Insurance brokers have a lot on their plate including managing their current book of business, identifying additional ways to mitigate risk for their clients and growing their business with new leads. Lead Management can be very manual and typically requires multiple steps along the journey. The often clunky experiences along the path from discovery through to conversion can be challenging for both the lead and the broker themselves and a poor experience may result in a delay in the lead conversion or worse – quote abandonment. 

The key to improved efficiency is bridging the gap with advanced lead management, fully enabled by a marketing automation platform. 

Lead management is one of the key strengths and benefits of using a marketing automation platform. With automation, brokers and insurance providers can streamline all aspects of the customer journey, from initial lead capture to quoting and binding. Intelligent lead management can help brokers, agents, and marketers unlock improved workflows, enabling them to quote and bind faster than ever.

Below, we will discuss how marketing automation can improve the speed and efficiency of quoting and binding for insurance providers.

A Look Into Lead Management

Lead management is the process of acquiring and nurturing leads through the sales funnel. The goal is to convert potential customers into loyal customers. For insurance brokers, lead management involves targeting prospects with relevant offers, contacting leads at optimal times, and providing personalized customer service.

In any organization, leads are a priority, with 66% of organizations acknowledging that their main goal is to improve the lead nurturing process. After all, leads are the source of new business and fuel most organization’s growth.

But lead nurturing is only one piece of the puzzle in lead management. There are other stages preceding the nurturing process, and insurance brokers have to get them right. These stages include:

Targeting the right audience: This stage involves determining who the target audience is and leveraging various channels to communicate relevant offers that speak to their specific needs.

Capturing qualified leads: Once a potential customer arrives at a broker’s website or engages with a digital ad, they should be prompted to provide their contact information. Having a lead capture form in place and gathering the right data will help identify qualified leads.

Qualifying leads: Qualifying leads means analyzing the data collected from the lead capture form to determine which prospects are likely to make a purchase. Including questions about current coverage or timeline for purchase helps support that qualification process.

Nurturing leads: Not all leads will be ready to buy immediately – some may not even be ready for a quote -, but that doesn’t mean they won’t ever convert. Brokers need to nurture the leads until they are ready to make a decision by providing them with personalized content and offers. Nurturing may be required in both the quoting and  binding process. Either way, this may include automated emails, personalized messages on social media, or even follow-up phone calls.

Converting leads: The final step in lead management is converting leads into customers.

How Automation Facilitates the Lead Management Process

Marketing automation software can power holistic lead generation, management, and conversion. Automation can create efficiency in a broker’s lead management process by streamlining the customer journey and providing personalized customer experiences at the right time. 

But before we delve into the role of automation in lead management, let’s look at two things brokers should keep in mind when implementing a lead strategy. These include:

  • Building a map for the lead flow: Brokers should define how their leads will flow through the marketing funnel. The map should capture how brokers currently operate and engage with their leads and how they envision the lead management process in the future.
  • Capturing the status of leads: This step will help brokers track where their leads are in the sales funnel and which stage needs more attention.

Marketing automation will come in handy in the above two steps. For instance, in building a leads flow map, brokers can use automation to gain crucial insight into whether the current landing pages and smart forms effectively capture leads. Based on the insight, they can decide which parts of the lead capture process to improve.

With automation, brokers can also capture each lead’s status in real-time using CRM integrations that are usually built-in to marketing automation platforms. The tools will help brokers understand what’s happening with their leads so that sales and marketing departments can determine the best way to optimize the lead management process.

For instance, based on the data from intelligent lead management, marketers can determine the best way to optimize their ads. It could be as simple as retargeting ads to those who have already visited the website but have not converted or sending emails to those further down the funnel.

An intelligent lead management process will also show brokers what to change in their lead-to-sale journey. Changes could be necessary for landing pages, forms, queueing systems, and follow-up sequences.

Finally, automation can help brokers focus on the ideal personas for their products. By identifying the customers most likely to convert and understanding their needs, brokers can craft marketing strategies that appeal to specific personas.

Optimize Your Lead Management Through Automation

Marketing automation is an essential tool for modern insurance brokers, who need to grow their business efficiently in order to stay competitive. Automation can help brokers quickly and efficiently capture leads, nurture them through the sales funnel, and convert them into customers. With the right automation tools, brokers can optimize their lead management processes to increase efficiency and improve customer experiences.

Need help with your lead management or marketing automation? Contact Goose Digital today to learn more about how we can help.