Any self-help guru will tell you that communication is the key to a healthy and vibrant relationship. You’ve heard this over and over about your personal life, but the same principle holds true for client relationships. To build a bond of loyalty and trust with your prospects and clients, you need to stay top-of-mind through consistently positive interactions. One of the most effective ways to do this is through a newsletter campaign.
A client newsletter is a marketing tool that’s especially well-suited for the insurance industry because there is no shortage of topics you can educate and inform your clients and prospects about. A well-crafted newsletter will meet the following goals:
• Keep you in front of your clients and prospects in a regular, nonintrusive manner.
• Provide timely, relevant information to your contacts.
• Promote your brand image as a reliable professional who is interested in client needs.
• Educate your prospects and clients about the insurance products available to protect them against various risks.
It’s not all about you
A newsletter garners the highest return on investment when the content addresses the specific needs and situations of your individual clients. To better target their clients, some firms develop targeted versions of their client newsletter. Versioned newsletters might cover employee benefits, senior markets, commercial lines, personal lines, and financial planning. Whether you create one version of your newsletter or five, the same rule applies: Always keep your client demographic in the forefront when developing newsletter content. When your contacts receive interesting and useful educational materials, you build their confidence in your firm as an entity that is qualified to meet their needs. That is exactly the impression you want to make in order to garner loyal clients.
The mistake you don’t want to make is to include mostly self-promotional articles. A newsletter should not be a multipage advertisement. To hold your contacts’ interest, make sure the articles are information-packed and relevant. A small section about new developments at your agency can help build an understanding of your business, but it should not be the focus of the newsletter.
Delivery system
Because more than 147 million Americans use email technology daily, e-newsletters are gaining in popularity. An e-newsletter can offer the added benefits of significantly decreased production costs, more efficient con-tact list management, and real time reporting of “bounce-backs,” returned emails, open rates (to see who is reading your newsletter), and link-throughs (to track specific components). By monitoring your email campaign closely, you can make informed decisions about how to refine your newsletter over time to best serve your audience.
Choosing the optimal newsletter format for your needs depends on many factors, including your technological capabilities, budget, timeline, and what you know about your target market’s access to and comfort with email. Keep in mind that some people still prefer to receive hardcopy newsletters.
The preferred method of delivery among insurance and financial service clients who participated in a recent Standard & Poor’s survey was actually both formats. Four in 10 (41 percent) respondents prefer to receive both a print and email version. If you already issue a print newsletter, it is relatively easy to post an electronic version on your Web site.
Regardless of whether you choose to create a print or electronic newsletter — or both — make sure that your newsletter’s design is professional and interesting enough to encourage the reader to keep reading.
You also need to devise a production schedule that meets both your capabilities and your clients’ needs. Be careful not to barrage your contact list with excessively frequent communications. At the other end of the spectrum, however, your newsletter will not achieve its goals if the production schedule is inconsistent or infrequent. The primary goal of your newsletter campaign is to develop a relationship. You want your clients to come to expect, appreciate, and depend on your newsletter.
John Geddie is president of Foresight Publishing, a fast-growing company offering content-driven newsletter and marketing services specifically for the insurance industry. He can be reached at 866-850-7526, ext. 901 or via email at john@insurancenewsletters.com.