Using Email Marketing to Improve Prospecting for Cold Insurance Leads

With the amount of time required to build and maintain relationships with warm prospects and clients, it's no wonder most insurance agents have little time for cold leads.

Fortunately with the simplicity and automation of email marketing, it doesn't have to be this way anymore. You can now more effectively nurture and close cold prospects without having to sacrifice the valued time needed to run the rest of your insurance practice.

The first step is to determine exactly how your follow-up funnel currently operates. From this diagnosis, you'll easily see what you can do to improve its efficiency.

How Is Your Follow-up Funnel Operating?

What happens to leads that go cold? Do you drop them into the same pile of your other cold leads, periodically sending them weak, ineffective communications?

Using Email Segmentation to Better Nurture Cold Leads

It's said that it takes 10 to 12 contacts before someone associates your name with what you provide. Sending mass emails to your entire cold prospect list, however, is likely to cause prospects to start associating your name with spam.

Send enough of these mass emails and you'll end up with a high percentage of unsubscribes and complaints. On top of that, you'll likely have very few cold prospects take interest and inquire about your services.

Instead, you'll generate much better conversions and engagement by segmenting down your list of "cold" prospects and tailoring messages based on the specific services they inquired about.

How to Begin Your Email Segmentation

While I can't speak much about other types of insurance, let me use a figurative health insurance agent named "Bill" as an example.

Bill offers a variety of health-related services to his clients. Instead of following the typical follow-up funnel most insurance agents use, Bill is smart.

He realizes that most people don't know him or what he's about. They're much more likely to sign with an agent that has some affiliation (relative, acquaintance, etc.) over him.

Instead of fighting this, Bill is going to use email marketing to manually create this "affiliation" with his cold prospects.

Yes, it will take time and a sophisticated email service to set up. Bill, however, understands that the value of his cold prospects is multiplied when he increases his conversion rate, thus raising the amount of "hot" prospects he has to work with.

Additionally, Bill realizes that once his automated email follow-up campaigns are set up, little if any work is needed to maintain this process.

For Bill, an agent working in the health insurance space, his segmentation based on services will include:

Medicare prospects
Individual and Family Plan prospects
Ancillary products
Short-Term services

From this segmentation, he now plans to build separate email follow-up campaigns for each of these types of cold prospects.

While this does require a bit of upfront setup, such email segmentation will likely:

Make emails more welcomed, allowing more frequent sends
Allow prospects to engage more with the content, deepening the agent - prospect relationship
Reduce unsubscribes and spam complaints
Raise conversion rates


Follow the 80/20 Rule for Email Engagement

Instead of bombarding prospects with sales message after sales message, he'll aim to give 80% valuable content and 20% sales emails.

20% Sales Emails:

Sales emails will include incentives and special information about low insurance rates, packages, and other messaging geared at getting a policy signed. These messages will all tie around the services that his cold prospects inquired about.

Subtle sales messages can include:


The cost of insurance and how having an agent doesn't cost more
Licenses and certifications and how you can be trusted
The cost of not going through an agent and the added hassle



There are a lot of subtle ways to sell your services without directly asking them to take action. Simply by analyzing the sales flow from new prospect to client, you will find numerous sales points and benefits that can be engineered into these 20% sales emails.

80% Engagement-Oriented Emails

It's here where Bill can architect a powerful follow-up campaign that both provides value and establishes his agency as a credible.

Engagement content can include:


Education about specific insurance policies the prospect has inquired about
Insurance claim horror stories and how you easily handled them
General tips and advice



Each of these bullets above would be catered towards each segment Bill communicates with. For the last bullet, for example, Medicare insurance prospects would be given tips on aging and Individual & Family Plan insurance prospects would be given tips on family and children health.

While engagement-oriented emails are not a common practice among insurance professionals, Bill realizes that sending solely sales-oriented emails will alienate his already cold list.

Engaging content and useful tips are a pivotal way to warm up his list from cold to hot.

A cold health insurance prospect that isn't interested in information on the latest health plans available may be engaged through an article on how to get the most out of your health insurance plan. Because the prospect has consumed an article from the agent, a seed of behavior is planted, making them much more likely to repeat the action.

Planting Seeds of Familiarity

Sending segmented, tailored content via email is just the beginning. Good content alone, however, will not increase sales in and of itself.

Bill, of course, realizes this and knows that he's not only competing for the prospects interest, but their trust.

Most people, as mentioned earlier, will choose an insurance agent they know over a stranger. To create an effective email nurturing campaign that rivals an in-person network, careful planning is needed.

To start, Bill makes it a point to brand his emails with a unique design and color scheme that prospects can't forget.

In addition, he makes sure to always include his contact details in each and every email communication with a quick, two sentence text ad that reminds prospects of the services he offers.

This text ad is not the typical call-to-action that most insurance agents use in their signature. Instead, it adheres to two proven direct response principles:

1. It's targeted

While a general, all-encompassing tagline ensures prospects know you offer a variety of services, it weakens your message dramatically.

Lines such as, "Bill Insurance Agency Can Quote Your Commercial & Business, Auto, Home, Life & Health Insurance Today" do little for prospects only interested in one service.

Based on the segment Bill is emailing, he adjusts his ad text to highlight key targeted benefits more likely to spark action. From the example above, that means Bill would have four separate email templates with four separate ad text call-to-actions.

2. It Has a Unique Selling Proposition

Bill realizes that insurance agents are a dime a dozen. To effectively compete, he makes sure each and every email has his unique selling proposition embedded into it. His USP is not only conveyed in his byline and signature but throughout the entire message as well.

Every email follow-up, in essence, becomes a branding vehicle for his USP.

This ensures that anyone who reads his email will easily differentiate him from the rest - not just from what he says but the value his emails provide.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9131424

Why Ink Refills Are Not Necessarily the Best Choice

The technological age is rapidly expanding, and with this expansion comes an increase in the need for data in its soft and hard forms. As a result, many companies, and individuals now find themselves with a desire for the ability to print large amounts of information at the lowest possible cost. This is the situation that has given rise to the use of Ink Refills. There are many reasons, however, why these are not necessarily the best choice in the production of hard copies of data.
Refilling Ink Cartridges Requires Skill
Not everyone is able to accurately refill cartridges. One result of poorly refilled ink cartridges (which usually occurs when there is an incorrect balance of air in the cartridge) is that the ink does not flow properly, and the quality of the printed material is uneven. One may even find blotches on the paper.
Poor Quality Output
This is one of the prime reasons why ink refills are not necessarily the best choice. Refilled ink cartridges tend to produce lower quality printed work than genuine cartridges. Additionally, it has been discovered that fading of the printed images may occur with the passage of time when one uses refills. This could have dire consequences for businesses who desire to have information preserved in its hard form.
Printer Damage
The printer may malfunction, or stop working as a result of the use of ink refills. Using ink refills may damage the printer mechanism, leading to greater expenses in the long run. HP inks for instance, are designed with individual print heads, which means that with each new cartridge inserted a new print head is being used. When ink refills are used the same damaged print head is continuously used, as the same cartridge is re-filled several times. These blocked or damaged print heads may in turn damage the printer.
Other Problems Caused by Ink Refills
Refilled Ink cartridges may be a bad choice because they may lead to leakages, clogged printer heads, and ink streaks, all of which affect the quality of the output created, and the performance of the equipment.
Warranty Implications
The use of Ink Refills may void the warranty available on the printer. This is critical to note especially since damage to the printer is a possibility when using them.
In essence therefore it pays to think carefully, and weigh the odds before deciding to use refills as you may be causing yourself, or your organization unnecessary expenses, among other problems.

Chris enjoys writing articles on topics like Lexmark ink cartridges and Brother ink cartridges. Visit to read more detail.

Article Source: Ezine Articles 

Remove Almost All Types of Viruses With One Simple Method

A virus can cripple your computer almost to the point that it becomes unusable. Viruses are not only annoying but also reduce productivity and in turn money specially if your computer is a mission-critical working tool. Viruses are so persistent than usually when a computer gets infected, it is faster to reinstall the operating system than to try to clean it. Any IT professional knows that reloading a computer can take a whole day of work. There are many types of viruses out-there and this method is not going to work for all of them but it will definitely work in an overwhelming majority of cases, guaranteed. I use this method frequently at work and with clients, and I can say with certainty that it works for me about 90% of the time. The method consists of only two parts:
1) Disable infected profile.
2) Clean the registry.
3) Run antivirus.
Usually viruses do not cross profiles, meaning, if you have a computer with several users and one of the users caches a virus, other users on the computer are spared. that already makes the job of removing a virus very simple. all that needs to be done is delete or rename the infected profile. Removing the infected profile usually does the job but the virus can come back. Most viruses write themselves in the registry so that in case they get disabled or erased, they can reinstall themselves in the computer. To prevent this from happening we have to search for traces of the virus in the registry and eliminate it before it comes back again. This sounds harder than it really is. Now that our virus has been disabled; we can proceed to clean all remaining parts of it. To do this run an antivirus of your choice. This will provide extra assurance that the virus won't come back. If you wish to get further details about this simple method to remove viruses, please visit my site.

Pablo Garcia is an IT expert with 15 years of professional experience in the industry. His passion is creating interesting IT projects and tips and share them with others.

Article Source: Ezine Articles

How to Make Money From Your Old Mobile Phone

So you had your mobile for quite some time and are thinking of getting a new one. Maybe you haven't had your phone that long at all and just have seen a different model that you want to own. Whatever the reason, you can make money from your mobile phone.
Mobile recycling is becoming quite popular as more and more models come out. People are now changing phones rather quickly so they can own the latest in technology. New and improved smart phones seem to be hitting the market every month. Taking your mobile to a local phone store can get you some quick cash for it. They might even offer a deal on a trade for a new phone.
Some people think, "should I sell my mobile for cash" or trade it in. Perhaps the best way to recycle your mobile phone is to sell it online. By selling it online you can find a buyer that will pay you much more than a mobile store would. There are many sites that let you advertise for free and a buyer can call you up within an hour of posting the ad online.
When selling your mobile phone for cash it helps to have the original box, CD (if it came with one), charger and owners manual. Taking a picture of it and showing that it is not damaged will also help. Buyers will not be as interested if they can't see a picture of your phone in the online ad. People don't want to buy a damaged recycle mobile.
Mobile recycling online allows you to sell your phone to people worldwide. If you got to your local mobile store they will buy the phone from you for a much lower price and sell it for what you should have sold the phone for. Unless they offer a really good deal on a trade, selling online is the best way for you to make cash off your mobile.
So there you have it, no need to just throw you old phone in a desk and forget about it. You can go make some quick cash off of it by selling it. There are a lot of people that are looking for deals on phones and might not be able to afford a new phone for whatever reason. The buyers are out there.

Article Source: Ezine Article

Custom Software Developer: Let the Professionals Do It

The modern business owner needs to look no further than a custom software developer in order to get the systems up and running to further advance your company. Here are some pointers for how to get started on your search and what you may need.
First, you need to begin your search by looking for solid, proven companies that have had successful work done by businesses in your field of work or sector. This will ensure that they have had some experience in working with needs similar to yours, and that may prove invaluable.
If you cannot find any developing company with the specific work pertaining to your needs, at least find one who has proven themselves with other companies. It would prove to be very risky if one used a new, unproven businesses to get your software going, even if it may seem cheaper. There is always the chance that mistakes made by rookies will cost more in the end.
When testing around for companies, have them send you sample programs that you can use to see and use their work for yourself. Often a little tinkering with many different sources and programs will enlighten you further on your needs, likes, and dislikes, as well as clearly giving you an idea if you like the company's work or not.
Next, you need to firmly set your needs in an organized, precise, and clear way. Make sure you budget finances and with time, because this is an undertaking that has many options, which can keep getting more complicated and expensive if it goes unchecked. If you lack enough experience in software development to be able to draw up a mock-up of your needs, state clearly what basic functions you need.
Throughout the whole process, there needs to be a high level of oversight from the beginning. In the contract, costs and deadlines need to be clearly stated so that delays won't cause extra charges. Make sure that there is a test team of the people that are going to be using the software regularly.
This will help ensure that input is being brought from the people who know best what is needed. Also make sure that there is a very frequent testing of the programs while being developed, which will also help the deadlines in the contract be met in a timely fashion.
Finally, you need to make sure you are getting quality work done. As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. These kinds of technologies can really help a company go, but if done poorly, it will impede those using it, and will ultimately hurt your progress. But when done right, custom software development will be able to really help your company take the next step into great success.

Article Source:  Ezine Articles

The Impact of the 1984 Superbowl Advert on Apple's Brand

The Rise of The Home Computer
Prior to the release of the Mac - heralded by this iconic commercial, computers WERE industry-specific, huge, unwieldy, and required incredibly specialized skill-sets to learn. Apple's intent with the Mac was to create a computer that was both affordable and useful for everyone. Steve Jobs referred to the Mac as the beginning of, "the democratization of technology," which, indeed, it turned out to be.
How did the most memorable of Apple commercials - 1984 - play into this image? By casting existing technology as overpowering, controlling, and malevolent - the talking-head overlord of the commercial - director Ridley Scott tried to capture society's current paradigm with regards to computer technology. Ridley's evil technology personified was in control of the user, not the other way around. The on-screen manifestation of Apple, in stark contrast is an athlete - a woman - lean, powerful, and in control. The technology of the Mac itself? A hammer - the most simple and basic of tools, familiar to all and useful beyond measure. This is the way Apple presented it's product in 1984, and remains a key part of their branding today.
Apple as The Liberator
In the 1984 commercial, the Mac literally destroys the status quo, freeing the inhabitants of Scott's world to live their lives without the yoke of controlling technology. Here, Apple is cast as liberator of the people - the Mac was intended to let people interact with technology on their own terms, to do the work that they need to get done, unlimited by the designs and desires of the technology's makers. Again, this remains a big part of Apple brand and image. Intuitive interfaces, "friendly," product design, and the epiphany that was user-created apps reinforce Apple's "liberator" image, though the advent of their pentalobular screw heads and other tamper-proofing measures do cast the company in a bit more of a Big Brother light than before.
Apple consumers view the company as friendly, supportive, and cool. They expect Apple products to be easier to use, nicer to look at, and better-supported than the alternatives. Apple set these expectations for themselves with the Mac, and cemented this image in the minds of consumers with a groundbreaking television commercial that has become a part of the modern zeitgeist. Surely, the company hired Ridley Scott to make a commercial that would reflect the image and culture that they WANTED to project, but one has to wonder whether the overwhelming and unanticipated success they met with pigeonholed the company to some degree. Would Apple still be marketing themselves as the liberating underdog were it not for 1984? It's hard to tell.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Benjiman_Kelly 

How To Hide IP Address

Before I will start the talk about the net security it's better to scatter the most stable myth concerning Internet anonymity. No, I do not want to say that people think it is impossible to get any information about a person through the Internet. I mean the next proposition: "I don't need anonymity because I have no "dark" deals. It must care the hackers..." And now think: is it good when strangers know your home address and want to enter your home without your permission?
They always follow you wherever you go and they try to find out all about you. I'm sure you won't be happy about it. So, tell me, please, why the majority of Internet users does not care about their security in the Net? Besides, recently more and more resources provide a man with different information according to home location. For example, a lot of US informational business projects do not show the most important data to people outside USA. Is it not fair? Not half! Today we'll try to correct this unfairness. If you know IP address of a computer you can know a lot of things about its users.
We start with the theory of the nets in general and the Internet in a particular. To be definite, we begin with the rule of addressing uploaded information packets. So, when you type some address in a browser line, the request first of all is sent to the DNS server which transforms the symbol string into the set of 32 zeros and ones (0, 1) - IP address which is used for routing. If an intruder knows that address he/she can hook out a lot of information. For example, real home location. Or with the help of whois service which defines user's provider easily by his IP address. Well, how can you protect yourself? For that reason you should hide IP address.
Proxy Server
Exploring how to hide IP address with proxy server which is something like a mediator between the user's computer and the Net servers we have discovered the "betrayer" - IP address which can be deleted in no way because of data routing necessity. But the proxy server sends requests to the web server itself. And it gets all information in return. That's why at first blush the usage of proxy - anonymity guarantee. But it's not so easy. It transpired that the majority of proxies sends final user IP address in a special field (x-forwarded-for). Honestly, there are anonymous services but it's hard to find them. But if you find such a server you can hide IP address and use the Net. By the way, you can check any proxy for anonymity on the site http://www.proxylist.com.
Anonymizers
Anonymizer - an anonymous proxy server which has its own web interface. And it's very easy to work with it. All you need is go to the site, put necessary address in the special field - that's it. After that server will hide IP address. Then the requested page downloads. You can be sure that you are secure.
But there are some disadvantages:

1. Download speed of pages can slow down appreciably
2. Most of them are high-priced

Nowadays it's practically impossible to find a good anonymizer for free. Of cause when they had just appeared nobody could think about selling. Maximum that the owners could allow - to set some advertising banners. Now users do have to pay to stay unnoticed. Incidentally, there are a lot of people who stand on the fact that anonymizers are not legal and should be stopped. But, of cause, it's flimflam because then we should also stop periwigs industry because criminals use them to change their exterior.
Now we know how to hide IP address, but there are other more effective ways to lurk. The most famous - cookies technology. Frequent, people use Cookies technology in cunning purposes. What is it? Cookie - is a symbol string (4 KB) which a server writes to the specific file on a PC of a user. This technology was developed for convenient Net working. For example, E-shop can remember a user and offer him/her to take a look over some new products according to his/her specific preferences. A special access limitation has been set to save all data confidentiality: only that server that put the data in the cookies can read them in the future. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a piece of cake to bypass it.
Think back, what do you see on almost all web pages in the Internet? That's right, banners and visitors counters. Aptly, most of these elements are downloaded from their own servers. Therefore a visitation counter script situated on the number of sites can easily write down and read the data from the cookies. As a result a system has an opportunity to follow your web rote or to learn your web habits. And this, in its turn, is the natural lurk. Do you agree? You should Hide IP address! There are different services that can hide IP address but I know for sure just one which uses GUI interface and has no equivalents - Arovax SmartHide.
Arovax SmartHide
SmartHide is a kind of anonymizer but it has no web interface. It uses simple interface and looks like any other software that a user runs everyday. Just one button click is needed to hide IP address. You can Hide IP address for free with this software. There are a lot of services with web interface but it's a matter of fact that they provide not all what they say. Furthermore, with the simple software like Arovax SmartHide you shouldn't fill the fields all the time. It will hide IP address absolutely for everything including ICQ, browsers, IRC, Email, FTP, etc.
Socks
Socks technology is a secure tool that provides anonymity in the Internet. We are talking about socks-protocols. A working principle of this technology is similar to the proxy server's one. A socks-server receives computer user's data, sends it to the web-server and retargets returned data back. There are several serious differences, truly. First - "communication" between a client PC and a socks-server is served not by the common protocols but by the special ones (socks4, socks5, etc.) As a result user's IP address transfer is impossible in principle. Moreover, a socks-server transforms the users' information into requests for the accepted protocols itself. That means that no other server will guess that it sends the data not to the final user but to its mediator. It's quite enough to download a special utility SocksCap provided by Company NEC USA, Inc. Install it, run it, choose the software which should be secured. (Internet Explorer, Mozilla FireFox), put in socks-server address and a port. That's all - now you are in safe while using the browsers.
That's all there is to it, I guess. I have presented all most famous ways which can be used in order to make a user anonymous in Internet space for today. Of cause, the situation changes all the time and new developments appear each day, that is why if you want to be protected and anonymous while surfing the Internet try to follow the latest news concerning computer security.

Arovax, LLC is an innovative software development company focused on innovative, high-quality and user friendly Online Security & Privacy Solutions. Visit Arovax Smart Hide [http://www.smarthide.com/hide_ip.php] Hideip page where you can find everything related to this topic. Also learn more about Smarthide on the site map [http://www.smarthide.com/site_map.php] page.

Article Source: Ezine Articles