Tag: EZLynx Marketing Campaigns

EZLynx Marketing Campaign Tips for Insurance Agents

Posted on by Sara Button

ezlynx_email_marketing

Email continues to play an integral role in online marketing for many different businesses, especially independent insurance agents. Through effective email practices, you can send a customized message directly to your target audience with the click of a button.

Taking things a step further with EZLynx Marketing Campaigns, we allow agents the option to select their audience and customize their message. You can search through a library of unique content and design templates to best suite your message and target base.

Know Your Audience

However you want to reach your clients, you should know your audience before you begin planning your campaign. Who do you want to reach? Whether it be customers enrolled in a certain policy, or narrowing down a community-specific message, knowing who you want to reach is crucial.

With EZLynx Marketing Campaigns, you can communicate with all of your clients in one place, and see your results as well. The recently enhanced interface allows a user-friendly and productive experience.

Personalize Your Message

A nice way to remind your customers that you appreciate them is to send them an email on their birthday. With EZLynx Marketing Campaigns you can import your clients and their birthdays, and send a mass but customized email each month for respective customers birthdays. You can also choose between a myriad of templates and messages, or create your own custom message.

Adding a personal touch reminds customers that you appreciate not only their business but them, as well. Who doesn’t like to be reminded that they are appreciated?

Build a Relationship

Your customers come to you for their insurance needs because they like and trust you. People can go literally anywhere for insurance coverage, which is why it is important to build relationships with your customers. Staying in contact with clients, more than just letting them know their policy is about to expire, is crucial for client retention and long-term relationships.

Insurance is a people business, and getting to know the people who keep you in business is a great way to ensure a long lasting business.

Posted in Products & Services | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Insurance Tech Trends for 2016

Posted on by Sara Button
2016_insurance_trends_ezlynx

 

As the page turns in our calendars from 2015 to 2016, we want to recap some Insurance Tech Trends to look for in the year ahead of us. Technology is on the forefront of all things insurance, on both a consumer and agent level. Ensuring you are reaching your customers in the most effective way while keeping their information secure are two key business objectives to keep in mind when forecasting your business for the year to come. EZLynx has compiled a list of Insurance Tech Trends to watch for in 2016.

Local Optimization

With only 15% of Americans not using the internet, the odds are in your favor to make sure your agency is easily found online. Local optimization helps agents reach customers in their area. Google is (continuously) the most popular online search engine and it pulls in search results from locally optimized websites first. With your EZLynx Gold Agency Website package, we provide locally optimized content that is more likely to be found on Google when searching locally. In addition to locally optimizing you website, it is also important to focus on a local reach when writing blog articles.

Email Campaigns

How you reach your client base is important. Nowadays it seems like everyone has a smartphone attached to their hand, which means they are likely receiving texts and emails pretty regularly. With EZLynx Marketing Campaigns, you can reach your customers the way they prefer to be reached: by email or text. This not only builds customer loyalty, but helps improve retention while driving sales. You can reach your entire customer base with one personalized email, or narrow down your search to customers with a birthday in a certain month, customers in a certain area, or by which line of business the customer has purchased with your agency.

PPC Marketing

In certain lines of business, PPC Marketing can be a very effective tool. When you search Google for a local coffee joint, you’ll see advertisements to the right of the search results. These are PPC Ads. The client pays a fee each time someone clicks their ad, thus buying visits to your website versus receiving visits organically. In in the insurance industry, these advertisements might be costly but prove to be very effective in driving traffic to your website.

Accurate Analytics

Wouldn’t it be nice to see all of the important metrics of your business in one organized snapshot? With EZLynx Agency Pulse, you can do just that! The comprehensive report is part of our Management System and includes key metrics such as total annual premium, policy count, new business, agency retention, and carrier retention. The report identifies and tracks changes in your business so you don’t have to rummage through multiple reports and emails. The report generates weekly (is that correct) and is sent straight to your inbox.

Drones

Yes, drones. Drones may be an important tool in your toolbox. In April 2015, a Pennsylvania insurance company was the first to receive approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to test drones for claims use. By September 2015 the drone inspected a roof of a house that had filed a claim. With the maturation of imaging technology, the company owner confirms that the effort is worth the risk. If your agency is in the business of covering large amounts of land, homes, or other outdoor properties, a drone (and a drone pilot) may be a wise investment in your future.

Cybersecurity

Insurers around the United States are raising concern to tighten their company’s cybersecurity. At EZLynx, we take data security seriously. With the major breaches last year from Premera and Anthem, there is no doubt that there will be more announced this year. Finding the right level of security is pertinent to your future success. Investing your time and business with any EZLynx product guarantees you a certain level of security, one that is protected by remote servers in dedicated production environments.

 

Posted in Advice, Miscellaneous | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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

Posted on by Riley Simmons

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!

Posted in Announcements, NewsLynx | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Tap Into the Marketing Potential of your EZLynx Consumer Data with EZLynx Bulk Campaigns

Posted on by Riley Simmons

According to one study, almost 50% of consumers will make a purchase next year as a result of a marketing email.  EZLynx Drip Campaigns makes it easy for our users to put individual applicants on long term, multi-step email campaigns, but we know that it is also important to be able to send out bulk campaigns to targeted groups of people.  After all, if you’re reading this article, you are probably here as a result of our own bulk email blast. EZLynx Bulk Campaigns, the perfect companion to EZLynx Drip Campaigns, is here to help make the task of marketing and communicating with your prospects and customers in EZLynx even easier!

EZLynx Bulk Campaigns - Campaigns TabYou have a lot of valuable consumer information in your EZLynx account. Aside from the typical data such as names, addresses, and emails, you also have some unique policy and coverage data. Agents need an easy way to tap into this powerful data in order to send intelligent, revenue-producing emails to their consumers. EZLynx Bulk Campaigns, available through the EZLynx Marketplace, will do just that.

Our primary focus as we started to build EZLynx Bulk Campaigns was the list-building capabilities. We know this is essential to agents when preparing bulk email blasts. Specifically, this new tool allows you to filter the entirety of your EZLynx consumer data based on some very specific criteria, such as age, marital status, line of business, expiration date, annualized premium, carrier, and more.

EZLynx Buk Campaigns - ListsThese advanced filters allow your agency to send out highly targeted email campaigns to help your agency grow and retain business. For example, with EZLynx Bulk Campaigns, you will be able to build a list of your personal home clients whose policies will expire in three months and don’t have an auto policy with your agency. Want to narrow your results even more? You can also filter your list to target only those clients whose current policy falls within a certain annual premium. Or, to send an email to all of your commercial policy customers that don’t have their personal coverage with your agency, simply add two filters and you’re ready to go.

The goal of the list building tool in EZLynx Bulk Campaigns is to simplify sending the right email campaigns for your agency’s needs, because the more targeted your marketing efforts are, the more effective they will be.

EZLynx Bulk Campaigns - New CampaignOnce you’ve built the list, starting a new campaign is easy. Simply give your campaign a name, subject, and set the reply-to address to get started. Then, select the template and one of the lists you created. All that’s left to do at this point is fill in the email content. We’ve built in customization tags so you can make your emails as personalized and targeted as possible. For example, you can dynamically include the consumer’s information in the email, such as their first name, and the system will automatically fill in those values before it is sent to each individual recipient. You will be able to schedule the campaign to go out immediately, or set it to go out at a future date and time. This allows you to plan ahead with your email marketing strategy.

This first release of EZLynx Bulk Campaigns is only the beginning. Additional templates, new ways to filter your consumer data, and more powerful ways to customize and personalize the emails that you send are already being planned!

Sign up here to get started with EZLynx Bulk Campaigns and find out how EZLynx can help streamline the entire customer lifecycle for your agency.

 

Posted in NewsLynx | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

EZLynx Roadmap for 2014

Posted on by Nag Rao

It is that time of the year when we reflect on our previous year’s resolutions and make new resolutions for the coming year. I want to start with a quick review of last year’s resolution first followed by new resolutions for 2014. There are four areas of the industry I focused on in our EZLynx Roadmap for 2013. Below is an end of the year update on each one of the focus areas.

A look back at 2013…

Consumers and Mobile

We made tremendous progress with both of these focus areas in 2013. We started the year with a new version of our consumer facing product EZLynx Client Center. This product allows our EZLynx Management System customers to add a consumer login to their agency website, allowing consumers to print policy related documents like ID card, proof of insurance, etc. and also to request policy changes. We also released our new mobile friendly version of EZLynx Consumer Quoting mid-year. This product enables consumers visiting an agency web site to use their smart phone or tablet to obtain live quotes in a mobile friendly screen. We have two other mobile products scheduled for delivery before end of this year – a mobile version of EZLynx Client Center, and an update to our mobile version of EZLynx.

Agency in a Box

Agency in a Box has been a philosophy of our product design from day one. It is our goal, one day, to offer a solution to our agents that manages the entire agency customer life cycle. We have been focused on agency policy servicing features for the last two years. We made considerable progress with expanding our commercial support in EZLynx Management System in 2013. We delivered two big pieces for commercial agencies this past year – Premium Trust Accounting and Certificate Management. Both of these solutions are feature rich and I really encourage you to visit our website or talk to one of our sales people for more details.

EZLynx Marketplace

We delivered four third-party products in 2013 under the EZLynx Marketplace architecture. We started the year with a fully integrated eSignature app, followed by a Lead Management integration app mid-year, and before the end of this year we will be delivering Bulk Campaigns under the umbrella of our EZLynx Marketing Campaigns product, and finally, EZLynx Accounting will be officially launched in January.

Agency Management for the new digital age

We are confident that we have laid a strong foundation for EZLynx Management System to date. Our product has been fully cloud based from day one so you can work with the management system from any place on any system and any device. One of the best features we implemented in 2013 is our monthly Agency Pulse report. This report summarizes, every month via an email, some of the key metrics about your organization. These metrics include total written premium, personal lines to commercial lines ratio, policies per customer, premium per customer, carrier retention ratio, agency and producer close ratio, and more. You can find more information about Agency Pulse here.

Looking ahead to 2014…

Now it’s time for me to make some resolutions for 2014. I have several wish list items that I personally want to accomplish this coming year. This list is quite exhaustive, so I will try and stick to 3 big items or focus areas that we will be tackling in 2014.

Agency Analytics and Agency Metrics (Agency top line feature)

We believe our industry is experiencing a paradigm shift that requires agents to be opportunistic about how and where they focus their efforts in order to increase their top line revenue. Agency analytics is one of the ways a well thought out management system can guide agents in increasing their top line revenue. Our EZLynx Agency Pulse report, implemented earlier this year in EZLynx, is a simple first step of a much larger analytics implementation that will be rolled out in the first half of next year to improve our EZLynx Management System customers’ top line. Please stay tuned because we have some exciting new products and services announcements to make in the next year regarding agency analytics that should help you dramatically improve your top line numbers.

Agency Process Automation (Agency bottom line feature)

It is no longer enough to improve the top line at an agency without improving the bottom line at the same time. We will be enhancing several existing EZLynx Management System features in 2014 to streamline agency processes and to improve agency profitability. Once again please stay tuned because we have some exciting changes coming in the first half of next year which should help you dramatically improve your bottom line numbers.

Commercial Support

We are very confident with the level of support that we have built into EZLynx Management System for personal lines agencies. We feel it is time for us to focus more on features that a big commercial lines agency would desire. We hope to build several new features in this area for 2014. Due to competitive reasons I would be hesitant to discuss this in detail other than to simply say that much more is coming soon.

Outside of these three major focus areas, we will continue to push forward with more mobile features, more consumer facing features, more marketplace applications, and providing the same level of customer support that we pride ourselves on. As you can see we have a big list of projects and ideas for 2014. I am really excited about the coming year, and I hope you are as excited as I am to be a part of the EZLynx family. I am predicting 2014 to be a break out year for EZLynx Management System.

Thanks for a great year!

Before I sign off, I want to thank all our hard working staff at EZLynx, especially our product support team, for their dedicated effort to serve you every day. I encourage you to send them complimentary emails whenever they provide you with excellent service. I also encourage you to contact me directly if there is something that is bothering you about our company or product. I will be more than glad to reply and have a conversation with you.

Thanks you for being our customer and have a safe and happy holidays and a happy new year!

 

Posted in A Note from the CEO, NewsLynx | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Software as a Service: Affordable Solutions for Total Independent Insurance Management

Posted on by EZLynx

Cloud computing allows an independent insurance agent to obtain the same computer services that a large insurance company enjoys by obtaining them through a service agreement with a Software as a Service (SaaS) vendor.

For more than a decade, EZLynx has been helping insurance agencies run more efficiently. Now we offer four levels of agency management and digital marketing suites to suppliment the EZLynx Rating Engine. EXLynx Agency Suites, ranging from basic to a full enterprise system, includes a number of features to help streamline your workflow, generate new business, and retain exising customers.

Whether you choose EZLynx’s Basic Package, Standard Package, Advanced Package, or our Enterprise Package you will get access to innovative solutions that rival the proprietary systems of the largest insurance companies. Since the software resides on our secure server, you avoid the major investment in hardware and software.

Changes are easily and reliably added by EZLynx without interruption of your daily operations and involvement of expensive IT services.

EZLynx Rating Engine

At the center of our product, EZLynx is powered by the EZLynx Rating Engine. This core componenet is required for all of our Agency Suites.

EZLynx Management System

Each package includes our robust management system. Agents can obtain any data they need from wherever they can access the Internet. The entire client lifecycle is managed and stored in the cloud.

EZLynx Consumer Quoting

The EZLynx Internet quote system allows your customers to easily fill forms out a single time and generate a quote they can review online. If the quote is incomplete, the system will automatically email the client and request they complete the information needed. Advanced features include automatic vehicle pre-fill and other things to make the process as consumer friendly as possible.

EZLynx Marketing Campaigns

Integrating your EZLynx data with email drip campaigns allows independent insurance agents to stay in contact with clients on a regular basis rather just at renewal time. It is easy to design digital marketing campaigns that are informative and relevant – communications is one of the most important parts of successful ongoing marketing. This feature is also standard for all packages.

EZLynx Client Center

Here your clients can easily get their ID Cards, policy documents, and request changes 24/7. Enhanced customer service helps to retain clients and saves your agency time and money.

EZLynx Agency Websites

EZLynx offers powerful agency websites that come fully integrated with our Consumer Quoting and Client Center products. Generate new business with a website built using SEO best practices, offer live comparative quoting, and then service those consumers after they become customers.

When you choose EZLynx as your SaaS provider, no matter what suite you select, you get an easy to implement full-service suite of services so that your agency runs smoothly. With no software needed to download, there is no reason not to try our free 10-day trial. Click here to sign up or call us at 877-932-2382, option 2.

Posted in Products & Services | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

EZLynx Marketing Campaigns – Assurance for Insurance

Posted on by EZLynx

The competition in today’s insurance market is tougher than ever. Potential customers know that they have a lot of choices. While getting rate quotes from competing insurance companies was once a luxury, it’s now expected. An individual insurer needs to market their existing products, serve current customers and attract new business. Doing it all can be a tall order, but with EZLynx Marketing Campaigns agents can focus on developing their relationships with customers, and ultimately grow their business.

Informed Customers

With so many people doing their insurance research online, it’s important to effectively incorporate digital marketing into your strategy. People throw away direct-mail advertising before they even look at it, and they leave the room during a commercial break while watching television. But the still turn to their computers, smartphones and tablets for information, and by providing it you engage your prospects and keep them focused on your products for that much longer. But keeping up with online digital marketing and drip campaigns takes a lot of effort, and honestly, do you really have time for that?

EZLynx Marketing Campaigns gives you the opportunity to use your skills in the way that you do best, while we take care of the marketing and provide clear reporting clearly identifies which of your policies and products are working, and which might need tweaking.

Email Marketing

Email Marketing is part of our strategy that helps directly engage customers. With email templates, we reinforce your brand and give your clients and prospects an opportunity to get a steady flow of information that will ultimately lead them back to your website where they can compare rate quotes, get even more information, and even manage many aspects of their own policy or research possible upgrades.

Instead of simply doing an email blast. we structure strategic drip campaigns, which send a series of emails to your clients and prospects over a period of time. The philosophy behind drip marketing is that the average person needs to be presented with promotional materials 29 times before they become a customer or upgrade their service. While these campaigns can be done with printed postcards and newsletters, it is far less expensive to present these promotional materials digitally.

Leads and Tracking

Ultimately, the best way to know whether your digital marketing plan is working is by looking at the number of leads you are getting. EZLynx Marketing Campaigns makes it easy. Our program uses an MS Outlook add-in to flag the emails that ultimately generate leads. With this knowledge, you can tell what is working, fine-tune your drip campaigns and put more of your resources into the strategies that are most effective with your customers.

More Information

While digital marketing is increasingly popular among all businesses, EZLynx focuses on the needs of insurance agencies to fully grasp the unique needs and concerns of the industry. Our Agency Suites products range from basic services, which include EZLynx Marketing Campaigns, to the EZLynx Management integrated with MS Outlook. More advanced packages include customer quoting, a client center and informative agency websites.

To find out more about which of EZLynx products would be a good fit for your agency, visit us at EZLynx.com

Posted in Products & Services | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Easily Send Birthday Emails with EZLynx Marketing Campaigns

Posted on by Riley Simmons

birthday cupcakesIndependent agents are often required to play the role of agent, CSR, and marketing director.  EZLynx Marketing Campaigns makes it easy to streamline simple email marketing tasks so that your agency can spend more time writing new business.  Multi-step drip email campaigns are a great way to follow up with both customers and prospects over a long period of time without requiring on-going monitoring on your part.

We recently released an upgrade to our drip campaign feature that allows the user to set a specific activation date for the drip campaign process for a selected applicant.  This makes it possible to put individual applicants on a variety of date-specific and recurring campaigns, including birthday campaigns.

To send out birthday campaigns you will need to setup and customize a Birthday Campaign template.  We have provided one to help get you started.

EZLynx Marketing Campaigns - New Birthday Template

Once a template is created, you’ll be able to put individual applicants on the birthday campaign in a few simple steps.

Select the applicant for whom you want to setup the birthday campaign.  Click Start Drip Campaign and choose your birthday campaign template from the list.

EZLynx Marketing Campaigns - Start New Birthday Campaign

Set the new campaign to activate on the applicant’s birthday and check the yearly recurrence box to schedule the campaign to repeat for the next 5 years.

EZLynx Marketing Campaigns is included as part of EZLynx Agency Suites.  Find out how EZLynx is the only tool you need to run your agency. Watch the video or drop us a line and we’ll get in touch.

Posted in NewsLynx | Tagged , , | 4 Comments