Last August we started a series about email marketing for your insurance business and we covered 5 key questions to help you put together an email marketing plan.

Now that you (hopefully!) have your email marketing plan in place, it’s important that you keep your email contact list clean. What do we mean by “clean”? A clean email list is one that has been scrubbed of bad or inactive email addresses and is also clear of email addresses from anyone who has requested to unsubscribe from your email list. Here is a list of best practices to ensure your insurance agency’s email marketing list is clean (and therefore, more successful and profitable):

- Delete inactive email addresses: Take time to look through your most recent email campaign reports and note the open rates compared to the overall frequency of email you’ve sent. Some contacts may not be opening your emails regularly. We recommend adding these contacts to a special list to create email marketing messages with the purpose of re-building those relationships.

- Remove role addresses or group distribution email addresses: As you’re cleaning your email list, look for email addresses that begin with “all”, “sales”, “info”, “help” or something similar. These are typically email distribution groups, meaning, when you send an email to this address, the message will be delivered to a group of people…which increases the possibility for your email to be marked as spam. Remove these and avoid adding these types of email addresses in the future.

- Perform list maintenance regularly: A week after every email distribution, review your email reports and delete any bounced email addresses. Remove unsubscribe requests immediately or designate a few minutes every week to remove them.

Always remember that a scrubbed email list will perform leaps and bounds better than a poorly maintained email list. Follow these tips and watch your email marketing become much more profitable!

As we proceed with our blog series about how you can leverage email marketing for your insurance agency, today’s post will cover why it’s important to set goals for your email marketing plan.

As any successful business person knows, a strategy without goals or milestones is destined to fail. Whether you’re planning a grand opening or a social media campaign, it’s vital that you set goals and outline outcomes so you know whether or not your plan was a success and whether or not you need to make a change or tweak something for the next initiative. Although goals can change, defining them is necessary for keeping your project on target.

So we’ve established that setting goals for your email marketing plan is imperative. What will these goals look like and how will they be measured?

First, start with setting large, long-term goals. Define the tactics you’ll implement to achieve that goal. Then, explain how you will measure the goal. For example:

1. I will increase my email marketing list by 35% within one year.
2. I will achieve this goal by creating newsletter sign up sheets to have at all conferences, collecting business cards at industry events, adding a sign up box on our website and all social media sites, etc.
3. I will measure the success of this goal by using the reporting features offered by my email marketing program.

Once you’ve established these overarching goals, break them down into smaller goals. (i.e. Attend 3 networking events every month. Attend 2 conferences every quarter. Tweet about email newsletter 2x every day.)

Now make sure you put these goals into action!

Parts 4 & 5 of this five-part series are coming up next, so stay tuned!

To continue on with our series about email marketing, today we’re going to focus on establishing the ultimate purpose of your email marketing.

So what is the purpose behind your email marketing strategy?

According to the “How to create an email marketing plan” guide by MailChimp, your purpose will answer these questions:

1) Why is what I have to say important to my audience?
2) What data, articles, topics & etc. will be useful to this audience?
3) What do I ultimately want to accomplish with this email marketing plan?

Just as it’s important to define your audience, it’s equally important to focus on what you want to accomplish with your email marketing. Any time you’re writing content for your email newsletter or want to send an email update to your audience, always ask yourself if this action will reinforce your overall purpose.

So tell us…what is YOUR purpose?

How do you stay connected with your customers and prospects? Are you communicating with them regularly?

One of the best, most cost-effective ways to stay in front of your clients and potential customers is through email marketing. As a matter of fact, according to a 2009 Forbes survey, email and electronic newsletter marketing have been rated as one of the top, most effective tools for converting prospects into customers.

Not sure where to begin? That’s okay. We have a quick overview for implementing an email marketing plan for your insurance business. Before we get started, you need to ask yourself these questions:

Question 1 – Who are your readers?
Question 2 – What is your purpose?
Question 3 – What are your goals?
Question 4 – How often will you send emails?
Question 5 – What will you talk about?

Our next few blog posts will cover each question in-depth. (For a simple, easy-to-follow guide to laying out your email marketing plan, check out this PDF from MailChimp.)