As an independent insurance agent, you know that communicating with policyholders is crucial. But the fact is customer expectations and preferences have changed. If you’re relying solely on insurance email marketing to reach and service your customers, you’re missing out on a major opportunity to enhance the customer relationship and overall experience. Worse, you’re holding your agency back from growth.

In this digital age, you need a great mobile app to complement your email marketing efforts.

The Role of Insurance Email Marketing vs. Mobile Apps

What you may not realize is that insurance email marketing and mobile apps each play a unique role in communicating with and servicing your customers. It’s about using the right method at the right time and for the right purpose. When you understand that, you can see the value of leveraging them both – together.  

How to Use Insurance Email Marketing

• To welcome new customers to your agency
• To get feedback from policyholders
• To provide high-quality content
• To share industry news and agency changes
• To introduce other types of coverage

Ultimately, email is used to educate and inform your customers. And that’s great! However, it doesn’t always deliver when it comes to engagement. Fortunately, that’s where a self-service mobile app fills the gap…

How to Use a Self-Service Mobile App

• To send disaster plan awareness notifications
• To facilitate customer bill pay with ease
• To streamline the claim filing process
• To simplify inventory management
• To ensure access to basic policy details & ID cards in one place

When it comes down to it, a mobile app provides access to service anytime, anywhere. It empowers customers by giving them greater control, which increases engagement. Plus, it allows you to establish valuable real estate on their smartphone.

Common Misconceptions About Insurance Email Marketing and Mobile Apps

1. Emailing Clients Is Enough

Like many agents, chances are you’ve adopted insurance email marketing as your primary way of staying in touch, recommending new coverage, and addressing insurance questions. Although email should be part of your overall strategy, it shouldn’t be the only method you use. The reality is email alone isn’t enough to reach policyholders.

Here’s why…

• Insurance email marketing plays a specific role, as mentioned above.
• Consumer communication preferences shift depending on the situation.
• Average email open rates are 20%, meaning 80% of your customers aren’t hearing from you.

That last point should really stick out, as you may not be aware of just how many customers aren’t even seeing the emails you send.

The good news is that when you combine email marketing to educate and inform with a mobile app that allows for self-service, you cover all your bases. You don’t limit your agency or force customers to engage with you on your terms. Instead, you ensure your agency is interacting with customers at all possible points of contact.  

2. Self-Service Mobile Apps Damage the Advisor–Policyholder Relationship

Many agents are under the impression that mobile apps damage the advisor–policyholder relationship. In fact, they think apps make agents obsolete. That’s why they stick to insurance email marketing and avoid adopting a mobile strategy.

If this is true in your case, get ready to shift your mindset… Providing policyholders with a mobile app doesn’t render the agent useless – it does the opposite.

Here are some of the ways a great mobile app improves the advisor–policyholder relationship:

• It reinforces your role as the insurance expert.
• It gives customers multiple options to engage with you.
• It allows you to provide more personalized communication.
• It confirms the ease of doing business with you.
• It ensures your agency stays front and center.
• It makes you part of every touchpoint a client has with their insurance.

With a self-service mobile app, you can deliver a better customer experience overall by giving policyholders what they want, when they want it. As a result, they’ll appreciate your agency and offerings even more. Further, they’ll be more likely to stick with your agency for the long haul because their needs are being met.  

3. Small Agencies Don’t Need a Mobile App

This is one of the biggest misconceptions among independent insurance agents today. And yet, many with small agencies assume they don’t need it because of their size. Others believe because they always answer the phone, a mobile app just isn’t necessary.

Sound familiar?

The truth is it isn’t about what the agency thinks; it’s about what the customer wants. Regardless of whether an agency is big or small, policyholders need help after hours/on the weekends or simply don’t want to talk to you every time they need something.

This misconception keeps small agencies from growing and reaching their full potential. No matter the size of your agency, geographical area, or customer base, providing policyholders with a mobile app only benefits you in the long run. After all, the use of mobile apps is essential to your customers’ daily lives. They use apps for the following:

• Banking
• Shopping
• Traveling

The smartphone is the focal point for all these things. That’s why it’s important to add insurance to the list. In fact, the ease and convenience offered by your mobile app, supplemented by the insurance email marketing you do, will ensure you remain your customers’ go-to for all things insurance.  

Moving Forward with Insurance Email Marketing and Your Own Mobile App

Once you decide to deploy your own agency-branded mobile app, you can then use insurance email marketing to promote it – leveraging one method to encourage the adoption of another! In doing so, you can use cross-communication to your advantage. This increases the likelihood of more customers taking advantage of your new app.

Just send out emails to your customers about what features the app includes, when it will be available, and how to download it on their mobile devices. Be sure to highlight how convenient it is and what they stand to gain by using the app for self-service. The key is to provide information and value in your emails when promoting the app.

Takeaway

Relying on insurance email marketing to communicate with and service your customers will only hold you back. Emails educate and inform, but a mobile app provides access to service anytime, anywhere. That’s why you need both to reach your policyholders.

If you haven’t already deployed an agency-branded, self-service mobile app for your customers, now is the time to do it. And Insurance Agent App can help. To learn more, schedule a demo today.

For more information read our relevant blogs here: https://insuranceagentapp.com/tech-mastery-2024-unleashing-the-power-of-a-blended-tech-stack-for-your-agency/

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