Image source: Agency Revolution

Guest blog by Adrian Jans, Agency Revolution

Guest blogs are written by contributors outside of HawkSoft. The author's views are entirely their own and may not reflect the views of HawkSoft.

This article at a glance:

• What is marketing automation? 
• What can my agency automate?
  • The claims process
  • Overdue payments
  • Prospect nurturing

What is marketing automation?

While email marketing tools can help you send emails and track metrics, a good marketing automation system enables you to set up and automatically send (or automate) communications for common occurrences at your agency—such as welcome letters, renewals, account updates, and more—when triggered by key events or a set schedule. This saves your agency team members countless hours of manual labor on repeat tasks and allows you to engage your clients more consistently, at a greater scale than was possible before. 

Your agency management system might already include some marketing automation features, such as batch email or correspondence templates, but integrating it with a marketing automation platform like Agency Revolution can take your automation efforts to the next level. The robust marketing features of an automation platform let you create sequences of emails, text messages, and even physical postcards, all while using the rich client data in your management system to trigger them to send at the ideal time.

This technology makes it possible for you to reach out to more clients in a meaningful way than would be possible otherwise. You can use it to give every new client the onboarding experience they deserve without overburdening your staff, round accounts at scale for clients with gaps in their coverage, or just make sure your team is aware of the important events in your clients' lives, such as renewals, birthdays, or anniversaries so they can reach out with a personal touch or schedule a postcard. In the world of marketing, personalization is the lifeblood of meaningful communications.

What can my agency automate?

We’d like to share three clever but simple uses of automation from a Case Study we recently did with HawkSoft user and Agency Revolution client Jamie Trovato, Principal of Trovato Associates.

Jamie has been using intelligent automated marketing platform Fuse™ alongside the HawkSoft agency management system for nearly two years. This has helped revolutionize how he runs his agency. "Marketing automation changes your whole mindset about how to run your agency," he says. "I can make things way more efficient on so many levels. From how we take payments to how we follow up with clients. It has shown me a different way to do things, and can change your philosophy on how you run your agency."

We'll take a look at three ways Trovato Associates has implemented automation and the benefits the agency has seen from them. 

1. The claims process

One of the ways Trovato Associates has used automation is to streamline the claims process. Jamie gave us an example of how they use it for new glass claims. Once the type of claim is selected in HawkSoft, a series of emails and text messages automatically goes out to both the client as well as the glass company. The glass company then receives information on the type of claim that was filed and relevant details they’ll need to proceed.

Meanwhile, the customer will receive messages with instructions on how to move forward, including links to helpful articles and videos. After five days the client will receive a text message and an email following up on how the claims process is going, providing more helpful content and letting them know who to reach out to if they need assistance. The customer receives the attention they deserve while ensuring the claims process is moved forward smoothly, all without any effort from the team. 

Jamie says this saves his team about four to five hours of work every month on glass claims alone. Now imagine having this kind of process triggering automatically for every type of claim you service. How much work would that take off your team’s shoulders? Imagine the peace of mind from knowing your clients are getting the attention they deserve while your team is enabled to focus on other meaningful ways to support and grow your agency. 

2. Overdue payments

Another great way we’ve seen Trovato Associates use automation is in handling clients who are past due on their payments. How great would it be if your team didn’t have to manually follow up with every one of these clients? Or just make sure they are aware and have an easy way to pay from anywhere? Jamie’s agency uses automation to send a text message and email alerting clients that their bill is past due, providing relevant links to mobile friendly sources so clients can pay their bill or cancel from their phone or desktop computer with ease. 

Add up all the time your staff spends on calls like this—or following up with claims, or onboarding new clients, or reaching out to lost clients, or any number of other standard activities. When you take all these rote tasks off the shoulders of your team, you allow them to focus on ways to grow and support your agency instead of simply keeping it running. You give all your clients a more consistent and engaging experience without having to hire new team members. 

3. Prospect nurturing

Perhaps the most radical change Jamie made to his agency came after two of his producers moved on to new opportunities. Instead of hiring new producers right away, Jamie decided to test a new idea; he built an email nurturing sequence for prospects with marketing automation, and ran new lists and leads that came in from his website through this campaign. This guides the leads through his marketing funnel, leaving his team to focus on processing new policies and addressing requests from the prospects. The experiment was a success, saving Trovato Associates more than $100,000 in annual staffing costs. 

The power of automation

What we’ve highlighted here is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how marketing automation can utilize your agency management system to grow your insurance agency. Take a look at the full Case Study about Trovato Associates to see how else they’re using automation to grow their agency, and start thinking of processes at your own agency that could use automation to reduce burden on your staff and run more consistently. Saving time doesn’t have to come at the expense of customer experience—with a marketing automation platform powered by your agency management system, you can have your cake and eat it too.