While generating new customers is an essential part of growing your agency, it’s equally as important to care for your existing customer base. It’s difficult to keep momentum if you continually lose customers! Nurturing customer relationships and maintaining policies should be a prominent factor in your overarching business and marketing strategy.
Luckily, the insurance industry boasts impressive customer retention rates, with the average agency maintaining an 84% retention rate. But don’t let this number fool you, retention rates like this don’t happen without any effort. Let’s go over how you can increase customer retention with customer engagement, exceptional service, and online marketing for insurance agents.
1. Keep Customers Engaged
By maintaining regular communication with your customers, you can let them know that you have their best interests in mind. This strategy should begin during onboarding and continue throughout the lifecycle of the customer.
Develop protocols that include multiple touchpoints triggered by events such as a policy change or renewals, birthdays, or holidays. This could be through email, a phone call, or traditional mail depending on the event. To add a personal touch, you may want to note each particular customer’s preferred method of communication during the onboarding process.
Customer engagement can also be accomplished through online marketing for insurance agents. This can be done through multiple avenues, such as sending out regular newsletters, responding to reviews online, and interacting via social media.
2. Go Above and Beyond
Customer service should be a cornerstone in every insurance office. Think of your customers like your business’s lifeforce, because without them you simply couldn’t go on! Studies have reported that 30% of consumers say they’ll consider switching to a new company after just a single instance of poor customer service. With so many competitors in the market, it’s essential you train your team in customer service habits and create a friendly atmosphere at your office.
3. Sell Additional Policies
If customers hold more than one policy with your agency, they’re less likely to abandon ship. Makes sense—why divvy up insurance policies when they can trust the same agency for multiple products? Try upselling at various stages throughout the sales process to maximize the value of each customer.
- Advertise multiple policies – Include bundles in your marketing rhetoric to show potential customers how they can simplify their insurance plans and save money.
- Nurture new leads – When you have a new lead on the line, provide them with additional policy information to show value in your products.
- Cross-market to existing customers – Identify gaps in policies to determine which customers can benefit from additional policies. Reach out to these customers via email or phone to offer them more information.
Customer Retention and Online Marketing for Insurance Agents
Customer retention and online marketing are not mutually exclusive strategies. When developing your customer retention strategy, explore how online marketing can streamline your efforts. For example, enlisting in reputation management services can help you better engage existing customers while cutting down on the time and resources you spend browsing reviews.
Have more questions about online marketing for insurance agents like you? Reach out to Melon Local to learn how our services take the guesswork out of your marketing strategy.