Insurance and Finance Marketing

Global Reviews, the customer experience benchmarking company, asked thousands of consumers what they are looking for online, from a variety of Finance and Insurance providers.

Their study found that 53% of consumers say that they currently research their home insurance online, with 47% saying that they are extremely likely to purchase through the Internet in the future.

Global Reviews also looked at the leading websites across the industry to create a benchmark of best practice against which they assessed under various categories including ease of use, information available to prospective customers, customer support, application processes, overall content and the quality of the online tools.

This research shows that consumers are very comfortable quoting and buying online when it comes to their finance and insurance purchases. Providing these types of facilities on your own company website is a very good way to tap into this growing market.

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I have been asked this question three times already this week by new coaching clients. They want to know where to find Affiliate Programmes that they can join and promote on their websites.

Now this is knowledge that I have assumed people would know up until this point but clearly not. So this brief article will give you some idea where to hunt out those all important relevant Affiliate Programmes.

Brokers seem to be trying to find new and different ways to increase their revenue streams due to the pressures in the current market climate. Hopefully, by adopting some of the online options available, they will be built into a sustained model, and not used as a knee jerk reaction to the markets. Used online, in newsletters, on blogs, and mini sites, affiliate marketing can be a very powerful technique and a good income earner.

In term of finding programmes for IFAs, insurance and mortgage brokers, it may be that you are looking for a travel insurance offer or maybe you are a commercial broker and want to offer some personal lines to your email list. Using an affiliate relationship online is a good way to test the water without too much effort. If you have a good level of response to your mailing you may want to explore different more direct options.

Most affiliate networks will have access to proven email creatives if you ask for it, which you can then just send out to your list.

Affiliate Networks

There are several large Affiliate network companies that manage Affiliate Programmes on behalf of their clients. There are lots of different networks out there but in the main there are probably 10 or so in the UK that are useful to finding Affiliate deals suitable for your business.

Commission Junction (Worldwide)
Tradedoubler (European)
Buy.at (UK)
AffiliateWindow (UK)
DGM (UK and AUS)
OMGUK (UK Finance Programmes)
Affiliatefuture (UK)

In House Programmes

You can also look at websites that you would like to work with and see if they have their own Affiliate Programme. Most will have a link somewhere on their site for “Resellers” or “Affiliates”. If not, drop them an email to see if they have a Programme you could join. If they don’t, move on and find someone else.

You could also try searching in Google or using one of the many Affiliate Programme directory sites such as:

www.associateprograms.com/directory
www.affiliatescout.com
www.top-affiliate.com
www.affiliatefirst.com/uk
www.affiliate-scheme.co.uk

To find out more about a Programme before you signup you may be able to find some comments by searching in Google or ask questions at an Affiliate forum. In the UK there is really only one affiliate forum worth mentioning:

www.affiliates4u.com/forums

Are there any good brands out there that I can use?

Some good quality Brand names have programmes including:

ASDA Finance, Budget Insurance, Esure, Credit Expert, Halifax, NatWest, Norwich Union, RBS, More Th>n, HSBC, MBNA and many many more….

Affiliate Product Ideas for Brokers to Use

Personal Loans - Alliance and Leicester
Credit Cards – Capital One, MBNA, RBS, Halifax, Barclaycard
Utility Switching – Uswitch, SimplySwitch
Current Accounts – HSBC, Alliance and Leicester, Barclays, The One Account
Savings Accounts - HSBC
Business Accounts – NatWest, HSBC, Direct Line, SimplyBusiness
European Mortgages - Barclays

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• July 10, 2008 -- Can A Broker Really Benefit From Using An Aggregator Service?
• August 26, 2008 -- Insurance Affiliate Marketing
• July 11, 2008 -- Top Article Marketing Tips For Insurance And Mortgage Brokers
• July 1, 2008 -- Mortgage Brokers urged to diverisfy
• June 23, 2008 -- Attract new clients

With the credit crunch really starting to bite mortgage and insurance brokers, as well as IFAs, brokers are trying to diversify into other product areas in order to generate income.

One of the best ways to easily announce a new product range or service is via email. It is low cost, quick and can be very rewarding if the right message goes out.

But the best message in the world is worthless if you don’t have anyone to send it out too.

So do you have a database of client email addresses?

In fact I bet you do and I bet you have several spread across the office on different Computers or broker systems. Take some time out to look at what data you hold in different locations and try and build a single list of all your existing customers.

Create processes to start capturing the email addresses of everyone that contacts you via phone, email, post, or even walks in through the door.

Incentivise clients and prospects to give you their email address. This could in the form of a free gift:

• An email course
• A downloadable Guide
• A Free Web or Teleseminar

If you have an office, why not have a free prize, have small cards next to a fish bowl and get walk-ins to write their email address on a piece of card and drop it in the box.

Contact other partners you work with and see if they have a mailing list? Offer one off mailing to that list to attract them or offer them your free gift in exchange for their email address.

As business gets more and more difficult, using email and autoresponder technology to produce and operate low cost, automated systems is a great way to attract new business and to offer new products and services to your existing customers. This creates new revenue streams for your business with a small outlay.

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• July 18, 2008 -- Building your Email / Newsletter Contact List

Import CSV Pro is a new Wordpress plugin that allows users to create their own simple spreadsheet of blog posts and drip feed them into their blog automatically. This means they could take a product catalogue from a merchant partner and drip feed it into a blog so their site looks fresh and saves the site owner a huge amount of time and effort.

“The main reason for the plugin” says creator Jason Hulott from internet marketing specialists Speedie Consulting, “was that it saved me a huge amount of time as I was able to upload 2 or 3 months worth of daily blog posts in one go”.

He adds: “Having tested it, we can also use it to import data feeds from Merchants and import hundreds, if not thousands of posts in one go. This puts the compete blog on autopilot.

“It means my business is not dependent on me, I can spend 1 or 2 days writing a months worth of blog posts. I just upload them using the plugin and timestamp them to go live as and when I like. The readers think I am there all the time but I can be relaxing by the beach or working on other projects, safe in the knowledge that this is taken care of.”

“I was worried about opening this out to the world as there is a potential for this to be abused and people can create huge sites really fast, but after discussions with a few colleagues and marketing experts, we decided to release the plugin with an ethical guide to use.”

For more information about the Plugin visit: http://www.speedieconsulting.co.uk/importcsv/

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• June 20, 2008 -- Range of Financial Calculators

Half of UK consumers fear for their finances
Where there’s muck there’s … A £57 million bill
64% of Britons are considering carrying on working after retirement
Middle Britain house prices to drop £40,000 by Christmas
home insurance leaves Britons £9billion out of pocket

They have all featured in the national press in the last few weeks and they are all relating to results obtained by running surveys.

So what does this have to do with me?

Using this technique, you can build press releases around surveys that you can carry out with your client base, or by running queries on your databases.  Journalists love stats and the more unique and original the stats the better.   You can even use these to produce a monthly report that gets sent out to local and national press.

For example, we used to produce a monthly survey for loan applications for a secured lending client and it got picked up and used for 6 months in 2 national print magazines with links back to the client site each month.

There is a hidden goldmine of stats that you can use in your customer database to create useful press releases:

Demographics – Where are your clients?

Product based – What products are they applying for?  How much for? What %age of clients who buy X go onto buy Y as well?

Remember, if using customer data to keep it generic and don’t mention customers on an individual basis.  Do be prepared to be asked for a case study, so it is always useful to have a case study available.  Having a case study in our experience gives you:

• More column inches
• More likelihood of use
• Greater future exposure – If you are easy to deal with, present info in a ready to use way and have case studies – you are a journalists dream!

Opinion based – use an actual online survey to garner results and scale up to a national level. Most surveys use a small number of responses and scale it up to create a national response.

So how do I build a survey that makes it easy to get quantifiable results?

The best way to build a survey is on a multiple choice basis. In this way it is easy to create statistics.  Online you can use free tools such as Surveymonkey to create an online survey or poll which then allows you to login in and collect the results to use.  You can use a free survey at surveymonkey.com which allows you to collect 100 responses which is a good number to work with.

How do I get people to fill it in?

You can email your existing customer base and offer them entry to a free prize draw for completing the survey.  You can use it as a competition and submit it to competition sites such as loquax.co.uk, competitionsuk.net, and ukcompetitions.com.

For the cost of an Ipod Nano or something of similar value you can build a good amount of information.

Keep the survey short, to say five questions, and if used correctly, you can create a press release around each question.  So that’s a press release every month for 5 months.

Okay so I have the release now what?

There are various methods for publishing press release but we will use two methods.

Firstly, you can email to the finance and insurance journalists.  Go out and buy all of the weekend nationals and local papers and note who is writing the stories in the money sections.  You can build a quick list of around 20 or 30 in this way.

Secondly, you can submit your release online.  You can use a paid for service such as PRWeb or you can spend an hour or so submitting to a few main press release directory sites such as: dbusinessnews.com, seenation.com, google.com/base, pr-usa.net, openpr.com, i-newswire.com, prlog.com, przoom.com, and pressbox.co.uk.

Some of these sites are US based but it doesn’t matter, journalists can look at these resources to get ideas for stories. They also get featured in Google News which is another great source for research for journalists.

Press releases are a great way to get exposure for your business both locally and nationally, online and offline so you should build in marketing time to add in this promotional tool to your arsenal.  Press releases used and picked up online also provide your website with a boost in authority too.  Having your story picked up and used by the BBC with a link back to your site, for example, can lift your website out of obscurity and improve it web rankings in the major search engines.

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If your business offers an online newsletter, one thing you want more than anything else is subscribers. But lots of small businesses have the mentality that “once you build it, they will come”. This is why most have mailing lists have single figure lists.

You need to promote your newsletter or email signup box to drive more subscribers. So how do you do it?

Here are some techniques that I have used to drive more subscribers to my email lists.

1. Add a subscription box to every page on your website and make it above the fold so as soon as they see your site they can signup. Remember not everyone will visit your site via the front door that is your homepage!

2. Add a link to a sample issue or your archive so potential subscribers can see what they are signing up to. This may reduce the number of signups but those that do will be more likely to open what you send them!

3. Make sure you clearly define your Privacy Policy - If you are going to send their details to third parties then tell them! Reassure them!

4. Contact other newsletter editors and offer a trade for advertising. They promote your newsletter and you do likewise. Make sure though that it is a relevant publication.

5. Register your Newletter with Newsletter (eZine) Directories such as www.jogena.com, www.directoryofezines.com. Carry out a search in Google for other Newsletter Directories.

6. Entice subscribers by giving them something of value in exchange for signing up. Write something original that they can’t get anywhere else, maybe a report or a Video.

7. Create an Image for your newsletter, give it a persona and use this image as part of your signup form.

8. Ask your current subscribers to pass on your email newsletter to others.

9. Promote it for free using Classified Ads Sites such as the marketplace on Ecademy, Gumtree, Craigslist, even eBay now offers a classified Ad format.

10. Use a co-registration process. Co-registration is a great way to build a list. Basically your newsletter advert will appear on other companies websites and their visitors will have the ability to add themselves to your list while signing up to others.

11. Use an Exit Window. An exit window usually pops up when visitors leave your site. Why not build a pop up window with a signup form to your newsletter. Maybe add some different text such as “Wait before you go…”. Yes, this could annoy some people but if pop ups annoy visitors they will have pop up blockers so they won’t even see them. Create different windows for different exit points on your site.

12. List Exchanges. There are websites you can signup to and promote that build a mailing list using MLM techniques. The more people that signup under you the bigger of a list you are building. Some of the best sites include www.yourluckylist.com and www.listinferno.com

13. Ask people that you network with. If you are a business card swapper and networker ask if you can add them to your list so they can receive your newsletter. Have a signup link to your newsletter on the back of your card. But keep the url simple!

14. Add a signup up advert or line to your email signature block and make sure it goes out on ALL your emails.

15. Use a Hover Ad or Pop Up ad on your sites homepage to collect email signups.

16. Make sure your newsletter has its own page on your site so visitors can read back issues or get more detailed information about what your newsletter will offer them.

17. Make sure you have a link to your newsletter page from your homepage and include it in your main site navigation.

18. Write and submit articles (like I have done below!) and include a signup link

19. Run a contest or quiz on your site to capture email addresses.

I think that this will be enough to be getting on with. There are hundreds of different techniques you can employ. I will be sharing more in my newsletter in the coming months. Why not sign up now and you will receive 5 reports aimed at helping you carry out your own Internet Marketing, subscribers will also receive our monthly newsletter, Insight. Send a blank email note to: speediesite@getresponse.com or visit http://www.speedieconsulting.co.uk

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• July 24, 2008 -- Do you have a customer email database?

One thing that most web aggregator sites do, is generate huge amount of web traffic.  Mainly, this is down to search engine optimisation techniques and paid for web advertising such as Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing.

However, there is a third way, which tends to sit under the radar yet drives a huge amount of traffic to the aggregator sites. Most of the major players will offer a white labelled version of their online facilities and a revenue share opportunity.  Just looking around some of the bigger sites out there, you will find an comparison site of some description powering the money or finance sections.

So how does this help me?

While you may not have a facility such as an online quote and buy engine, you could still provide a white labelled money / insurance or investment sections to a large number of sites.

Sites such as:

• Local interest sites or local information directories.
• Clubs and Associations
• Local charities and groups.
• Other local companies – Accountants, Lawyers, Business Services and the like

You could very well have relationships with these organisations already but using the web to do it, means that it is easier to track and shows you very quickly what is working and what isn’t.

The advantages

Most referral business is done on trust between two partners and it has always been a difficult thing to manage as far as a paper trail goes.  Now with using the Internet, you can have an online tracking system, and depending how big it grows there are tools that will allow partners to login and check stats and commission due, all without your involvement.

If you haven’t done so already, provide your current partners with their own landing pages so they can promote these pages to their members.  After all it is in their best interest as they will earn more revenues.  You can even make the landing page look like a page on their website.

A Win-Win

Their site gets more content, as well as, additional revenue streams and you get more business with an easy to manage solution.

Provide marketing materials such email shots, web copy or even issue a joint press release promoting the new service or partnership (You could have a template of something built in advance.).

Make sure you mention these partnership opportunities at your networking events, so not only are you promoting your business but also offering a business opportunity. Even add it to your business card.  Have a page on your site with more information about your partnership programme.

This is a great way to dominate a local marketplace.  Just like the aggregators have tied up most of the major online portals, you could be doing the same at a local level.

Summary

There is still large number of untapped groups and sites out there that will benefit from a relationship with an IFA, insurance or mortgage broker.  Promoting and running an online partnership programme is a good way to drive more business and build new revenue streams.  The beauty is that the work you do once in building the system (the content, the advice for promotional and the marketing materials) can then be rolled out to any new partnership arrangement quickly. You can even have this in a password protected area on your website so it can be automated entirely.

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Article marketing is one of the easiest, low cost ways to drive business, increase your exposure and increase your website traffic.

In essence, article marketing is simply a case of picking a topic and writing a 500 word or more article in a non salesy way.  The idea is to provide the reader with information that they can use. If they like the way you write and like your style they can use you.  This is the ultimate presell technique, give them something for nothing and let your article do the talking.

So, as an example you could write an article about saving money on your insurance premiums. Once written and spell checked (most important) you can then start the process of getting this article published.  Online, you can simply visit loads of article sites that will list and publish your article for free.

But don’t fall into the trap of thinking more is better, there are services that will submit your article to 10,000 article sites.  Now while this may seem like a good idea, it really is a waste of time and money.  There is a list of the better article directories below and to be honest it is quick a small list.

Article directories offer you three main benefits:

1. They will attract direct traffic to them as the main ones are popular
2. They are used by other Webmasters looking for site content and they could use one of your articles on their site and to do this they will have to give you a link back to your main website.
3. Some of these article sites are so popular they rank very highly in Google and your article could feature on search results page very quickly.

Article Directories

www.ezinearticles.com
www.articlealley.com
www.articledashboard.com
www.articlecity.com
www.goarticles.com

Here are a few more tips that we have used to really drive more people back to our website.

1. Write a useful article; don’t worry about making search engine friendly and worrying about number of keywords and all that. Make it useful and it will take of business for you.
2. You will be able to add a resource box on the article which is your chance to say who you are and what you do.  A good way to drive traffic back to your site is if you have a long article, split it in two, post one part out the different places and tell people in your resource box that to get part two they have to visit your site.
3. Build your own Niche submission list.  While we recommend the 5 site above, there could be other niche directories, websites or publications that accept article submissions.  Try the publications that you receive each month.  Do they accept submissions?  Have a look in the news agents.
4. Be consistent – This is the tricky one as life and work usually kick in at some point.  You need to try and establish a schedule to works.  Will you send out one article per week, or one a month, whatever “your” schedule, try and stick with it.
5. Outsource – There are services which could prepare and submit articles on your behalf. You would just need to give them a list of topics each week or month and maybe even some quotes to drop into each one.

Article marketing is a good way for any business to drive leads, search rankings and traffic, mortgage and insurance brokers have a big advantage over the majority of current article writer in their space.  They have experience, case studies and knowledge.  Look around the article marketing sites currently and most insurance articles are written by website owners, not brokers, looking to build leads and drive online sales to earn commissions.  They use it as it is low cost and works well for them.

Isn’t it about time you made the move to writing?

Related Posts

• July 1, 2008 -- Mortgage Brokers urged to diverisfy
• June 23, 2008 -- Attract new clients
• August 14, 2008 -- Insurance Marketing Tips
• July 25, 2008 -- Where can I find good affiliate programmes?
• July 10, 2008 -- Can A Broker Really Benefit From Using An Aggregator Service?

Over the last few days I have decided to try and see what all the hype is about facebook and use it to try and establish leads.  Note I said leads not sales!  I have also used it to increase my knowledgebase by joining with  other marketers and groups and I am collecting a lot of useful info.

The trick is now to turn it into something tangible for my business.  Once that is done I want to create an A to Z guide for use for Finance and Insurance companies. The initial findings look promising.  If you want to join my Facebook “Posse” then stop by my profile and send me a Friend invite.

Also stop by Internet Marketing for Insurance Brokers - which is my new page on Facebook to

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Internet-Marketing-for-Insurance-Brokers/23334811463

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• June 2, 2008 -- Displaying your RSS feeds

This month, James Harrison of Insurancewide urged brokers to embrace aggregator technology and include it within their customer quotation systems.  He suggested that brokers could use an aggregator solution to improve their customer experience and give the customer what they needed.

Now most brokers are opposed to aggregators, as really, they are direct competitors to their own businesses. But is there some middle ground where an internet savvy broker could use an aggregator relationship to earn extra income, provide additional products and services and keep his customer happy?

Firstly, let’s look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of aggregators

Advantages

Aggregators have usually access to a wider panel of insurers than brokers, for example, Confused have over 60 Motor partners, over 40 home partners and over 30 travel partners. They use a panel of both direct insurers and brokers.

Aggregators can offer a wider selection of niche products alongside standard Insurers. Some panels include specialists in insurance for over 50s, ladies only and vintage cars.

An aggregator service provides a real time quote, the customer fills in one form and results can be displayed immediately.

Aggregator software can give your site much needed interactivity.

Aggregator services can provide your clients with lots of secondary products that you can earn an income from that you don’t offer yourself; savings accounts, current accounts, cash ISAs are just a couple of examples.

Disadvantages

Using an aggregator means you could be passing lots of your core business away and earning less income if you don’t use it correctly.

Using an aggregator means in commission terms you are getting a cut of a cut.  So you would not want to put all your business through an aggregator.

You feel out of control of what your users will do once they visit the aggregator pages.

So Can You Use On Your Website?

Firstly, I would like to state that simply having an aggregator plonked on your homepage is not something I would suggest you do.

Having said that, you can have a working relationship with an aggregator at key points in your site processes or use to create new areas of your website that the user will find of benefit and could be an additional income earner for the broker.

For example, if you have a customer dropping out of your site during a quote process, why not pop up a small window, with an aggregator quote form, so they can search the market.  You could find that the very next destination for that user would very well be an aggregator service like this anyway, so why not try and monetise it yourself – And help your user get what they want.

You can also identify drop out pages on your site, where visitors come in and go straight back out again that you could plug with a popup window if they leave the site at that point.  The key is to make the popup relevant to the page that they are on.

Having a car insurance quote form on the back of travel insurance pages isn’t going to do you any favours, nor will it improve conversions.  Also make sure that you brand the popup in your look and feel so the user knows where it has come from and looks like an extension of your services.  This will improve any conversion rates.

You could also add secondary product using aggregators.  You could have current accounts or Cash ISAs or in fact just about any of the services they provide.  In this way, you are widening your appeal and having these services on your site will enhance your website and site income.

It also shows that you are giving your customer what they want, when they want it.

Tips For Using And Implementing Aggregator Services

You must get a white label version – this means the services are provided in YOUR site look and feel, with your navigation and everything.  From a customer point of view the process is seamless.

Cloak the aggregator url – You must tell the customer you have a relationship with an aggregator using a “Powered by X” statement but you can hide the URLs so the user looks like he/she is staying on your site.  You would be surprised how many people will revert to the original url and cut you out of your commissions given the chance.  There are lots of different ways to cloak urls.

Please note this is not to deceive the user in anyway just to simple protection your commissions

Get direct product or quote engine links – Do not just get a single link to an aggregator homepage. You want to control exactly what the user sees when he visits the aggregator.

Summary

In summary, I believe there is room for adding aggregator services to a broker website and done in the right way, it can be a win-win.  Having worked in the aggregator space for the last 8 years, I can say that the technology used by aggregators work very well and can provide you with much need interactive content.

It can also add a much needed additional revenue stream to your broker business quickly and easily.

If you do decide it is for you then drop me a line as I have working relationships with most of the major aggregators and have direct contacts with their partnership teams.

Related Posts

• July 25, 2008 -- Where can I find good affiliate programmes?
• September 9, 2008 -- What’s going on with Aggregators?
• July 11, 2008 -- Top Article Marketing Tips For Insurance And Mortgage Brokers
• July 1, 2008 -- Mortgage Brokers urged to diverisfy
• June 23, 2008 -- Attract new clients