3 Steps To Convert More Online Insurance Leads

How to Capture & Convert More Online Insurance Leads

In today’s world, your digital presence, combined with your in-person experience, is critical to your agency’s success. Insurance Journal put it best when they said, “Agents play an important role in the insurance buying process. Their expertise and service help consumers make informed decisions. Consumers are looking for that expertise.”

While almost everything today can be done online, consumers still rely on agents and brokers to help them navigate the complexities of buying health insurance. Because of this, you will want to have some strategies in place to ensure a seamless experience. 

Here are the top ways your agency can work smarter and convert more online insurance leads than ever. 

The Best Way for Health Insurance Agencies to Gather Online Insurance Leads 

First things first: Your website needs to have at least one lead form, which should be optimized for conversion. This means the lead form is created with the user in mind, i.e., it’s user-friendly and has a maximum of four (4) required fields to fill out.

Lead forms are essential to gathering new leads. Plus, they enable online visitors to easily contact your team and submit their information, which is important in creating a good customer experience. 

Your company’s lead form could be for any of the following: 

• Contact form
• Quote or consultation inquiry
• Newsletter subscription
• Sign up to access exclusive educational content
• & More

To create a lead form specific to your goals, use a customizable lead form builder that’s attached to your agency management system (AMS), like the lead form builder in AgencyBloc’s AMS+ solution. Note: To implement your lead form, you will need access to your website's HTML. Connect with your internal marketing/product teams, or contact the company that built your website for help.

Online Insurance Lead Conversion Tips

It’s important to remember that an online presence and an optimized lead form are only two parts of your sales process. 

When purchasing insurance, many consumers prefer to work with an actual person. This means that no matter how you capture leads online, successfully converting them to clients is ultimately based on your follow-up process. So it’s paramount that your team has the processes and tools in place to ensure that timely, effective follow ups happen.

Let’s explore three ways your team can convert more online leads and how the right insurance lead management software can support your efforts.

1. Respond to online leads quickly

There are countless studies that investigate how quickly you need to follow up with leads to increase your chances of conversion. Many have found that the sweet spot is between 5-10 minutes. In fact, your chances of qualifying leads drop 400% if it’s longer.

While insurance agents and advisors know they need to respond instantly, leads may still fall through the cracks. There are a couple of reasons this happens:

1. New leads don’t receive confirmation of form submission
2. Agents are alerted of new leads after the 5-10 minute window

New leads don’t receive confirmation of form submission

You expect to get an email confirmation whenever you fill out a form on a website. Automation is a smart way to ensure your leads have confidence that you’ll be reaching out so they don’t need to move on to a competitor. It also gives them clarity around the next step in the process, which can foster trust.

Many agencies use automation to notify new leads that they’ve received their information instantly and will be in touch shortly. In order for this to happen, your lead form must funnel those leads into your agency management system or insurance CRM in real-time. 

AgencyBloc’s AMS+ solution has a built-in lead form builder. Create your form, embed it on your website, and funnel leads directly into AMS+. Use Automated Workflow to set up alerts for agents and ensure the new lead receives a confirmation email. Check out these email, text message, and workflow templates to streamline your lead nurturing messaging. 

Agents are alerted of new leads after the 5-10 minute window

Manually bringing leads into your CRM doesn’t always happen promptly, which can slow down your agents’ follow-up times. For immediate follow-ups to happen, agents need to be instantly alerted of new leads. 

When your lead form is tied to an insurance CRM like AMS+, you can immediately alert agents of new leads. 

2. Develop a measurable process for responding

As we’ve discussed, it’s essential to have a process in place for collecting and immediately following up with online leads. In addition, your team also needs a way to measure the success so you know how to improve.

Track your lead sources in order to measure the performance of your sales efforts and investments. Then, pull reports or view their real-time data analytics.

Our industry-specific agency management system, AMS+, allows you to assign a lead source to each new lead. This feature makes reporting on lead sources, agents, and lead dates much easier.

AMS+ Lead Tracking

Seeing lead sources across your agency is also important for understanding performance. The real-time graph below shows various lead sources for an agency’s group clients and their current policies. From this, you can quickly see which lead sources generate the most return on investment (ROI).

3. Use nurture methods to convert leads into clients

Online leads fall into your funnel at different levels. Some are ready to purchase, and others might still be researching. 

A personalized lead nurturing program allows your team to build relationships with your leads so they turn to you when ready. In fact, companies skilled at lead nurturing generate 50% more conversion-ready leads.

Drip and automated email campaigns, combined with an immediate follow-up, are an excellent way to keep your agency top of mind.

Drip Email Campaigns 

Drip email campaigns are mass emails that are set up to send communications to a specific list at a specific time. 

Many agencies use drip campaigns to send newsletter-like or announcement-style content to their prospect and client lists. However, it’s not recommended to send the same content to everyone on your list. Instead, keep the content relevant by segmenting your list based on what they’re interested in and where they are in your funnel; then, send content that applies specifically to them.

For instance, agencies can segment prospects based on what type of coverage or content they’ve been interested in and send relevant emails to those groups.

Automated Emails

Agencies utilize automated emails to further personalize communication and ensure important information is sent in a timely manner. These are triggered by an event or behavior. For example, a lead’s status is changed from “prospect” to “client,” so they are automatically sent onboarding information to get that process started. 

When it comes to lead nurturing, continuous communication is key. It’s your job as an advisor to provide the right information at the right time, and automated communication makes this much easier.

Sales-Focused Text Message & Email Templates for Insurance Agencies

The biggest takeaway when it comes to converting online leads is that you must communicate. Speed-to-contact and lead nurturing automation are integral to sales success. To implement more touchpoints into your health insurance agency's sales efforts, use these text message, email, and workflow templates:

• [Templates] Lead Nurturing Email, Text Message, & Workflow Recipes
• [PDF] 6 Steps for Converting Leads (+Emails!)
• [Templates] Cross-Sell Email Templates for Agents & Advisors
• [Templates] Policy-Related Email Templates for Agents & Advisors
• [Templates] 7 Automated Email Templates for Insurance Agencies

This blog was originally posted on June 11, 2020, and was updated on May 21, 2024.

Posted by Allison Babberl on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 in Lead Nurturing & Automation Software

1. data management
2. lead nurturing
3. selling