From Cold Leads to Happy Customers: A Winning Email Strategy for Insurance Agents

The Undeniable Power of an Effective Email Strategy

If you can’t tell, I love email. I still believe it’s one of the most valuable methods of communicating with leads, prospects and customers that we have access to. We’re going to break this down, but first you need to understand the different groups of people that should be getting emails sent in different sequences or campaigns.

Segmenting Your Email List: The Basics

First let’s talk about the different groups or segments of people you probably have in your database. You can create future segments around Lifetime Value, Premium, Revenue, Number of Products, etc… but these are your core to start with.

1. Leads – This is merely contact information you’ve gathered either from different sources. If you’re buying leads I won’t judge you, much. 
2. Prospects – A prospect is someone who’s raised their hand and says they might be ready to buy from you, or at the very least talk to you.
3. Customers – These are people who paid or are continuing to pay you money for something.
4. Former Customers – These are people that used to pay you money, and as long as they haven’t told you that you suck and they hate you, guess what you should still communicate with them.

Diving Deeper: Sub-segments for Precision Targeting

Now that we’ve got the different segments, there’s sub-segments you should probably consider, especially when it comes to leads and customers!

Let’s break these down further:

• Leads
  • Cold – usually acquired from email lists,  or scraped (naughty naughty)
  • Warm – usually acquired from paid advertising or referrals
• Prospects
  • Current – They’ve recently booked a call, or you’ve quoted them in the last 15 or so days days
  • Luke Warm – They’ve booked a call, or you’ve quoted them more than 30 days ago
  • Ghost – Just like dating, they’ve gone ghost on you, haven’t responded to your follow ups, usually more than 45 days ago
• Customers
  • Happy – These customers love you, and probably send you referrals
  • Passive – These customers exist, they’re not happy nor upset, they just exist and you just exist to them. Most of the time this is a personality thing.
  • Detractor – These customers aren’t happy, might not even be your fault but they’re not happy.
• Former customers – we’re going to be careful here.
  • Happy former customers – They left for reasons beyond your control, but you should still communicate with them. Heck they might still be a decent referral source.
  • Passive former customers – They probably found a better price, might like you, but are indifferent to your existence still.
  • Unhappy former customers – They left and they’re telling the world about why they left. 

Crafting the Perfect Email Strategy

So we’ve laid out who we’re going to be emailing, and broke down the sub-segments of these groups. Let’s talk about how often you should be emailing your lists. This isn’t a bible, and I’m not even going to dig up the stats, this is all my theory. But exactly how I build out email campaigns for the companies I’ve worked at.

• Leads – All the damn time, seriously. The more you email, the more you’ll convert.
  • Cold – I like at least every 3-4 business days, at least 9 emails in a campaign with my patent pending break up email at the end.
  • Warm – We’re going to follow a similar structure as the cold leads, but even longer campaign, as long as you possibly can. Follow-up until they tell you to f&*k off. Part of those emails should be not just about raising awareness, but also getting them to opt-in for your newsletter/content list.
• Prospects – Why aren’t you emailing your prospects?! You want to improve your sales? Communicate with your prospects!
  • Current – These people get my “indoctrination campaign”. I currently have one that sends two emails within the first hour of booking a call, and getting a daily email all the way up until their appointment. I get some flack from sales people on this, but the data shows it’s improved our show rate significantly. They also get added to a 14 email long series after their appointment.
  • Luke Warm – These people didn’t buy, or the deal stalled, but you should still be communicating with them, once a week for as long as you possibly can. The best thing you’re looking for here is to get I’ll buy if you leave me alone, or unsubscribe.
  • Ghost – I love my current ghosted campaign, we’re seeing about 30% of people who no-show their call getting back on the calendar! This one is simple, 1 email every 5 days, then they get added to that same 14 email campaign that goes out once a week. Throw in the “9 word email” towards the end of this.
• Customers – I’ve never heard a customer say my insurance agent communicates too much. It’s always, I never hear from my insurance agent.
  • I would focus first on the content you’re creating, you’re creating content regularly right? Send them a weekly or monthly summary of the content you’ve created linking to your blog/video.
  • Check-ins – I would send something super simple like “Hey John, it looks like your policy is going to renew in 90 days or so. Any major changes to your household? New cars, or toys since we talked last?” Something along those lines, but I would follow up on those renewals 90, 60, 45, and 30 days out.
  • Asking for reviews – The only way to keep getting google reviews is to consistently ask for them. You don’t need to be pushy, but the two best times to ask for a google review is:
    1. Immediately after a recent positive purchase interaction
    2. Immediately after a recent positive service interaction
• Former Customers
  • I hope when they were customers, you opted them into your newsletter/content list! 
  • Happy Former Customers – You probably know when they’re renewal is, so send them a couple of emails 45-60 days before their renewal.
  • Passive Former Customers – Same thing, always worth a shot to hit them up on their renewal
  • Unhappy Former Customers – Good luck, if they’re unhappy or made your staff unhappy just skip these.

Making the Most of Your Email Marketing

Most people over think all of this, but my general consensus is if you have legal permission to email people, you should be emailing them as often as possible. Most of these require some sort of marketing automation, you’re probably already paying for it, so you might as well use it!