MGAs rely heavily on insurance brokers as their primary distribution channel. Brokers have extensive networks and client bases, and they can connect MGAs with potential customers who are seeking specialized insurance coverage. MGAs, in turn, offer brokers unique products that can set them apart in a competitive market.

Getting this partnership right is often the difference between success and failure. In this blog we share some real-world examples of how digitally enabled MGAs can leverage their data and marketing automation software to grow their broker network and increase submissions by up to 75%.

There are three principal ways in which marketing automation can help to grow your distribution channel and drive more submissions:

• Acquire new brokers
• Improve broker engagement
• Support proactive brokerage

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation is the use of technology to streamline and automate marketing tasks, such as email campaigns, lead nurturing, and data analysis. It allows for personalised and targeted messaging to be automatically sent to the right people, at the right time in an efficient and effective fashion.

There are a number of marketing automation tools on the market, such as Salesforce Marketing Cloud (formerly called Pardot), Hubspot, and Marketo – to name but a few.

Why use marketing automation?

Whatever marketing automation tool you use, it is crucial that you can connect and sync it with your CRM. This allows you to automatically segment audiences (based on geography, product lines, activity etc.), personalise messaging, and schedule campaigns. Likewise, you can then feed the results of those campaigns directly back to your CRM for analysis and sales intel.

At Azur, we are a Salesforce partner and build all our solutions on the Salesforce Financial Services Cloud. Our marketing automation tool of choice is therefore Salesforce Marketing Cloud, due to its innate ability to integrate seamlessly with the Salesforce CRM.

Real-world examples

Azur Technology began as an in-house tech team, building solutions for Azur Underwriting, an MGA in the UK. We are now an independent technology provider, working with some of the world’s most ambitious and successful MGAs.

Capitalizing on our experience within the MGA space, we have compiled a list of real-world examples of how digitally enabled MGAs can leverage data and software to support their distribution efforts.

Broker acquisition – Sign up more brokers

Create a list of prospective new brokers from within your CRM. Then build an automated email campaign to send personalised emails over a period of time to let them know about your brand, the products you offer, and the value that you bring. Direct them to a broker enquiry web form. Once they enquire you can auto direct those leads to sales by territory etc.

You can also track engagement to identify those brokers that open and read your emails and visit your website. You can add lead scoring to identify brokers that are engaged, even if they don’t fill out the contact form.

New broker on-boarding – Show them the ropes

Build a series of onboarding emails for new brokers. These can be automatically triggered once a broker reaches a ‘close won’ stage within your CRM. These emails should educate and guide them through the onboarding process to ensure a successful partnership.

Examples of onboarding emails:

Day 1 a welcome email

Day 2 details of all your products

Day 3 how to use your broker portal

Day 5 info on how your claims process works

Day 7 do you need some support? etc.

Broker re-engagement – Get them back on board

Track broker activity and create an automation rule that triggers a re-engagement email series to brokers that have not made a submission or logged into the portal for e.g. 4 weeks.

Examples of re-engagement emails:

• Have you lost your login details?
• Send a password reset link
• Reminder of your products
• Feedback or support requests
• You can also auto assign alerts to sales reps to reach out to the broker personally.

Broker rewards – Make the journey more fun

Depending on the regulatory landscape, you may be able to encourage and reward brokers for activity with you. e.g. run a seasonal competition over Christmas, summer, Halloween for brokers that hit targets for submissions to win a gift voucher.

Examples for reward emails: Send an initial email to all your brokers to launch such an initiative, and then send them auto updates at predetermined intervals or once they hit a points threshold to tell them how many points they’re got, how many more they need to win a prize, where they are in the leader board etc. You could even take this to another level and build a microsite for brokers to track their progress and that of their competition.

Ad-hoc campaigns – Using data to make them look good.

Throughout the year, you can send campaigns to brokers in specific geographies or product classes, segmenting audiences and personalising messaging via the CRM data that you hold. There are many potential use cases here, but the best campaigns are those that support your brokers and enable them to be proactive and look good in the eyes of their customers.

Example campaigns:

Planning permission alerts – In the UK, you can access a list of all planning permission applications. If you can tie this to your insured database, you can alert a broker that their customer has permission for a new property build or renovation and they can proactively approach them to offer new cover. (this can be done in bulk, using mail-merge to auto send these each month, personalising each email to each broker with specific client info.

Rolex watches – When the price of Rolex watches (or any asset) goes up, provided you have the data available, you can auto email brokers with customer who own Rolex watches so that they can reach out proactively to the owner to say, “let’s re-assess your cover to make sure you’re not underinsured”, and offer the valuation service at a special discount.

Hopefully this blog posts gives you some ideas and demonstrates the potential that marketing automation has to transform your distribution efforts, increase broker satisfaction and engagement. All of which are critical for successful distribution and sustained growth in the insurance industry.

If you would like to learn more about marketing automation, or Azur Technology’s digital insurance products, book a demo to find out more. Marketing automation is one of our MGA Connect Plus modules.