Email marketing continues to be an effective tool for insurance agents — and for good reason. In addition to being a low-cost strategy for staying in touch with prospects and existing policyholders, it can help with lead generation and referrals. And while email marketing is a bit of a numbers game, there are better ways to get your emails in front of your target audience and improve your open and click-through rates.

What’s the difference between an open rate and a click-through rate?

An open rate is the percentage of people who opened your email in a single marketing campaign and is a good indicator of how effective your email campaign was in getting the attention of your target audience.

A click-through rate is the percentage of people who clicked on a link within your email. A high number of click-throughs means that people are interested in what you have to say or offer and are willing to click on your email to learn more. The higher your click-through rate, the better chance you have of converting a lead into a sale.

According to MailChimp, the average email open rate for the insurance industry is 21.36%, and the click-through rate is 2.13%.

Ready to improve your next email marketing campaign? Here are four tips.

Build a more personalized list. Marketing is a numbers game. However, just sending out hundreds of random emails isn’t going to cut it — particularly when it comes to selling insurance. It can take some time, but what you want in the end is a list of more meaningful contacts to send marketing emails to. To do this, always be looking for ways to add new prospects and existing policyholders to your list. For example:

1. After a networking meeting or whenever you make a connection with a potential lead or prospect, ask if you can add them to your contact list so, in the future, you can share helpful insurance information with them.
2. Create an email sign-up form on your website so visitors can automatically receive helpful information
3. Create a compelling piece of content (e.g., white paper, helpful guide, infographic) on your website that visitors can download. To receive the content, website visitors must sign up and provide their email address.

Target your specific audience. To effectively improve your open and click-through rates, you must craft emails that resonate with the people on your list. To do that, you need to know who your target audience is and send them information they would be interested in.

For example, are you a life agent looking to sell more long-term care insurance? Or are you an agent who specializes in coverage for small businesses and wants to sell more workers’ compensation insurance? Once you know whom you want to target and why, start building your email marketing list using certain demographic factors about your audience. Then, create content that focuses on the information and products that are only relevant to your target audience.

Be consistent with your messaging. If you are going to send out a newsletter or other type of informational email, you want to be consistent. Sending out regular marketing emails keeps people interested and can reinforce your insurance expertise. For example, if you are thinking about sending out a newsletter, consider sending it out every month or quarter. The idea is to stay in front of your target audience but not become a nuisance.

Developing and sending out content on a regular basis takes discipline. To stay on track, consider building an editorial calendar that specifies what content will go out in the next email campaign or newsletter.

Craft an effective subject line. Always be sure to pay special attention to your email’s subject line — especially if you are sending emails to prospects who are not current policyholders. It’s an all-too-common occurrence for recipients to immediately report emails coming from marketing campaigns as spam if the email came from a business/brand they didn’t recognize or sign up for. Here are three subject line tips:

1. Use clear language that provides just enough information, so recipients know what the email is about.
2. Avoid spammy, over-promissory or clickbait-type wording.
3. Use a human email address such as mary@insuranceagency.com rather than noreply@webster.com. 

About FastrackCE
Need to complete your insurance continuing education credits before the end of the year? Don’t panic! FastrackCE can help you get all your life and health and property and casualty continuing education credits done in one place and at your convenience. We offer online insurance continuing education courses in most states, covering a broad range of topics, including most of the state-mandated courses such as ethics, flood, long-term care and annuity training.