THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE

TOP 3 WAYS TO USE DATA TO SELL MORE

As consumer buying preferences have increasingly shifted online to online buying since the pandemic, data has become the most powerful sales tool in insurance. Companies are using data to drive their marketing, to tailor their front-end buying experience, use proprietary data to prefill and improve the customer experience, and send personalized communications to upsell and improve retention. While the number of different ways to use data can (and have!) fill entire books, there are a few use cases that stand out. These are ways that leading agencies and MGAs are using to drive both their top and bottom lines in the right direction. We're going to take a quick look at these use cases--what they are, what's required, and how to use the data to make a big impact.

These three data use cases we're going to unpack are:

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3. Using book of business data to create target customer experiences and dominate niches Using customer policy data to upsell and cross-sell during renewal time. Using lead data to proactively rate and reach out to prospects.

These three use cases are so powerful that any agency or MGA can use them to drive innovation and stay relevant and grow in a world where data is king and digital is the new default. Let's dive in.

#1: Using Book of Business Data to Create Targeted Customer Experiences & Dominate Niches

In today's world, your customers are getting bombarded with alerts, offers, and direct marketing all day long. It's harder than ever to stand out.

This is where data comes in.

Leading agencies and MGAs are using their book of business data to create experience-driven campaigns that are optimized to their customer needs. They're looking at their book of business to find which segments are growing the fastest, where there are retention problems, and where loss ratios are lowest. These become targets for campaigns tailored to specific customer segments. These campaigns offer insurance packages targeted to those customers, streamlined digital experiences that don't ask for irrelevant or unnecessary information, and valueadds that speak to their individual situation. By tailoring the customer experience based on data, you're able to stand out by focusing on what they need and want, and branding and presentation that's clearly not just massmarketed generalizations. #2: Using Customer Policy Data to Upsell and Cross-sell During Renewal Time As we just mentioned, data is most powerful when it's used to create targeted customer experiences. Another important use case is to create and send personalized communications to upsell and crosssell during the renewal process. This requires you to have up-to-date information on your customers, particularly which types of policies they have and updated exposure data, typically obtained through a renewal questionnaire. Ideally, you need to provide your customer with a renewal form prefilled with their existing information. Once you have that information, the selling can actually begin in earnest. You should be able to use that information to generate quotes for relevant policies, if the carriers providing those products are sufficiently advanced.

This gives you the ability to create proposals that you can deliver automatically through a marketing automation system or personally by putting them in the hands of producers. This is a strong touchpoint with the customer and an opportunity to expand their overall premium they have with you. A personal lines customer who is a business owner is the prime example--they should be presented with a proposal for their business. You should also be crossselling benefits to your current book of commercial policies if you can. The possibilities are endless if you have 1) the ability to get the data and 2) the ability to use it to generate targeted renewal offers. #3: Using Lead Data to Proactively Rate and Reach Out to Prospects Lead data is a powerful way to proactively rate and reach out to prospects. Combined with the ability to use that data to proactively rate them for policies that they probably need, there's a powerful recipe for increasing sales. Lead data is made up of the contact information and online behavior of those who have shown interest in your company's products and services. Or you can purchase lead lists if you find a quality vendor. Either way it's a goldmine of information about what those prospects are looking for, which products might be relevant to them, and the time to reach out and engage is before they start shopping around. The really useful leads data contains enough demographic and exposure information for you to get a quote on a policy. Approaching a prospect with an actual quote--even if an indication--is a powerful way to streamline the sales process and set you and your company apart from the crowd. Paired with a marketing automation system to deliver those quotes in a personalized way and drive customers to a digital online buying experience can increase your sales numbers significantly. So that's just a few ways to use data to improve your agency's or MGA's growth and profitability. There are of course many more ways, and more will be discovered and used over time, but these methods are typically within reach of most agencies based on today's technology, and certainly worth the time. Author Bio: Jason Kolb is Founder & CEO of DAIS Technologies, Inc.