Summary of Success
Business of Insurance Podcast
Episode 72 - If you’ve been listening to the last few episodes, we’ve been breaking down the steps you need to consider before starting a business. The concepts shared in these episodes are the foundation of building a successful business, no matter what kind. Bottom line in business is You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know You see, too many people jump into starting a business without doing any planning. Then they wonder why they aren’t finding success, as if business should just fall from the sky! For some people even if they don’t plan, they might get lucky but the majority of...
info_outline
Business Pre Planning Part 2
Business of Insurance Podcast
EP -71 If you haven't listened to episodes 65-71, they set the stage for this final episode on things to think about when starting your own insurance business. Regardless if you are starting an agency, an insurance company or a related business to the insurance industry like technology, claims or risk management, the concepts of starting a business are the same. These are discussed in these episodes and can help with your thought processes and planning. Pre-planning, part 2 provides ideas to implement 6-12 months before you are ready to open your doors. If you don't have a year to plan...
info_outline
Business Pre Planning Part 1
Business of Insurance Podcast
EP - 70 This episode provides additional insight into starting your own business in the insurance industry. We'll cover ideas to help you map out the process over the course of several months so you don’t have to do everything at one time. We'll talk about tasks that can be broken down over 12 months or done in 30 days if you don't have much time. Month 1 -2 Define your ideas - what area are you going into? Agency, carrier, claims, Life, health, will you just do something like work comp, airlines or medicare? Maybe you are thinking technology in the form of a CRM for insurance, maybe...
info_outline
Who Should Be On Your Team
Business of Insurance Podcast
EP 69 - We get training for being an insurance agent but we don’t get training for being a business owner. They are two completely different hats. If you want to succeed in Business you need to have a team. I was recently listening to another podcast with an angel investor and she said the first thing she looks for is who is on the team and what is their experience. You need a team. It’s nice to think you can do everything yourself, but something will be lacking if you don’t bring on help. So here’s what your team should look like. Accountant Consult with an accountant for...
info_outline
Understanding The Business Owner Mindset
Business of Insurance Podcast
Today’s episode is one of several episodes about how to get started in the insurance business. I’m not talking about becoming an agent, I’m talking to those of you that are thinking about starting an agency, an insurance company, or an an insuretech business. There’s a lot more to hanging a shingle that says you are open. As part of the planning process for starting a business there are some concepts to consider, these are about yourself. As exciting as it is to start a business, there’s a lot to consider. It’s not all glamor and glory! Most business owners would agree it’s a lot...
info_outline
How To Start A Business Without Failing
Business of Insurance Podcast
WHY DO BUSINESSES FAIL? EP 66 - In this episode, we are talking about the top 10 reaosns businesses fail and what you can do to keep your business from failing. This episode is one of several episodes about how to get started in the insurance business. I’m not talking about becoming an agent, I’m talking to those of you that are thinking about starting an agency, an insurance company, or an an insuretech business. These are real issues to consider. It’s geared for those of you who are thinking about getting started or those that have started and are looking for ideas to build a better...
info_outline
Don't Be Fooled By Entity Structures
Business of Insurance Podcast
SET UP YOUR BUSINESS PROPERLY EP 65 - Today’s episode is one of several episodes about how to get started in business. Some of you might be working for someone now and thinking about going off on your own and some of you might just be entering the industry and doing so as an independent. If you are in either of these two categories or if you are someone that works with agents that are working independently, this episode is for you. I started in this industry on the property and casualty side and quickly moved into commercial insurance when I started. Working with my dad, his personal...
info_outline
Risk Management Basics
Business of Insurance Podcast
SMALL THINGS MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE EP 64 - Todays episode was inspired by a recent CE class on Ethics. There were many great ideas shared, in a boring ethics class, but the tips I'm sharing today were from the discussion. There was actually a list of 50 risk management tips and I've taken 10 of them and offered my thoughts on them from my own experience in the industry. States didn't always require ethics, it's only been a requirement for about 20 years. When I first entered the busines we didn’t have to take ethics. It’s a good refresher but it can also be boring! I’ve...
info_outline
Making An Impact
Business of Insurance Podcast
THERE IS MORE TO THIS INDUSTRY THAN MAKING MONEY EP 63 - Like teachers, social workers and doctors and nurses, you have the power to make a difference. This episode provides three examples of how people have benefited from having a solid insurance policy and an agent that will works for them. It also talks about a few situations where agents need to do a little more to protect the people they serve. CHECK OUT OUR SPONSOR: This is a mailing service I’ve been using for over a year now and I love them. I send all of my birthday cards, thank you cards and marketing post cards from this...
info_outline
Continuing Education Thoughts
Business of Insurance Podcast
STAYING FOCUSED ON A MONITOR FOR 8 HOURS EP 62 - This episode is about getting CE credits As a CIC, we are required to do annual updates and the classes are usually a deep dive into a topic that you won’t find elsewhere. I’ve done updates every year since 1992. In 2012 I did an update and received a certificate that I had been a CIC for 20 years. To my surprise that meant that I only had to do my CIC update every other year now, instead of every year. This created CE issues for me because I need 24 hours of CE’s a year in my state and since the CIC updates are only 16 hours, I’ve...
info_outlineEP 51 - PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER
If this is your first joining us, welcome. If you are interested in marketing and specifically email marketing, I encourage you to check out episodes 45-now where we’ve talked about creating a marketing foundation, segmenting your list, metrics creating content and today we are going to talk about email campaigns.
I’ve used the term email campaigns in several episodes and said I'd would explain it…..so here’s the explanation.
Each time you create an email to send to your list, think of it as a campaign. I’m not talking about an individual email you would send, but one that you are sending to your entire list. One that you are creating for marketing purposes.
Think of it in terms of “what do you want to get from the email campaign”. What kind of action do you want people to take? What is the result you want to see?
An email campaign is pushing content to someone to pull a response from them.
One of the concepts mentioned in this series is that content is king. John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing actually says content is AIR. Your company can’t breathe today if it isn’t creating content. Whether it be articles, ads, video, audio, graphics...it’s all about content.
So when it comes to email marketing, you are pushing that content to your list, to your audience and to new prospects. You want them to take action on the content that you are creating.
In addition, and this is more of a website tip than an email tip, but you want to drive people to your website as much as possible. There’s so many reasons for this but in a nutshell, the more people you can get to your website, the more likely you are to get new business.
So when we think of content for your email campaigns, also think about creating the content on your website and pushing it out by linking it in your email campaign. Use your email campaign to drive traffic to your website!
Let me go back to the hot chocolate example I gave in episode 50 for creating content. What if you wrote an article about the best recipes of hot chocolate. In your email campaign, you talk about one of the recipes then link to the article that is published on your website for the rest.
Are you thinking “but that’s not insurance related, why would I put that on my website?”
That’s ok…...you are human, most of us drink hot chocolate or make it for our kids, so why not drive traffic to your website with hot chocolate information and maybe they’ll stick around and get a quote while they are there!
Your email campaign is pushing content - hot chocolate recipes and your response is getting them to click the link on the email campaign so they go to your website and get additional recipes. While they are on your website, they learn more about you and you have more opportunities to connect with them on other digital platforms. (this is tied to retargeting, FB pixels, google analytics and a few other areas which again, is not the subject of this podcast episode series.)
This isn’t an episode about websites, but creating content for your email campaign. I just think it’s important for you to understand that creating content for your website is huge.
Driving traffic to your website and having a website that you own is essential, I have not done that at this time for the business of insurance. I don’t want to come across as a hypocrite, telling you to do one thing and doing something different myself, but my decision is intentional. If you go back to the original intent of this podcast, it’s to talk about why working in the insurance industry is such a great career path. I’m not selling anything so I’m not worried about how many people visit my website. I’m not sending out any email campaigns so it’s not essential to me ….at least for right now. Things could always change
I’m saying this because if you look at the website for the business of insurance podcast, it’s very basic, very simple. It’s actually created by my podcast host, Libsyn. However, I do script out each episode and have some links in each episode for SEO purposes. These are all things you want to be doing on your website and with each piece of content that you create as well.
If I wanted to send out an email campaign and drive traffic to my website, I could easily do that because each episode has it’s own url and it is easily sharable. If I want to take an episode url and share it in an email campaign, it’s easy to do.
That’s important for the content that you create for your email campaigns.
So an email campaign is a little more than sending an email newsletter. It’s a marketing tool that has a goal and a system for measuring your results with a lot of moving parts in the middle.
Hopefully you find that explanation helpful.
Other ideas for creating your email campaign.
- Create a card or announcement
-
- Promote a celebration or a milestone
- Automated birthday emails - I’ll talk more about this in episode 52 but this is a great use of automation and emails
- Press release
- Invitation to an event or webinar
- Special offers and deals
- Surveys and polls
- Business letter
- Newsletter just information - so long as it is valuable
- Drive traffic to your website
- Share on social media
What should your email look like
- Most importantly, it needs to follow your brand - same colors, fonts (if possible) and graphics that reflect your brand.
- Less is more -
-
- Don’t put everything into one email campaign. You’ll lose people from overwhelm. Remember the KISS principle. It works well for email campaigns also
- This is where you have to be a creative writer - or hire someone who is. Use phrases to get people’s attention so they will read what you are sending but you don’t want to be spammy or salesy.
- Mobile Friendly
- Keep your call to action above the scroll line
- Graphics are good but they need to be relevant
-
- They need to be the right size
- You want to make sure you own the pictures and avoid copyright issues
- They should be in line with your brand.
- You can use Canva to make your own graphics, you can purchase them from Canva and other online sites - I’ll link to the website so you know you are going to the right website.
-
- Watch for app sumo for deals for buying lifetime subscriptions photo companies
- Make your graphics clickable
-
- Link to website
- Social media
- Something that allows you measure
- Make sure you use text labels in case images aren't displayed by the recipients email program.
- Be sure to test images on different devices (phones, laptops, tablets)
- Recognized sender - Who will be in the ‘from’ line
-
- Producers
- Owner
- Marketing
- Sales
- Just the agency
- Compelling subject line
-
- Create your subject line after your email campaign is complete. As I mentioned earlier, a good writer will know how to do this.
- Take advantage of the pre-header text - it’s another opportunity to capture attention
- 2 seconds using 2 works to get people to take action today
- When to send
-
- Track in your metrics -
- Use common sense.
-
- As your list grows you might need to do this again to see if anything changes
Those are the major points you want to think about once your campaign is created.
In this series, The Power of the Inbox, we’ve covered a lot. We’ll be publishing 2 more episodes in this series, one about growing your list and the other about automation. Both topics are a little more advanced.
Up to this point, you’ve been given a lot of information to get your emails created.
Have you started?
Share what you are creating. Join the Business of Insurance FB group and lets’ talk.
If you like what we are creating in this episode and other episodes, please go to apple podcasts and leave a review.
Until next time, keep creating opportunities.
SHOW THE LOVE
If you haven’t done so already, please like or subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player. We are on all of the platforms including spotify, IheartRadio and Apple podcasts.
If you are listening to this podcast online and don’t know how to listen to podcasts on your phone, reach out to our host, Debbie DeChambeau and she'll help you.
CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL
ABOUT THE HOST
This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneurer, business advisor, insurance professional and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.
Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.
She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces three other podcasts, Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.