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Leveraging Social Reviews When Servicing Your Accounts

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As you may have read in our article about using your email signature to gather Facebook Likes, as well as social reviews, implementing a few changes to your service processes can yield equally successful results.

When you think about it, when would be the best time to ask for a referral, a Facebook Like, or a social review for your insurance agency? Perhaps immediately after you just helped someone with a policy change, answered a billing question, or successfully closed a claim? Consider implementing the following suggestions to your customer service processes, and you’ll find yourself with a bigger social audience and plenty of customer reviews to attract new quoting opportunities.

Asking for a Social Review

Feel free to modify to meet your agency’s needs:

    1. Gather the prospect/client email address during the service transaction if you don’t already have it.
    2. Ask permission to add them to your agency newsletter mailing list.
      1. Add email address to your agency management system.
      2. From time-to-time, synchronize your agency management system’s client and prospect data with your email marketing platform.
    3. Two-days after you’ve closed a service transaction, send a personalized thank you email by way of an email template such as this:

Dear <name>,

I thought I’d send a short email to follow-up on the <change, billing question, etc.> that we took care of for you a couple of days ago.  If there is anything we failed to do, or your issue isn’t resolved, please reply to this email and let us know immediately.

On the other hand, if all is well, I have a small favor to ask of you. As you may be aware, online reviews are becoming very important to individuals and businesses when shopping for goods and services online. Therefore I’m asking if you could take a moment and leave a short online review for our agency on either Facebook or Google+. The links to our review pages are:

ABC Agency Facebook Reviews

ABC Agency Google+ Reviews

Once again, thank you for choosing <agency name> Insurance.

Sincerely,

 

After you’ve gathered a number of reviews on Facebook and Google+, you’ll probably want to start mixing it up a bit by adding links to Yelp, Superpages, and other online review sites.

Conclusion

By implementing these simple changes to your service transaction processes, your entire support staff will be actively soliciting Facebook Likes and customer reviews from everyone that you provide service to. Before you know it, you’ll have a number reviews to help promote your agency and attract new business.

Notes

  1. Instructions on how to link to your Facebook Reviews
  2. Instructions on how to link to your Google+ Reviews
  3. Instructions on how to create an email template
  4. Be sure to test all links once they are setup to ensure accuracy and functionality.

Using Your Signature Line to Market Your Agency

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you already have a signature line that is automatically appended to each email that you send. This is not only a time-saver, it’s a great opportunity to brand your agency by being clean, consistent, and professional such as shown below.

Joe Agent, Owner and Producer

ABC Insurance Agency, Inc.
123 Main Street
Anytown, WI 54321
Phone: (555)555-1234
Fax: (555)555-6789

joe@abc.com | www.abc.com

We suggest keeping things simple and not using any images whatsoever in your email signature, as many email clients don’t show images by default, and your signature ends up looking horrible. Instead of images, style your signature line using font colors & size, along with a bold typeface. In most cases, using italics to style a signature comes across a bit cheesy, but that’s just our opinion.

Other Marketing Opportunities

Building Your Facebook Audience

Besides branding your agency, it’s also a great opportunity to and add a call-to-action (CTA) that will help with your agency’s marketing efforts.

A common CTA is to ask one to “Like” your agency’s Facebook Page. While the actual “Liking” can’t be programmed into an email signature easily, it’s simple enough to add a simple line such as “Be sure to Like us on Facebook!”, where some or all of the sentence is linked to your agency’s Facebook Page.

Gathering Customer Reviews

In addition to, or in place of asking for a “Like”, you might want to focus on gathering online reviews instead. Doing so will not only help your insurance agency’s ranking in Google and Bing, it can do wonders for conversions as well. Reading social proof such as found in a customer review, can be the difference between a prospect picking up the phone and giving you a call, or moving on to another website.

To add a review call-to-action (CTA) to your signature line, you can simply add a couple of sentences with links to your Facebook and Google+ Review pages such as:

We’re doing our best to exceed your expectations!

Let us know how we’re doing on Facebook or Google+

Conclusion

By implementing these simple changes to your email routine, your whole agency will be passively soliciting Facebook Likes and customer reviews from everyone that you send an email to. That includes not only clients, but prospects, friends, family, business associates, underwriters, adjusters, and company personnel. Before you know it, you’ll have a number of Fans and reviews to help promote your agency.

Notes

  1. Instructions on how to edit your email signature can be found at:
    1. Gmail
    2. Outlook 2007
    3. Outlook 2010
    4. Outlook 2013
    5. Outlook Web App
  2. Instructions on how to link to your Facebook Reviews.
  3. Instructions on how to link to your Google+ Reviews.
  4. Adjust the color of your agency name as well as the call to action.
  5. Be sure to test all links once they are setup to ensure accuracy and functionality.

Linking to Your Agency’s Google+ Reviews Dialog Box

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Reviews are where Google+ users can rate your agency by way of assigning a number of stars between one and five, along with a few words describing their experience. Gathering a number of positive reviews can not only help you agency rank better in Google and Bing, it can make a big difference on whether or not someone picks up the phone to get a quote, or moves on to the next agency’ website. A couple of good strategies on how to gather reviews are to ask for them immediately after the sale, or after a successful service transaction.

The following outlines how to properly link to your Google+ Reviews:

  1. Much like Facebook, linking to your Google+ Business Reviews from a mobile device is not well supported through a URL link. The only way one can leave a Review from a mobile device is to find your business themselves through the Google Local App or Google Maps App, and create a review from there. Because of this, there is only one practical option left, and the good news is that it works just fine for all desktop users as well. Therefore, let’s focus on the desktop user experience.
  2. Identify the image or text that you want to link to your Google+ Reviews Page. One thing to note is that if you are linking from an email or email signature, we discourage using images as many email clients don’t download images by default and your links will look awful. Instead, we suggest linking a word or sentence to your Google+ Page.
  3. Creating a link from a word or phrase is a matter of highlighting the word or phrase, then choosing one of the following methods, depending on what program you are in when making the edits:
    1. Select the text that you want to turn into a link then do one of the following:
      1. Right-click on the highlighted word or phrase and choose Hyperlink.
      2. Choose the Hyplerlink icon from your toolbar or ribbon
      3. Choosing Insert/Hyperlink from the menu
  4. When the hyperlink dialog box appears, insert your Google+ Page URL
    1. The URL that should be used in your link is: https://plus.google.com/+AgencyPageName/about?hl=en&review=1
    2. Be sure to replace “+AgencyPageName” with your agency’s actual Google+ Page name

Notes

  1. Regardless of method, Google requires anyone leaving a review be a logged in as a Google+ user.
  2. Be sure to test all links once they are setup to ensure accuracy and functionality.

Linking to Your Agency’s Facebook Reviews Tab

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There are many cases where you might want to create a link to your Facebook Page Reviews Tab. Your Reviews Tab is where customers can rate your agency by way of assigning a number of stars between one and five, and optionally leave a few words describing their experience. The following outlines how to properly link to your Facebook Reviews Page:

You have two options to link visitors to Facebook:

  1. The first (and preferred) method is to link directly to your Reviews Tab by using the URL: https://www.facebook.com/FacebookPageName/reviews. This works well as it brings the visitor directly to your Facebook Reviews Tab where they can leave a review. The one drawback of this method, and that is that visitors using an iPhone will not be brought to your reviews page. In fact, they’ll won’t be brought to your page at all. Instead, our tests indicate that they will be sent to their own Facebook Newsfeed or be asked to login.
  2. The second option is to link to your Facebook Home Page using your Facebook Page ID instead of your Facebook Page Name. This will guarantee that everyone will find your page without regard to what device they’re using. The drawback is that they will need to make an extra effort to go to the Review Tab. A second drawback is that mobile users will be brought to the web browser version of Facebook instead of the Facebook App that most people use on their mobile device. Because of this they will be prompted to login, and that likely won’t happen. If you still choose to use this method, your URL should look like this: https://www.facebook.com/FacebookPageID/.
    1. You can find your Facebook Page ID at: http://findmyfacebookid.com
  3. Regardless of method chosen, identify the image or text that you want to link to your Facebook Reviews Page. One thing to note is that if you are linking from an email or email signature, we discourage using images as many email clients don’t download images by default and your links will look awful. Instead, we suggest linking a word or sentence to your Facebook Page.
  4. Creating a link from a word or phrase is a matter of highlighting the word or phrase, then choosing one of the following methods, depending on what program you are in when making the edits:
    1. Select the text that you want to turn into a link then do one of the following:
      1. Right-click on the highlighted word or phrase and choose Hyperlink.
      2. Choose the Hyplerlink icon from your toolbar or ribbon
      3. Choosing Insert/Hyperlink from the menu
  5. When the hyperlink dialog box appears, insert your Facebook Page URL as described above.

Notes

  1. Regardless of method, Facebook requires anyone leaving a review be a logged in as a Facebook user.
  2. Be sure to test all links once they are setup to ensure accuracy and functionality.

Linking to Your Agency’s Facebook Page

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There are many cases where you might want to create a link to your agency’s Facebook Page itself. One that comes to mind is if you wanted to direct someone to your page, in order for them to “Like” you page. The following outlines how to properly link to your Facebook Reviews Page:

  1. Identify the image or text that you want to link to your Facebook Page. Often times this will be a simple call-to-action such as “Like Us on Facebook”. One thing to note is that if you are linking from an email or email signature, we discourage using images as many email clients don’t download images by default and your links will look awful. Instead, we suggest linking  to your Facebook Page with a word or sentence as suggested above.
  2. Creating a link from a word or phrase is a matter of highlighting the word or phrase, then choosing one of the following methods, depending on what program you are in when making the edits:
    1. Select the text that you want to turn into a link then do one of the following:
      1. Right-click on the highlighted word or phrase and choose Hyperlink.
      2. Choose the Hyplerlink icon from your toolbar or ribbon
      3. Choosing Insert/Hyperlink from the menu
  3. When the hyperlink dialog box appears, insert your Facebook Page URL as described below
    1. What you’ll want to do is link to your Facebook Home Page using your Facebook Page ID instead of your Facebook Page Name. Your URL will look something like this: https://www.facebook.com/987654321/. You can find your Page’s ID by going to: https://www.facebook.com/FacebookPageID/
    2. We discourage using your vanity URL such as: https://www.facebook.com/InsuranceMarketingPartners/ because it will not resolve correctly on some devices such as an iPhone. Using your pages ID will guarantee that everyone will find your page without regard to what device they’re using.
    3. One thing to note is that mobile users will be brought the web browser version of Facebook and not the Facebook App that most people use on their mobile device. Because of this they will be prompted to login before being able to “Like” your page. However, they will still be able to see your page, look at your posts, and find your phone number among other things.

Notes

  1. Facebook requires anyone leaving a review on your page be a logged in as a Facebook user.
  1. Be sure to test all links once they are setup to ensure accuracy and functionality.

Contact

Insurance Marketing Partners
N47838 Tower Rd
Strum, WI 54770
855-797-2432
mike@insurancemarketingpartners.com Google+

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