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Customer Relationship Management Tools for Insurance Agents

While the insurance business is generally a traditional industry driven by referrals, more Millennials are investing their money and are demanding a technology-driven approach. As such, the insurance industry is adapting online trends like sales and marketing automation and Customer Relationship Management software (CRM) to get a leg up on their competition and to better serve their clients.

Adopting an online approach to growing your insurance business opens a world of possibilities for your company. We’ll explore some ways you can accomplish the task using Small Business Dream.

First, here’s why you should consider using Small Business Dream as your companion in the insurance business.

Ease of use. Small Business Dream focuses on crucial areas in business such as customer acquisition, customer communication, customer feedback, and customer education. It offers a simple, user-friendly interface and avoids unnecessary clutter.
Small Business Dream enables you to devise your own strategies with as many combinations and customizations as your creativity would allow. It offers a wide selection of themes, landing page templates and email autoresponders which can be customized to fit any kind of business.
Cost-effectiveness. Small Business Dream increases your profit margins by minimizing the overhead cost of acquiring new clients with cutting-edge technology in sales and marketing automation.

Online Customer Acquisition

Our long-held notion of a typical old-fashioned insurance agent is quickly being replaced by tech-savvy mobile users capable of reaching hundreds of potential clients from any place around the world with a mobile app like CRM. It’s not surprising why so many traditional insurance companies are also scrambling to learn CRM just to keep up with the competition.

With Small Business Dream’s Sales Funnel Setup, you can easily set up your first landing page about your insurance company for just an hour or two, or customize our generic sales funnel pages with your chosen theme and start creating traffic through social media, customer referrals, or sales funnel card. The system works whether you have a company owned website or want to have a micro-site right off the bat.

Opt-in Survey Form

Segmenting your leads and contacts from the outset can save you a lot of time sifting out your ideal prospects. Typically, insurance agents will have to qualify their leads based on the following information:

Personal information (name, sex, date of birth, email address)
Health information (height, weight, lifestyle habits, pre-existing condition)
Employment status (type of work, employer, length of service)
Financial information (income, net worth)

However, for our CRM, you might have to skip some of those during the initial opt-in survey and get to them later on after showing more interest. Instead, we’ll be focusing only on the basic information such as name, email address, sex, age, and the type of insurance they’re interested in. This might slightly be different from one type of insurance to another.

If your insurance company offers life insurance, your opt-in survey form may ask for additional information about the specific type of life insurance they’re interested in (term, universal, or whole life), and have them subscribed to a specific email series based on which option they’ve checked off. This method can be used in other types of insurances as well.

The idea is to have your prospects spend as little time as possible on your opt-in survey form and get just the right amount of information for your email autoresponder to work with. Eventually, you’ll be able to get to them via phone, sms, or email after showing up on your Action List. You’ll have a much better experience qualifying your leads using this method than having it done manually by yourself.

Upselling to Your Existing Clients

Insurance upgrades can help increase your income by as much as 30% or higher depending on the number of clients who opted for a policy upgrade. You need a follow-up tool like a CRM to update their knowledge about additional coverage offered by the insurance company through policy upgrades.

Again, Small Business Dream’s survey builder will come in handy. Depending on user response, you can switch them over to an email series about the advantages of increasing their coverage and specific situations where they are considered vital, as is usually the case with health insurance and long-term disability.

You can also upsell to your qualified prospects prior to the sale by showing some of the benefits of whole life over term insurance, or you may follow up on them from time to time for policy upgrades after showing some interest on it.

Offer Solutions through Customer Education

You can help your future clients save money on their monthly premiums by sharing some useful information such as avoiding risky behavior or by maintaining a good level of fitness prior to the insurance exam. You can also educate your prospects and existing clients about the pros and cons of choosing one type of insurance over the other and why people need to have coverage. One way of doing it is through your email autoresponder or through your company website or blog.

Conclusion

There are plenty of ways CRM can increase your productivity as an insurance agent. You’ll be able to come with more creative ways and develop new techniques as you gain more experience in the insurance business and with Small Business Dream CRM, or you can reach them on how you can use the system for your industry better.

Learn more on how you can successfully build your business through sales and marketing automation. Visit SmallBizDream.com and start using our suite of tools to increase your sales and profitability like never before.

5 Steps to Creating Your First Landing Page

Spending a ton of money on expensive ads is pretty much a thing of the past. Nowadays, you can setup your own landing page and have as much reach or even greater. One of the quickest ways in acquiring new customers in the digital era is by having a landing page for your business.

Getting to Know Some Basics

Traditional businesses find it much easier to build an online presence, thanks to vastly improved site creation tools designed specifically for people with little or no experience working with websites. Clickfunnels and Leadpages are some examples of DIY landing page builders for beginners, but some CRMs also have this feature as one of their customer acquisition tools.

These days, you don’t have to learn HTML and CSS since most landing page builders contain visual elements aside from the usual code. However, learning some basics allows you to make fine adjustments and have greater control on your landing page’s look and feel. There are basically two stages:

Laying the basic structure and content of your landing page using HTML (hypertext markup language)
Designing and applying styles using CSS (cascading stylesheets)

Using a landing page builder, you can simply choose a template or theme to work on and give it your own personal touch (changing the background colour, image, fonts, links, etc). Small Business Dream CRM allows you to use both methods for your landing page, sales funnel, and survey form. This, combined with a database management system and autoresponder makes Small Business Dream CRM a powerful tool for both old school and tech-savvy business owners.

Building Your First Landing Page with Small Business Dream CRM

Landing pages are some of the client acquisition tools you can use along with Small Business Dream’s survey forms, sales funnel, and card scan function. You may start with a simple landing page as your opt-in page and slowly build your email marketing strategy with Small Business Dream’s mailing list, email series, and autoresponder.

Step 1:

Sign up for a CRM Account. Small Business Dream has plenty of options for business owners, sales and marketing teams looking to gain a firsthand experience using the CRM. Upon subscription, you’ll be receiving updates which will guide you through the whole process and introduce you to the CRM’s main features and different functionalities including page and sales funnel creation.

Step 2:

Pick a landing page template. Small Business Dream has plenty of templates to choose from including restaurant, hair salon, facial care, auto repair – pretty much any kind of business. If you can’t find a match, you may choose any template and customize it by yourself (DIY), or you can avail of Small Business Dream’s Done for You (DFY) packages and have it set up for you (just provide your landing page’s ‘look and feel’ to facilitate the process).

Step 3:

Apply customization and styling effects. Start by putting your logo, images, and texts to your template. You can use your own images or get them free from Pexels or Pixabay. Match the aspect ratio of the target image to the page. Editing texts is pretty much like using a word processor on the page editor. You can then edit the links in your CTAs (call to action) by double clicking on the CTA button and inserting the URL or permalink to your sales funnel, survey, opt-in confirmation, or any other page you’ve made on the CRM. You can also change the background image for templates that utilize scrolling parallax effect (faux 3D) using the CSS editor; insert a video, modify background colour, or implement dynamic styling effects during mouse hover, etc.

Step 4:

Test your landing page. Small Business Dream’s templates are responsive both on PC and mobile. Modifying the templates on the surface level won’t have any effect on those. However, if you choose to move things around with the CSS editor, (float, aside, etc.) it’s good practice to check on the PC and mobile browsers if they’re positioned correctly. Also, test the CTA buttons if they lead to your assigned page URL.

Step 5:

Promote your landing page. You can start acquiring new leads with your landing page and watch your Action List fill with new contacts from time to time. Create more traffic to your landing page by using social media and encourage your friends and followers to share it with others (shorten your landing page’s URL using Small Business Dream’s Shorten URL feature to make it easier to remember). You may also try promoting your landing page through Facebook Ads for a limited time or have two versions (split tests) running at the same time – the possibilities are endless.

Final Thoughts

Spending some time working on your landing page pays dividends for your small business and really allow you to target niche markets. You only have around 8 seconds to make a good impression so you need to have good graphics and good copy on your landing page to make each second count. Make some improvements from time to time. See what works and update your knowledge on how to better use landing pages or have Small Business Dream assist you in reaching your goals.

Creating an Email Strategy for Your Small Business

We’re all familiar with email marketing. It’s how we get our coupons, discounts, and newsletters from businesses all over the internet. Many of these emails are considered spam. So how do small companies without a big marketing budget do email marketing correctly to engage their audience and drive more people to their websites or into their stores?

We’ll answer the question with a proven strategy using sales and marketing automation. Here’s why you should consider creating an email strategy for your small business:

Half of the world’s population are email users. Estimates show around 3.8 billion email users by the end of 2018. Gmail users alone account for 1 billion email accounts, 75% of whom access them through their mobile devices. In fact, every mobile user has at least one email account for signing up on Google Play or accessing their social media account through Facebook Mobile or Twitter. One in two of your potential clients and customers are email users (give or take, depending on where you live), and by being able to connect with them, you could potentially increase your income by as much as 50%.

Stay on top of user engagement. Besides email, the internet has plenty of other platforms for connecting with other people around the world. But despite the popularity of social media, email still ranks as the best and the most preferred method of communication, particularly on anything business-related. One of the key advantages of having an email list is that, unlike Facebook or Twitter, you have more control over how your message is delivered to your target audience. You could spend hours creating great content for them, but it could quickly vanish from Facebook newsfeed or buried underneath by dozens of other posts within minutes.

Automate routine tasks more easily. Small business owners don’t have much time on their hands responding to every email. Fact is, they don’t have to. Some of the best sales and marketing automation have mailing lists, email templates, and auto-responders taking care of most of the work so they can focus more on things that matter. It might take some work initially getting more acquainted with the ins and outs and creating an email strategy. As you gain more experience, you’ll be spending less time with it, and begin to reap the benefits of using this sales and marketing feature for your small business.

Steps in Building your Email List Using Sales and Marketing Automation

Step 1:

Choose a sales and marketing automtion software with an auto-responder feature. If you’re just starting out with email marketing, you don’t need an expensive CRM like Salesforce, Hupspot, or NetSuite. There are plenty of options for business owners from email subscription service and lead-generation software. Small Business Dream offers service packages for small businesses who want to accelerate growth using this feature. Just remember to stay within the bounds on the proper use of this tool.

Step 2:

Set up an opt-in page or survey form. You can start with a very simple and straightforward landing page or survey form and add your bells and whistles as you get better. Small Business Dream can help you set up your first landing page and survey form. Share the link through your Facebook Page, WordPress, or your company website. Or you can have it the old way and add the contact yourself (be sure to get their email addresses). Another method is to put QR codes in conspicuous places to get your walk-in prospects and customers to your landing page or online survey. Offer freebies or discounts for taking the time.

Step 3:

Wait for confirmation from your subscribers. Double opt-ins is the preferred method of choice for email subscriptions because it accomplishes two things at once. First, it filters out low-quality leads, and second, it helps verify real users. This might seem tedious compared to single opt-ins, but you’ll have better chances of making more conversions over the long haul for getting high-quality leads. It consists of a few lines asking your recipients to confirm they’ve opted in to your mailing list by clicking a link, etc., hence a “double” opt-in.

Step 4:

Segment your prospects and customers. You may start with just a few categories at first. Later, you can add more details to your customer data to make it more granular. Small Business Dream allows you to segment your prospects and customers from your initial survey. For instance, you can include a list of brands, companies, or products on the survey form and Small Business Dream will categorize each contact based on which box your visitors have checked. The same applies for setting priority to every customer. You can update their category by giving out surveys periodically in order to stay relevant to them.

Step 5:

Create a simple email follow-up series. Take some time reading through the templates to see how each customer engagement progress seamlessly to the next, and so on. It usually takes some practice and experimenting to make sure it won’t sound robotic. As much as possible, we want to avoid the impression that they’re dealing with a robot secretary instead of a real person, by a adding a human touch to every conversation.

Conclusion

Having a mailing list for your small business is more of a necessity these days, now that our target audience is moving towards mobile. Take some time learning the ropes and start making your own email strategy.

5 Reasons Why You Should Learn CRM Now

Running a successful business takes more than just hard work. A lot of times, it’s more about being smart, critical thinking, and minimizing work through sales and marketing automation and Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

Many small businesses are still missing out on this remarkable tool which would have saved them time and money, reduced stress, and helped grow their business like never before. However, it’s never too late learning about CRMs. We have a system that can help small business owners and salespersons become a CRM virtuoso with practice and a little bit of creativity.

Here are five reasons why you should learn CRM now.

Use Time More Productively

You’ve probably heard about the 80/20 rule with regard to time management and productivity. Put simply, 80 percent of outputs comes from 20 percent of our tasks, while the other 20 percent comes from 80 percent of tasks.

Small business owners often put too much time and energy on things which can easily be done through automation like customer acquisition, and maintaining customer loyalty. Time lost is money lost, so we want to focus more on strategy and developing skill sets such as dealing with prospects and customers – also known as ‘soft skills’ – and be able to automate most of our routine tasks.

Small Business Dream CRM works on the same principle by allowing the system to do most of the heavy lifting so that by the time it gets to you, all it takes is a simple follow-up call, email, or SMS. In other words, we’re working smarter, not harder. Additionally, Small Business Dream keeps your customers in the loop through automated email follow-up series, newsletters, and surveys.

Use Technology to Outpace the Competition

Technology has levelled the playing field for many of our small businesses. We’ve seen this many times with brick and mortar stores, local shops and restaurants growing massively through the internet and social media. It’s incredibly hard to compete with stores like Walmart, Amazon, McDonalds and General Electric, however when it comes to reaching your target audience, no matter if you’re big or small, we all have the same access.

Today, it only takes a simple tool like sales and marketing automation to do certain tasks which would otherwise be more involved and time-consuming. Small Business Dream CRM combines marketing automation with a simple, user-friendly interface to help business owners build their own templates, landing pages, sales funnel, and survey forms, and be able to promote their business on multiple channels, either directly from a sales funnel card (QR code or link to site) or through referral links, social media posts, updates, and invites – the possibilities are endless.

Create a Good Impression about Your Business

Customers will have an opinion about your business during the crucial 8 seconds on your website or landing page. They’d either stay on page to learn more about your business, or look somewhere else. Most of the hard work when trying to get more customers comes from designing landing pages which are both appealing and engaging.

CRMs make it surprisingly easy for businesses to create user experience with potential clients and customers. Small Business Dream integrates a lot of its site-building capabilities on the Sales Funnel Setup enabling business to create stunning websites, sales funnels, and landing pages. With practice you’ll be able to create professional-looking web pages to impress your target audience, but more importantly, convert more prospects into qualified leads and buying customers.

Save Money on Your Marketing Expenses

Automation took over a lot of our tasks such as sending emails, replying to certain requests, promotion, lead acquisition, and so on. It enables small businesses to cut back on marketing expenses while still gaining a competitive edge over the competition whether it’s real estate, insurance, event planners, restaurants, salons, dental practice – pretty much any kind of business.

Nowadays, you don’t have to hire additional personnel to do multiple tasks. You can build on your marketing strategy from time to time, spending just an hour or two on Small Business Dream. Customize your email autoresponder, tweak some settings, and perfect your Sales Funnel after doing all your tasks in the Action List.

Spend as much time as your schedule would allow. For those who need more time typing in customer information, Small Business Dream has a Card Scan function to take care of your data entry tasks, and done-for-you (DFY) website setup packages for busy business owners.

Have Full Control On How You Want to Interact with Customers.

Marketing automation works best with different approaches to customer acquisition such as permission marketing, personalized messages, and human interaction. We want to use both full-automation and semi-automation when dealing with potential clients and customers. Buying lists from data suppliers won’t cut it, and you could end up paying fines on the wrong use of marketing automation like sending unsolicited emails (CAN-SPAM Act of 2003).

Small Business Dream CRM gives business owners total control by combining different approaches on how they wish to interact with their leads and buying customers. Need more clients to fill up your Action List? Set up a Sales Funnel or landing page and have your visitors and walk-in customers optin to your email lists, Facebook, or Twitter follow up series. Use templates to quickly send personalized, semi-automated messages on the fly, or make the call as soon as they show up on your Call List.

Conclusion

Your ability to use CRM will make a big difference in getting more customers and increasing sales. With all the challenges faced by many small businesses and with competition on every turn, this could mean the difference between rapid growth and going out of business. You, too, can experience the power of CRM if you only take the time to put these words into action.

Take your business to the next level through sales and marketing automation. Visit SmallBizDream.com and start using our suite of tools to increase your sales and profitability like never before.

5 Ways CRM Can Help Your Auto Body Repair Shop

Standing out in a competitive world of auto repair industry is becoming more challenging. Shops are pretty much the same with their services offered, and they all share a common problem with regards to cycle times, turnarounds, and customer satisfaction. But there is a way to beat the competition and fix these problems using the right tools.

Growing Your Customer Base

Customer acquisition can take some time unless you actively market your business. Traditional means of getting exposure through ads and promos are still being used in the digital age, although they’re not always as affordable and effective as having your customers spread the word about your auto body repair business, i.e. through customer referrals or word of mouth. CRMs enable business owners to grow their customer base by reaching out to their target market more efficiently. Consider the following examples for auto body repair shops:

Acquiring information of potential customers on-site. Shop owners can collect customer details such as contact information from walk-in prospects and customers asking for quotes on their repair service and follow up on them based on their preferred method. Shop owners can also leverage by offering a referral program and give points redeemable for discounts, free items, and services to existing customers who can bring along new customers on-site. Small Business Dream’s Card Scan function takes a step further by having a data entry service to do all the typing work for them.
Acquiring information of potential customers online. Tech-savvy shop owners can acquire customer information through their websites, blogs, Twitter account or Facebook page and import them to the CRMs’ contact list. One advantage of having an online presence is it allows shop owners to collect customer data basically on autopilot. Small Business Dream can be used alongside existing auto body repair website, blog, Twitter, or Facebook Page, or it can create one for them as a micro-site or as part of a sales funnel. This automated feature not only increases your chances of acquiring new customers, but also saves your business time and money.

Managing Your Customer Data

Customer information has a lot of potential for growing your income. Unfortunately, many shop owners don’t have a system of collecting and storing them, or they have no idea what to do with the information they have. As a result, they miss a lot of opportunities for making conversions and repeat customers. CRM keeps all the customers’ data in one spot and shop owners can easily organize them however they want. This allows them to do the following:

Segmenting contact list. Business owners should be able to categorize and manage their contacts if they are to stay relevant and top of mind with them. Majority of email marketing campaigns fail because they are too generic or end up in the recipients’ spam folders. Small Business Dream CRM enables auto body repair shops to hone in to a specific type of audience based on category, whether they are new clients, regular customers, or you can categorize them based on their cars’ make, model, mileage, ownership status, and so on. With Small Business Dream you can also send automated or semi-automated emails to let customers know what stage their car process is at. For example, an email can go out that you’ve got a quote for the work from insurance. The next email can be you’ve started work and so on. This is an easy way to keep your customers engaged and will ensure a higher level of customer service which will in turn get more referrals and more sales.

Prioritizing qualified leads and customers. Shop owners pay careful attention to cycle times and turnaround times in order to stay on schedule. Small Business Dream CRM allows them to prioritize who comes up first on their Action List and when they wish to have them back on that section. This feature will come in handy when you want to give your customers a heads up in case you experience some delays with your auto parts supplier, auto insurance company, or if you want to update them about the status of the repair. You can also set the date when you want to follow up on them based on your turnaround date so you can quickly notify them of a successful repair, and a thank you note for choosing your shop.

Maintaining Customer Relationship

Brand loyalty can be a game changer in the auto body repair industry; you need a tool to keep your business top-of-mind to your customers and be able to do them with minimal effort. CRM helps maintain customers’ interest by automating certain tasks for you. Touch base with your customers if they need a tune-up. Offer tire changing services for the winter and summer season. Small Business Dream lets you accomplish all these tasks with just a few clicks after searching for a specific category of clients and potential customers on the Email Group section you wish to communicate with.

Creating an Email or Content Marketing Strategy

As a shop owner, you can share your expertise and experiences gained in the auto repair industry to educate your prospects and customers about proper care and maintenance. Small Business Dream’s autoresponders, enables you to build an email series for your subscribers about the importance of rotating their tires once every 5000 miles to evenly distribute wear and maintain traction, or preserving their cars’ lustre and shine by using automotive cleaners instead of liquid soaps and detergents. This CRM feature can also lead to a sale or a new customer when used with the sales funnel and following up on them through the Action List.

Listening to Customer Feedback

Business owners learn a lot by listening to their customers and can make you stand out in an industry that isn’t known for its customer service. Small Business Dream’s Survey Funnel allows shop owners to find gaps in their services and act accordingly. By automatically sending out a survey to all its customers it allows you to receive valuable feedback. How many of your customers prefer shorter turnaround times and those who prefer to have a thorough check-up, damage assessment and repair? Survey forms can be fine-tuned at any point in time to stay relevant and collect more information from your customers as needed.

The Small Business Dream Survey Funnel is extremely easy to use and doesn’t require any special web skills. All you need to do is write the questions you want your customer to answer and then create an answer field. You can use multiple choice or a checklist – whatever fits your needs.

Whatever your customer service needs, Small Business Dream is an amazing tool to collect, contact, and manage all your customers and leads.

Take your business to the next level through sales and marketing automation. Visit SmallBizDream.com and start using our suite of tools to increase your sales and profitability like never before.