While everyone knows that an independent insurance agency’s website is its most powerful marketing tool, fewer agents realize the role your website can play in improving operational efficiency. A well-designed website can streamline data management, communications, and trend watching without a great deal of extra expense.
The age of the pamphlet website has ended. Today, insurance agencies that want to be competitive need to build interactive websites that allow clients and prospects to find the data they’re searching for easily. This may include general information on particular policy types or tailored information such as rate estimates. Providing easy access to data means that when clients make contact, they already have a clear idea of what they want and need, which saves time and qualifies leads.
More interactive sites also provide your agents with a steady stream of leads as well as data about prospects and clients. As visitors to your site enter their own information to get more refined results, you gain valuable insights into their needs and objectives. Best of all, your website can store and organize this information, streamlining data management.
Your website can do more than just gather data. It can be programmed to respond to data entered by visitors. Integrations with applications like Constant Contact can turn your website into an automated receptionist of sorts, auto-generating emails and text messages in response to visitor queries.
In addition to email and text messages, your website can communicate your values and priorities via its blog. In somes cases, your website can even be programmed to gather those posts into a newsletter and automatically sent to your email list each month, keeping your agency front of mind.
Instant messaging and emergency alerts can also be handled directly through your website. It’s fair to say that your agency’s website is its most versatile messaging platform, and it can be designed to meet the diverse communication preferences of your many clients.
Your website is a powerful tool for tracking trends over time. As you build up a storehouse of data about clients and prospects, you’ll be able to see where people’s minds are. Those insights can then be used to more persuasively appeal to site visitors and to respond to changing risk management preferences and needs.
Want to learn more about how your website can become a multi-purpose tool for improving your agency’s marketing and processes? Get in touch with the insurance marketing specialists at AgenciesOnline, and we’ll help you see the possibilities.