Top 10 Tips for Personal Lines Retention

It’s no secret that successful agencies make retention a priority. They know that keeping a customer is much more profitable than going out to find a new one.

Here are 10 helpful tips to keep your agency focused and winning at renewal time.

  1. Have a Retention process. 
    This one may seem obvious, but it really does start here.

    Repeatable success won’t happen without a plan. Document a process and embrace it the same way you would any critical procedure within your agency.

  2. Work your Retention process daily.
    Retention should be a daily habit. Each member of the team should have an assigned role and a list of goals to achieve each day.
  3. Be proactive, not reactive.
    Know what’s happening with your client’s policy before the carrier sends the renewal notice. Then, communicate (quickly).

    Once clients receive their new rates from the carrier, they’re already shopping (without you). That means you need to touch 100% of your clients before the carrier.

    To stay ahead of the game, make sure renewals are downloading to your agency management system.

  4. Know when a client is at risk.
    Renewing clients should be managed in two categories—those at risk and those that aren’t.  (This may seem easier said than done, but technology can really help out in this area.)

    You’re going to touch both groups, but prioritize the communication.

    For at-risk clients, you’ll want to evaluate their policy first. If you recognize their renewal is out of line with the market, communicate that. Let them know better options are available and reassure them that you’re already working on it.

    For clients in a better spot, you’ll want to communicate that you’ve proactively reviewed their renewal. All is in order and in line with the current market, but you’re available for any additional consultation.

  5. Be ready to explain why the client’s premium increased.
    An on-screen comparison of the current and renewing policies is the quickest way to accomplish this. If there is an obvious reason for the rate increase (new car, coverage changes, etc.), viewing them side-by-side will quickly discover it.
  6. Be ready to provide multiple quotes.
    Customers want to feel like they have explored their options. By providing multiple quotes, you’re easing their minds and making them feel better about doing business with you.
  7. Know when to remarket, and when to educate.
    As retention becomes a daily priority, your agency will gain a feel for when it is appropriate to remarket your insureds.

    What does the client value? How big was the impact of the state rate change? What’s happening in the carrier market, or with the product offering?

    Educate your clients on current market conditions so you remain their trusted advisor.

  8. Stay in touch… not just at renewal time.
    Having a regular communication cadence will keep you top of mind all year round. Find reasons to reach out and add value to your clients’ lives.

    Account reviews are great opportunities to re-evaluate clients’ needs and reinforce your value.

  9. Cross-selling keeps customers.
    Rounding out accounts is a sure-fire way to strengthen them for the long term. Is the client bundled for home and auto? Does your agency offer Life and Health?
  10. Be unique in your community.
    You know why customers trust you to insure their risks, so make sure that value comes through at renewal time.

    Do you give back to the community through charitable work or volunteerism? Do you serve a particular demographic? What types of online services do you provide? Do clients have access to their policies online 24/7?

    This is the time to promote your brand and show customers that you care.

Final Thoughts

Always remember, agency retention doesn’t happen by accident. It’s something you must work toward constantly to be successful. With the right plan and practices, retention can become the cornerstone of your business and its long-term growth.

If some of these best practices seem daunting, it may be because your agency isn’t using all the technology available today. EZLynx can help with that. From Rating Engine to Management System, Communication Center, and the patented Retention Center, EZLynx has the tools you need to intelligently streamline the entire customer renewal process.


You Asked, We Listened: AgentLynx Progress Report

A little over three short months ago, many of our agents gathered together at AgentLynx 2018 in San Diego, where we announced new products, held group sessions, and allowed you to speak directly with the EZLynx Team about our products. We listened to your requests for new features, and we heard how EZLynx could further accommodate the needs of your agency.  With our release in mid-July and in the coming months, we are thrilled to be able to provide you with the first round of solutions to many of the requests and challenges you shared with us at AgentLynx.

EZLynx for Outlook

In response to your requests at AgentLynx, we committed to bringing you a more efficient, sleeker EZLynx Outlook plugin with updates to performance, workflow and features.  These enhancements will make Outlook feel like an extension of EZLynx.

We heard your concerns with the functionality of the plugin when you utilize Outlook on multiple devices. With this new enhancement to your Outlook plug in, seamlessly switch between home and work devices without worrying about receiving multiple automatic save dialogue boxes when you open Outlook.

In addition to simply documenting your emails in EZLynx, these Outlook plugin enhancements will allow you to select a specific task to associate with the email, attachments, and/or note; reopen or close a task from within the plugin; and add a reminder. For users with the Enhanced Workspace, you will now have the ability to mark a task as important and set its due date and time directly from the plugin.

Although you already had the ability to import attachments to EZLynx, the enhancement takes document management abilities to the next level, giving you the ability to preview documents, save documents to specific folders, and disable automatic saving of embedded images so you do not end up with unwanted email signature images in EZLynx.

We updated the Agency Workspace within Outlook as well, giving you the ability to add labels and mark emails with a sticky note, and we are improving your workflow by giving you the option to search and save to a different applicant within the workflow, even if matched to an applicant automatically. These enhancements will be automatically applied to your existing Outlook plug-in.

MSB Residential Pre-Fill and Reconstruction Cost Valuations

Soon EZLynx will feature integration with CoreLogic® to bring you residential prefill and reconstruction cost valuation powered by Marshall & Swift. Residential prefill will drastically improve your home quote process by allowing you to use MSB lookup within EZLynx to automatically pull information about a home prospect. You can further improve your process with the MSB reconstruction cost valuation tool to predict the cost of replacing the entire home. Both services will be available at a competitive, cost-efficient rate per transaction.

CoreLogic, the CoreLogic logo, and Marshall & Swift are trademarks of CoreLogic, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries.

Non-Owners & Broad Form

In the coming months we will be rolling out support for non-owners and broad form auto policy types, which has been a highly requested feature for many of our users.

Read Only User Access for Reports

Read Only User access for reports gives you more control over your data by allowing you to send reports to other users in your agency without having to give them access to all your reporting. This will keep your data secure within your organization. Contact customer support to activate this feature.

Bulk Actions in the Document Library

Additional efforts to increase your productivity and help you manage your data, we have made improvements to our document capabilities to now allow you to move or delete more than one document at once and share multiple documents to the Client Center simultaneously.

Agency Activities

The first of several Activity and Agency Workspace enhancements, we have enhanced your ability to associate notes with policies in order to increase your productivity and make it easier to stay organized. You can now associate a policy number with a note at any time, rather than only having this capability when you first created the note. If you need to move a policy to another individual, all the notes associated with that policy will now be carried over to the new assigned user.

Multiple Addresses

To help you stay more organized, we will soon allow for additional addresses, including military addresses, to be stored and associated with one customer’s account. Users with EZLynx Accounting will have the ability to directly include billing address information on invoices. The enhancement will also allow you to select the proper address from the addresses associated with a policy when sending postal mail through Communication Center. This feature is coming soon.

Looking to the Future

These enhancements and features are just the start. We have committed to bringing you even more of the changes and features that you have requested. We take your suggestions seriously, and we are always looking for ways to make improvements that will benefit your agency.

The opportunity to provide face-to-face feedback to the EZLynx Team is part of the main value of attending our user conference. AgentLynx helps our teams hear the unified voices of multiple agents and allows us to understand and address the top business challenges that many of our users face. It also provides you with the opportunity to network and collaborate on the best strategies for using EZLynx with other agents and EZLynx team members. We hope to see you at the next AgentLynx Conference in Fort Worth, Texas in 2019!


EZLynx Text Messaging Supports Multimedia Messages (MMS)

We are excited to announce that MMS support for our EZLynx Text Messaging product will be available in the coming weeks. Available as part of our EZLynx Communication Center bundle, with EZLynx Text Message your agency is provided with a unique local phone number that you can use to send and receive SMS and MMS text messages directly from EZLynx.

If you already have EZLynx Text Messaging, you should have received an email from us about some changes required to take advantage of this new feature. We will continue to stay in touch with you directly about this process. You can contact [email protected] directly if you have any questions about the migration process.

In addition to support for multimedia messages, we have added notification management and branch support features, allowing for number sharing and greater control over who receives alerts upon incoming messages. Let’s take a look!

Send and Receive Multimedia Messages (MMS)

When you receive a multimedia message, the message will be displayed in the Sent & Received log as usual. However, the message will also indicate that it contains a number of attachments.

EZLynx Text Message Attachments

Click to view the included media and you will be able to preview the attachments right there on the page.  Easily download or save the attachments to the applicant’s document library in EZLynx.

EZLynx Text Messaging Attachment Preview

Sending multimedia messages is extremely easy. You will notice new options on the ‘Send Text Message’ window that will allow you to either upload attachments or select from the applicant’s document library.

EZLynx Text Messaging Send Attachments

This first version includes support for the universally accepted multimedia message file types, which includes most images, videos, audio files.

Manage your Text Message Notification Preferences

This upcoming update will also add a new tab to the Text Messaging Settings area.  This settings page is already accessible to users with the appropriate permission by hovering over the Communication Center menu and selecting Settings under the Text Messaging section.  This page will soon include an additional tab called Notification Rules that will allow you to configure how your organization, or your branch organizations, will receive alerts for incoming text messages.

Text Messaging Notification Rules

For those with a single location, you can simply jump right in to configuring the notification preferences for your users. For agencies with branches, you can choose to configure notification rules for each of your locations.

Text Messaging Notification Options

For agencies with multiple locations, it will also be possible to share the EZLynx Text Messaging Number assigned to your primary location with your branch locations as well, allowing all text message communications to flow through a single number. Incoming messages will still be routed to matching applicants at the branch, while unmatched messages can be managed at the main office.

Text Messaging Number Sharing

What’s Next

We are very excited about the possibilities in store for our text messaging solution. We have more enhancements planned for later this year that will make it easier than ever to communicate effectively and efficiently with you prospects and clients from EZLynx.

If you would like to learn more about EZLynx Communication Center, Text Messaging, or about what new features we plan to add later this year, please do not hesitate to contact us below.


Leverage EZLynx Reporting for your Email Marketing Campaigns

EZLynx Email CampaignsGet ready for our upcoming update to EZLynx Email Campaigns in the next few weeks, which includes a completely renovated process for segmenting your existing data for bulk email blasts.

We have been very pleased with the extensive enhancements that have been made so far this year to EZLynx Reporting; so much so that we felt the power of our reporting engine far outstripped our separate email campaign list builder.

As a result, this upcoming update will replace the existing list builder with Saved Reports from EZLynx Reporting. Take advantage of the powerful capabilities of our reporting engine to segment your data using both simple or highly complex filters. Once you have saved the report, it will be available for you to use within EZLynx Email Campaigns, which is part of our Communication Center bundle.

When you start a new campaign, your first step will be to name the campaign and select your recipients. You will be able to manually add individual recipients, select from your available Saved Reports, or choose from one of your static lists that you may have created from within EZLynx Retention Center or from the old list builder tool.

EZLynx Email Campaigns - Saved Reports

Your old lists will still be available to use, but any new or future lists will have to be created from within EZLynx Reporting as a Saved Report.

By making it possible to use our reporting engine to segment your data for Email Campaigns, we have brought a new level of accuracy to your email marketing. We are also excited about the new possibilities it brings, as there are many more filter options available in EZLynx Reporting than we had in our previous list builder.

This Update is Only the Beginning

While this update allows you to use your Saved Reports for campaigns, those campaigns are still using a static version of the report at the time you scheduled the campaign.  While not a big deal for short-term campaigns that are sent immediately, if your campaign has steps that are scheduled throughout the year, your list could get seriously out of date by the time the campaign finishes.

This has always been a problem for any email campaign service that relies on saved or uploaded lists, but we are excited to announce that our Email Campaigns update later this year is going to take your static lists and make them dynamic, allowing you to run Drip Campaigns using your Saved Reports and have those campaigns automatically update in real time before each email is sent.

Imagine being able to have a campaign that sends an email to your prospects every 3 months and automatically removes those recipients that become customers as a result. Schedule a recurring, long-term cross-sell campaign to all your customers that have an active homeowners policy but no auto policy and rest easy knowing that our system will automatically add or remove recipients to the campaign based on whether or not they still meet that criteria. The possibilities are endless, and this is just one of several very exciting enhancements planned for EZLynx Communication Center this year!


EZLynx Unveils Suite of Consumer Communication Tools for Insurance Agents

EZLynx today announces the general availability of EZLynx Communication Center. This suite of communication features brings seamless text messaging, email campaigns, eSignature, and Microsoft Outlook® integration to their flagship single-platform product.

“Communication is an essential part of doing business as an independent insurance agent,” said Riley Simmons, Product Manager at EZLynx. “That’s why Communication Center will be a priority for us this year as we strive to streamline the agent-consumer communication process for both new sales and the servicing of existing policyholders.

“Pair these integrated communication tools with EZLynx Agency Websites, EZLynx Consumer Quoting, EZLynx Client Center, EZLynx Management System, and EZLynx Retention Center, and our users now have the tools they need to manage the complete customer lifecycle – all on ONE PLATFORM™.”

EZLynx collaborated with the agent panel to get on-the-ground feedback on the tools needed by insurance agents. “It has been really satisfying to watch EZLynx take our feedback and roll out these incremental improvements to their product suite,” said one participating agency panel member . “EZLynx works hard to understand the challenges that agents face. When you look at the progression of their product enhancements, it because very obvious that these guys get it.”

Learn more about EZLynx Communication Center and their full suite of agency solutions.


New Email Campaign Enhancements Coming Soon

New Communication Center TabAfter the holidays, as you start to prepare your marketing efforts for the new year, those of you that have our EZLynx Marketing Campaigns product will see a few changes. To begin with, you will soon find a new icon in EZLynx. This updated menu will be your hub for everything related to your email campaign settings, templates, and campaign status.

Enhanced Design & Content Library

One of the concerns we frequently heard from agents is that they don’t have the time or expertise to design professional email campaigns, as well as come up with engaging content that their customers and prospects would want to read.

We have started to solve this challenge by building a design and content library that can be inserted into any email campaign. Choose from a library of categorized designs and simply click to insert the layout into your new campaign or template. With over 200 articles, it’s easy to build a newsletter, sales email, weather alert, or safety tip from scratch. The editor has also been enhanced to include common customization options such as font type, font size, background color, image upload, and more.

Design LibraryBest of all, you can insert these pre-written content samples completely independent from your design selection. The content is inserted wherever you place your cursor, making it easy to mix and match design and content.

Once you have inserted sample content into your template, you can easily edit the content to meet your specific needs. For example, you may want to add a link to your website, or you may want to include some additional content that is specific to your local community.

Shared Template Library

Another concern that many of our users have today is that we have two completely separate campaign tools – one for sending out bulk email blasts, and another one for sending out campaigns to individual applicants.

New Campaign WorkflowWhile the ability to put an individual recipient on an email campaign has not changed, starting in late December all campaigns will being using one common template library. Not only will this clear up some confusion about the two functions, but it will also open up new features, such as the ability to send a multi-step (“Drip”) campaign to a single applicant or a bulk list of recipients.

The new campaign workflow makes it possible to build these single or multi-step campaigns on the fly, and you can quickly toggle between each step in the series.

Greater Visibility

With a unified email campaign platform, you will be able to see exactly what communications are being sent out by your agency. See which emails are coming up, what has recently gone out, and get an estimate on how effective each campaign was by tracking open rates.

Campaign Overview

What’s Next

Communication is essential to running a successful business.  This first update will lay the foundation for where we want to take our email campaign tool next year.  From list building to powerful automation, we know that the more effectively you can communicate with your clients, the more productive you will be.

We will send out a notification to our current Marketing Campaign customers once we begin the migration process to this new tool to ensure that all of your existing templates are moved over.

Need help getting your templates set up or planning your email marketing strategy for 2016? We may be able to help with that too…


Supercharge Your Digital Marketing With New Designs and Sample Content in EZLynx Marketing Campaigns

This year will see several major enhancements to our bulk and drip email marketing campaign tools as we address some of the feedback we have received on how to make these tools more useful for your agency.  We are excited to announce that the first of these enhancements is now available, making the creating of new bulk email templates easier than ever!

One of the concerns we frequently heard from agents is that they don’t have the time or expertise to design professional email campaigns, as well as come up with engaging content that their customers and prospects would want to read.

We have started to solve this challenge by building a design and content library that can be inserted into any bulk email campaign template. To get started, navigate to the Campaigns tab in EZLynx, then make your way to your template library. This is the list of all the templates you have created at your agency. From here you can create a new template for use in future bulk campaigns.

Template List

Now that you are in the Bulk Campaigns template editor, you can insert your own content (or HTML, for you advanced users out there) like always, but there are now two new buttons at the top – Select Design and Select Content.

Template Editor

Choosing either of these options will bring up the new Design and Content library, which you’ll find populated with over 40 new designs and over 80 content samples.

Design List

Browse the list of options by category to find an option that works for your needs, select it, then choose Insert. Magically, your selection is inserted into the template editor, ready for your customizations!

Design Selected

Best of all, you can insert pre-written content samples completely independent from your design selection. This makes it easy to mix and match designs and content.  Simply place your cursor in the spot where you want to insert the content, then choose ‘Select Content’ from the top.

Content List

Once you have inserted sample content into your template, you can easily edit the content to meet your specific needs.  For example, you may want to add a link to your website, or you may want to include some additional content that is specific to your local community.

Complete Email

Once you are happy with your template, give it a name and click Save. The new template will be added to your Template List and available to use on any future Bulk Email Campaign.

While this first enhancement is limited to our Bulk Email Campaign Tool, rest assured that we will make these features available to the Drip Campaign tool in the coming months.

Communication is essential to running a successful business, which is why we have more exciting enhancements to our suite of communication tools planned for this year, so stay tuned!


Resolutions for Your Agency’s Success in 2015

Resolutions for Your Agency’s Success in 2015

When ringing in a new year, it is tradition to set resolutions; a catalyst for personal growth in the year ahead. Business goals can also get a renewed momentum by taking advantage of this time of fresh starts. So, here we present four communications resolutions for your agency’s success in 2015.


Resolve to Sell More Business

Resolve to sell more business

This may seem as though it doesn’t require a resolution, it being an ever-present main objective, but we’re talking about having a clear plan of action to make it happen. EZLynx Bulk and Drip Marketing Campaigns give your agency tools that are well proven to increase new sales, brand awareness and customer loyalty. With a high return-on-investment, these email communications not only increase revenue, but cost less while doing so. Be bold and successful.

EZLynx Marketing Campaigns

Resolve to provide customers with better service

Resolve to provide customers with better service

Another “no brainer” you’re thinking, but again, you need a concrete plan. With EZLynx Text Messaging, you’ll use today’s consumers’ favorite form of communication, but with a new twist. Your two-way text conversations are automatically saved in the applicant’s account, and accessible to everyone in the office instead of stuck on a personal cell. Using innovative technology not only facilitates better service, but also builds customers’ confidence in your agency. Be modern with cutting-edge technology.

EZLynx Text Messaging

Resolve to build a great reputation

Resolve to build a great reputation

An organized agency works more effectively and ultimately creates a positive image.   With EZLynx for Outlook, agents can quickly save relevant emails and their attachments to an applicant’s account, and create tasks and reminders simultaneously. The daily barrage of emails becomes manageable and organized, and tasks related to these emails won’t “fall through the cracks”. Be efficient and reliable.

EZLynx for Outlook

Resolve to simplify

Resolve to simplify

Sometimes a seemingly small change can reduce a lot stress. The post office is well known for being a stressful, wait-in-a-long-line kind of place. Avoid trips to buy stamps and drop off mail, as well as jaunts to the local paper/toner/envelope supply store by using EZLynx eSignature. Obtain electronic signatures on multiple documents from multiple recipients, without leaving your office. You’ll access the completed documents within the applicant’s account too. Be calm and use eSignature.

EZLynx eSignature

EZLynx Communication Center makes it easy to keep these 2015 resolutions. Our sales reps are happy to demonstrate these powerful tools and get you up-and-running in no time. Fill out the form below to find out more.

Integrated Text Messaging in EZLynx

Eliminate the E&O Trap Caused by Texting with Clients

Continuing the trend of providing innovative agency solutions, EZLynx now has a fully integrated SMS text messaging solution – EZLynx Text Messaging. And it’s available today!

EZLynx Text Messaging is Here!Everyone loves to text. It’s quick, to the point, and you can do it from anywhere. Agencies are keenly aware of the huge E&O issue caused by communicating with their customers via text messages because the courts find that if it’s not documented in the agency system, it never happened.

Available as an individual add-on or part of our discounted Communication Center bundle, EZLynx Text Messaging allows your agency to send and receive text messages with your customers using a custom, dedicated phone number for your agency – giving you the peace of mind in knowing the messages are safely stored in EZLynx. No other agency automation vendor offers such a tightly integrated solution.

Text messaging, once used almost exclusively by teens, has grown to encompass a wider age range, with older adults now making up the fastest-growing new population of texters, according to the Pew Internet & Life Project.

In another study, it was found that text message open rates exceeded 98%, and even more shocking was that 90% of all text messages were read within 3 minutes of being received on the mobile phone. In short, texting works!

EZLynx Text Messaging - New Message

When viewing a consumer in EZLynx, select the option to send a text message, choose the phone number, type your message, and click send. It’s as simple as that.

EZLynx Text Messaging - Activity Log

When the consumer responds, the message will automatically be associated with that applicant. You will also receive a copy of the message by email. Best of all, the text messages will be logged as an activity in EZLynx, ensuring you always maintain a two-way record of the entire conversation.

EZLynx Text Messaging - Message Log

When viewing the incoming message log, reply back to incoming messaging without leaving the page, allowing you to quickly work your way down the list. You can also search through your log of text messages by applicant, date, message, and more. For text messages where the phone number does not match, search inline to find and associate the message with the correct applicant in seconds.

EZLynx understands the power of digital communication, and we are continuing to find innovative ways to make technology work for you and not against you. With EZLynx Communication Center, take advantage of our full suite of communication tools, including Text Messaging, Bulk & Drip Email Campaigns, eSignature, and our Microsoft Outlook plug-in, EZLynx for Outlook.

Start texting