as their agent, it can also make them start asking the kinds of questions that lead to additional sales. “Do I need an annuity?” “Maybe we should consider EPLI coverage.”

No matter how you look at it, a newsletter is the most flexible marketing tool your agency can have. It’s good for prospects, good for potential clients and good for existing clients. It adds value to your service while introducing need into your client’s thought process.

Anyone with an email address knows what spam is, and if you’re like me you absolutely despise it.  So as an email marketer, why would you want to risk associating your agency brand with that of a spammer?  Given the facts, I’m sure the majority of you wouldn’t.  Consider the following checklist to determine if you are following the rules.

The Permission Marketer’s Check List

• Do you have the recipient’s permission? – Before you send someone an email you need the person’s consent.  How do you get permission? If the recipient is a current client, ask the next time you talk to them. For prospects, request their permission to follow up via email before you leave your meeting.

  Rented or purchased lists are a no-no. The list seller will likely say you are buying an opt-in list.  But what did they opt-in for?  I’m going to go out on a limb, and say likely not insurance topics.

• Are you mailing too often? – This is a tough one for insurance agents. It’s not like you’re sending out a weekly flyer announcing various items on sale.   Since there’s no hard and fast rules, you need to use your best judgment.  Are your messages important enough, that people need to hear from you weekly?  If not, you should probably stick with mailing no more often than monthly.
• Is your content consistent with what the recipient signed up for? – If your subscribers signed up for a commercial lines p/c newsletter they’re likely not interested in articles on homeowner’s insurance.  If you do wish to cross promote to a different list, just send out an opt-in email requesting permission.
• Can the recipient easily unsubscribe? – Having an easy unsubscribe process is not just to prevent people from reporting your messages as spam, it’s a requirement.

Any agent with insurance email marketing experience knows all about spam filters. You can follow all the rules and still find some of your emails lost in cyberspace. Even with a permission-based mailing list, you’ll still encounter emails getting trapped in spam filters.

Unfortunately, there is no easy fix to stay clear of spam filters. Understanding how they identify spam, however, can help you minimize their effect to your email newsletter campaigns.

To ensure maximum delivery of your email newsletters, avoid these common mistakes:

· Usage of obvious spammy phrases, like “Money back guarantee” or “100% Free”

· Excessive use of exclamation points!!!!!!

· USING ALL CAPS, especially in your subject line

· Multiple font colors, or large fonts, where unnecessary

· Messy non-compliant HTML code

· Mail is nothing but one large image

While certainly content is key in determining whether an email is marked as spam, we also take preventive steps on our end to maximize delivery for our agent clients. As an established email marketing service, Foresight Publishing has been accepted into feedback loops with ISPs like AOL, Hotmail, Comcast, Yahoo and others. Whenever an email recipient from one of these ISPs reports an email as spam, we’ll alert you right away so you know someone blocked your message. Additionally, we also automatically remove these subscribers from your mailing list(s).

Avoiding spam filters when sending out legitimate emails can take considerable effort on your part. However, watching your open rate grow by just a few percentage points could do wonders for your email marketing.

Insurance agents new to email marketing are usually surprised when only a portion of their email newsletters are opened. “Hey, these are my clients why aren’t they all reading my messages?” Don’t worry it’s not that they don’t like you, you just need to help them see the value in your communications.

Consider these tips for increasing the likelihood of getting your emails opened:

1. Make it easy to subscribe. Prominently display a newsletter signup form on your agency website. When meeting with clients and prospects ask for permission to send them your email newsletter.

2. Use a known “From” name. Do your clients know you by your name or agency name? Or perhaps you should blend the two like so: John Smith @ ABC Insurance <john@abcinsurance.com>.

3. The subject line is prime real estate. Something like ‘ABC Insurance Monthly Newsletter’ is boring. ‘6 Ways to Lower Your Workers’ Comp Rates’ is likely to be more enticing. Make sure to mix it up often.

4. Avoid SPAMMY words and punctuation. Words like FREE and punctuation like !!! are sure to get your email delivered straight to the junk folder.

5. Use images sparingly. Images can result in your email message taking longer to load. In addition, many users have images turned off anyway.

6. Personalize every email. When capturing email addresses be sure to ask for at least the person’s first name too. This way you can personalize the message with the recipient’s name.

7. Don’t bury your contact info. Make sure your phone number, email address, and website are readily available. Keep in mind that to comply with CAN-SPAM every message must have a physical address shown too.

8. Encourage recipients to add your email to their address list. If they whitelist your email, you’ll never go to junk.

9. Re-consider the attachments. Many people won’t open attachments for fear of getting a virus. And some corporate servers will strip the attachments anyway. If you have to include an attachment consider uploading the file to your web server and then linking to it rather than attaching.

10. Avoid purchased or rented email lists. If you don’t have permission to email these people, it’s SPAM plain and simple.

11. Offer one-click unsubscribing. If someone wants to remove their email from your list, give them an easy way to do so. You’d much rather them unsubscribe, then report your email as SPAM to their ISP.

In this day and age, agents aren’t just in the insurance sales business anymore—they have to be skilled marketers, as well. The average U.S. consumer is inundated with about 3,000 marketing messages a day. Consequently, insurance agents are forced to find increasingly ingenious ways to break through the marketing static and grab consumers’ attention.

While each agent has their own unique marketing style, there are a few essential tools every business should have. As you dig through your marketing tool box, what do you see? Eye-catching logo? Check. Website? Check. Direct mail campaign? Check. Email newsletter? Nope.

If you aren’t distributing a regular email newsletter, you’re missing out on a valuable opportunity to connect with clients and prospects. As a matter of fact, an e-newsletter is often the most powerful tool in an agent’s marketing arsenal.

Here are five good reasons you should crank up an e-newsletter campaign today:

It’s the icing on your website cake
If you have a website promoting your business, good for you. These days, a well-written, professionally designed website is crucial to any company’s success. However, your clients and prospects probably aren’t spontaneously visiting your website just to see what’s new with your business. After all, most people spend more time reading and responding to emails than they do surfing the web.

That’s where an email newsletter comes in. If you send an e-newsletter directly to your clients’ inboxes each month, they are much more likely to think of your business on regular basis. In other words, an e-newsletter campaign creates top of mind awareness with your clients. That means the next time they need insurance or other financial services, they’ll think of you first.

E-newsletters are green (and they save you some green, too)
Although print newsletters are certainly an effective way to stay in touch with your clients, email newsletters are much more cost-effective. Because you won’t have to pay for expensive paper, printing and postage, you’ll save a bundle on e-newsletters. Plus, because an e-newsletter campaign is paperless, it’s also the more environmentally friendly option. If you or your clients are green-conscious, an e-newsletter is the way to go.

They drive traffic to your website…or anywhere else
An e-newsletter can also include a direct link to your website. Of course, you can include your web address on a print newsletter, but a client is much more likely to visit your website when all they have to do is click on a link in an email.

Plus, you can include other attachments or interactive features in an e-newsletter. For example, you could attach a PDF file of a brochure or ad or even a sound file of your radio ad or talk show appearance.

E-newsletters can be forwarded
If your clients find the information in your e-newsletters particularly enlightening, they can easily forward it to family members, friends and colleagues. That means you’ll get more bang for you buck—and possibly a few new clients.

You can track the campaign’s success
With many e-newsletter programs, you can keep track of how many recipients are actually opening your email and clicking on the links inside. This helps you determine if your e-newsletter campaign is effective or if you may need to make a few tweaks.

There are countless reasons to launch an e-newsletter campaign—and the sooner you get started, the better. If you’re ready to plug into a high-voltage marketing tool, contact Foresight Publishing to discuss e-newsletters today. We can customize a dynamic e-newsletter campaign that will allow you to break through the marketing static and connect with clients and prospects.

A question we frequently get from agents is how often they should send an email newsletter to their clients. Currently, we offer monthly, bi-monthly, and quarterly mailing frequencies, but some agents are wanting to mail as often as weekly, or worse daily.  Our advice is always the same, do you think your clients really want to receive a daily or weekly marketing message from you?

While increasing your frequency might lead to short-term traffic spikes to your website or quote requests from prospects; it can also increase unsubscribes and even spam reporting.

A recent piece from Email Marketing Reports examines this issue in greater details:

As the marketing world (re)discovers email, many people are asking if they can send out more email to keep sales/responses flowing through difficult times.

Experts are skeptical, citing the risks of increased spam complaints, unsubscribes and list fatigue. Short-term response boosts can come at the cost of delivery problems, damage to your brand, and long-term loss of sales/responses … [continue reading]

There’s no question about it:  insurance agents have to stay in touch with their clients if they want their business to grow and thrive. A monthly or weekly newsletter, whether it’s print or electronic, is an extremely effective way to grab your clients’ attention and reinforce your customer relationships.

What makes a newsletter such a sharp marketing tool? When you distribute an eye-catching, informative newsletter to current and potential customers, it creates top of mind awareness for your business. That means the next time a client needs insurance or other financial services, they’ll think of your company first.

However, if you want to whip up a truly successful newsletter, you’ll need a few essential ingredients, including the following three elements:

1. A professional design: A substandard, badly designed newsletter will reflect poorly on your business. Think about it:  if you send your clients a thrown together, second-rate newsletter, they may assume your services are second-rate, as well. Consumers are bombarded with more than 50,000 marketing and advertising messages every single day. If you want to stand out from the crowd, you have to send clients a newsletter with a professional, sleek design.
2. Useful information: A newsletter that’s filled with nothing but fluff and sales pitches is simply not effective. If you want your clients to actually read your newsletter, you have to provide them with information they can actually use. When you offer valuable information to your clients through a newsletter, they’ll be more likely to come to you when they need insurance or financial advice.
3. Interesting, easy-to-digest content: Obviously, the world of insurance and financial services can be a bit dry and complex. When you reach out to your clients with a newsletter, you’ll want to keep the complicated financial jargon to a minimum. Although your newsletter articles should offer useful information, they should also be light-hearted and easy-to-read. Otherwise, you’ll quickly lose the reader’s interest, and they’ll end up tossing the newsletter in nearest trash can.

As you can see, creating a striking, informative and interesting newsletter is no easy task. If you want to send out a truly effective insurance newsletter, trust in the experts. Foresight Publishing can customize a dynamic newsletter to help you reach out to your clients and stay top of mind.

Obviously, it’s always important for advisors to stay in touch with their clients. But in tough economic times like these, client communication becomes absolutely critical.

Whether you work with individuals or businesses, one thing is certain: your clients need some reassurance right now. After all, they’re probably growing increasingly anxious as they watch our economy falter. With portfolios dwindling and financial institutions crumbling everywhere they turn, they could use some guidance and words of wisdom from a trusted advisor—you.

So, it’s time to polish up those communication skills and offer your clients the extra support they need right now. Here are a few tips for keeping the lines of communication wide open with clients in these difficult times:

Be proactive: Don’t wait for your clients to call you—beat them to the punch, and call them first. When you proactively contact your clients, you instantly win their trust. That’s because it’s clear that you have nothing to hide and you genuinely want to help them.

Touch base weekly: In a rough economy, you should connect with your clients at least once a week—and preferably on a daily basis. Whether you give them a call, meet with them in person or send out a newsletter, it’s important to maintain constant communication with each and every client. After all, clients find it much easier to fire advisors who rarely communicate with them.

Humanize yourself: When you discuss the tough economy with your clients, don’t hesitate to tell them how you and your family have been affected. This will make you seem more human in your clients’ eyes, allowing you to create a genuine connection with them. When you point out that you’re suffering too, clients will realize that they’re not alone and you understand what they’re going through.

Put on your listening ears: Communication is a two-way street. That means when you call or meet with your clients, you shouldn’t do all the talking. It’s extremely important to listen to clients as they voice their concerns or share their fears about the economy. Once they’ve said their piece, wait a few seconds before responding. Not only will this give you time to think about what they have said and prepare a knowledgeable response, but it also allows your client time to make any additional comments.

Explain what you’re doing: Give your clients two or three specific examples of what you and your firm are doing to deal with the economic downturn. For example, have you been poring over research? Have you been holding daily conference calls with colleagues to discuss possible actions? Have you been reviewing your clients’ files to see if anything can be done to better serve them right now? If so, tell your clients about it. Otherwise, they may assume you’re doing nothing.

There’s no question that our economy is faltering, and financial advisors are feeling the pressure. However, if you maintain consistent and honest communication with your clients, you’ll be much more likely to weather these difficult times.

The ideas we’ve gone through so far are the cornerstones of branding and marketing. But in 2010, why not take it a step further? Why not take your marketing to the extreme? Here are some additional brand awareness ideas:

• Radio show: Many local radio stations let agents buy advertising time—but how about proposing a short series of radio programs to your local talk radio station? They can be scripted programs that discuss current events in insurance or evergreen topics, or they can be call in shows during which you answer consumer questions.
• Television: You’ve probably seen your fill of television commercials for local law firms, so how about one for your insurance agency? There are many time slots and stations that your cable company can sell you ad time on and chances are they have a team of videographers and editors that they outsource commercial creation to. It can’t hurt to call and find out how affordable the packaged deals are.
• Newspaper advertising: Many people overlook this valuable resource. A simple advertisement in the classified section—or in a more prominent area—can bring in a few extra clients.
• Yearbook and alumni newsletters: Not only might you advertise to someone who already recognizes and trusts you when advertising in yearbooks and alumni newsletters, you also have tight control over who sees your message and can craft a very targeted ad which increases your chances of getting clients from the piece.
• Community, group and church newsletters: Find out if your local, smaller papers accept sponsorship or advertisements. You really need to sink your marketing teeth into your local community so your agency is associated with the community in the same way the local schools, favorite restaurants and popular shopping malls are.
• Trade magazine articles: Creating articles, or buying pre-written articles and personalizing them, for placement in trade magazines is a great way to raise your profile and earn some professional recognition.
• Sponsoring local youth sports teams: Someone has got to pay for those uniforms the local kids wear while playing baseball, golf, basketball, football and bowling. Why not let it be your agency? You get to do something good, get your name in front of all the parents and relatives of the kids and associate a positive image with your agency.
• Community group membership: Joining your local Toastmasters group, neighborhood watch, or bowling league helps put a human face to all the advertising your agency does and can increase the trust that prospective clients have for you.