3 Steps To Convert More Online Insurance Leads

Learn how to capture & convert more leads than ever.

In today’s world, your digital presence–in combination 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–plus digital. It should be a symbiotic relationship.”

While almost everything is done online, consumers still rely on agents to help them navigate the complexities of 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 leads than ever.

The Best Way To Gather Online Insurance Leads 

First things first: Your website needs to have at least one lead form–and it should be optimized for conversion. Lead forms are essential to gathering new leads. Plus, they enable visitors to easily get in touch and submit their information, which is important in creating a good customer experience. 

Your lead form can be a contact form, quote or consultation inquiry, newsletter subscription, a sign-up to access exclusive educational content, and 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 AgencyBloc.

Online Insurance Lead Conversion Tips

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

While researching insurance agencies and coverage types often starts online, the vast majority of people prefer to work with an agent or advisor either in person or over the phone when it’s time to purchase. This means that no matter how you capture leads online, successfully converting them to clients is ultimately based on your follow-up process. 

Let’s explore three ways you can convert more online leads and how the right insurance lead management software can support these processes.

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—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:

New Leads Don’t Receive Confirmation of Form Submission

Whenever you fill out a form on a website today, you expect to get an email confirmation that the recipient has gotten the information and message. 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 instantly notify new leads that they’ve received their information and will be in touch shortly. In order for this to happen, your lead form must funnel those leads into your agency management system in real time. 

AgencyBloc has a built-in lead form builder to help you create your form, then embed it on your website and funnel leads into the AMS. You can use Automated Workflow to set up alerts for agents and ensure the new lead receives a confirmation email.

Agents Are Alerted of New Leads After the 5-10 Minute Window

Manually bringing leads into your CRM doesn’t always happen in a timely manner, 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 AMS like AgencyBloc, you’re able to alert agents of new leads through dashboard activities and emails. Plus, you can track the follow-up process internally and externally. Internally, activities and automated internal emails hold agents accountable, and externally, automated emails jumpstart the follow-up process for new leads.

2. Develop a Measurable Process for Responding

As we’ve discussed, you need to have a process in place for collecting and immediately following up with online leads. In addition, you also need a way to measure it so you know how to continuously improve.

In order to measure the performance of your agents and the profitability of leads, you must be able to track your lead sources in a way that allows you to pull reports or view their real-time data analytics.

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

AgencyBloc 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 are generating the most return on investment (ROI).

AgencyBloc Groups & Policies by Lead Source

3. Nurture Your Leads All the Way To Purchase

Online leads fall into your funnel at different levels. Some are ready to purchase and others might still be researching. Many new leads are not ready to make a purchase right away–even though you’ve checked all the boxes listed above, they still may not sign a policy contract that same day. 

A personalized lead nurturing program allows you to build relationships with your leads so that, when the timing is right, they turn to you for your products or services. 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 to a specific list at a specific time. 

Many agencies use drip campaigns to send “newsletter-like” content to their prospect and client lists. However, it’s not recommended to send the same content to everyone on your list–this will drive leads away. 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 them 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. 

This blog was originally posted on June 11, 2020, and was updated on August 30, 2022.

Posted by Kelsey Rosauer on Tuesday, August 30, 2022 in Lead Nurturing & Automation Software

1. data management
2. lead nurturing
3. selling