Marketers at insurance companies have their work cut out for them.
According to a study by Accenture, the number of consumers who perceive that “most insurance carriers are the same in terms of their products and services,” jumped 50% in the last year. Furthermore, the same study revealed that only 27% of customer have a high opinion of their insurance providers’ trustworthiness, and only 16% of respondents said they would definitely make a repeat purchase from their provider. Today’s fast-paced digital buyers expect relevant products, services, and experiences — not a sea of sameness built around impersonal customer relationships.
On top of lukewarm consumer perceptions and an increasingly competitive landscape, marketers in the insurance industry also face big strategic questions.
How do we . . .
- reach consumers with better, more applicable information?
- nurture leads without stretching our marketing and sales resources too thin?
- set ourselves apart?
- create a unified team across marketing and sales?
- get the best data to provide personalized customer service?
- cultivate a loyal base of customers?
All of these questions — and more — can be answered, at least in part, with marketing automation. Here are a few ways insurance companies can use marketing automation to engage today’s digital buyer.
1. Create more personalized experiences.
While you’ve heard the common refrain over and over, it’s no less relevant: consumers crave personalized experiences. In fact, 52% them are likely to switch brands if a company doesn’t personalize communications, according to Salesforce’s fourth annual “State of Marketing” report.
Reaching consumers at scale with personalized messages may seem like a tall task, but that’s where marketing automation comes in. Based on behavioral triggers, such as when a returning website visitor downloads a guide to buying a life insurance policy, marketers can automatically follow up with a “thank you” email and nurture these relationships with related offers.
Customized lead capture forms are also a great tool that can help with personalizing content. Later in a lead’s journey, marketers can use progressive profiling to select which form fields appear based on the information you already have about a particular lead. As you collect this valuable customer data, you can then deliver even more relevant information via dynamic content. This doesn’t just work for email, either; implementing dynamic content experiences on the web is an often overlooked method of creating personalized experiences.
2. Support your sales teams.
Sales and marketing teams shouldn’t function separately. So, when you consider marketing automation, it’s equally important to realize that you’re affecting sales strategy. Marketing automation, simply put, stretches beyond the marketing team.
With Salesforce Engage, your sales teams can have access to records that show a lead’s interactions with marketing materials, such as emails and website content. This way, they have a 360-degree view of a prospect’s behavior. Engage also gives your sales reps the ability to receive real-time alerts as prospects engage with their content, send marketing-approved email templates, and add prospects to personalized nurture journeys.
These automatic workflows — like funneling the right data from strategic marketing campaigns to a sales rep — can help sales teams speed up an otherwise slow, manual the sales cycle.
3. Build loyalty with new programs.
Only 29% of insurance customers say they’re satisfied with their current providers. This could lead to an estimated $470 billion in business that’s up for grabs, according to an Accenture study.
To keep consumers happy with their insurance, providers could build and implement educational onboarding or retention campaigns. For example, a consumer who signs up to get a quote for an auto policy might benefit from an informational nurture program about long-term automobile care. Creating a base of content around this topic and setting up email drip campaigns could encourage consumers to engage more with an insurance company — hopefully providing a foundation for a stronger relationship.
For insurance providers who are constantly challenged with standing out from the competition while also delivering personalized customer experiences at scale, marketing automation might be the key to success. Discover more marketing automation tips on our blog.