Category Archives: Email Marketing

The Challenge of Improving Wholesaler Performance

Suffice it to say, sales leaders in the asset management, insurance, and retirement industries are under un-relenting pressure to enhance wholesaler performance.  Brands that want to win the trust of their channels and be perceived as a valuable, priority relationship, must deploy effective Intermediary Relationship Marketing (IRM).  Today, many brands deploy a version of IRM, most of which neither generate trust or add value to their relationship with their important intermediary partners.

What is Effective IRM?

In the context of the asset management, retirement, and insurance industry, IRM creates leverage and scale for distribution platforms targeting intermediaries and distributors. An IRM initiative augments the productivity of internal and external wholesalers through a pragmatically developed plan of systematic and integrated marketing activities. These activities:

  • Create a compelling, consistent and coherent narrative with target channels
  • Generate new qualified leads
  • Keep target channels engaged with your brand and products
  • Pave the way for more effective wholesaler interactions.

Instead of focusing on a single campaign, or a series of disconnected interactions, effective IRM initiatives plan and deploy integrated inbound and outbound communication streams — guided by the stage of your brand’s relationship with the channel, individual level data (e.g., behavioral, self-reported, firmographic), and your brand’s narrative. These communication streams increase the probability that your products and brand are selected by your target intermediaries and distributors. IRM builds mindshare, reinforces the value of the relationship with your brand, fosters trust, and provides your wholesalers with richer and timelier intelligence. IRM must also integrate seamlessly with existing sales force automation and CRM tools.

Spray & Pray: There’s A better Way

Most advisors express frustration with the volume and the frequency of promotional communications from investment product and insurance manufacturers. Research conducted by EMI and real client experience confirms this, with emails being especially high on the list. At a recent roundtable I attended, many advisors said: “we’re done with email”. Why? Because most of the communications they receive are difficult to process and deliver questionable value to their practice. So what’s a manufacturer to do?
Despite frustrations with the volume and quality of communications, advisors readily admit that they do read communications deployed by the brands they trust and value. These brands plan and manage communication streams with valuable content, use easy to process copy standards, and create a consistent narrative that demonstrate respect and thoughtfulness. These brands have earned the attention of the advisor and are therefore opened and read before the others (assuming the others are read, which is unlikely given the ease of deleting or navigating away in digital media).

So what’s a manufacturer to do? Build a systematic relationship marketing program that demonstrates respect and delivers real value. Perhaps we can call that SRM.

Email Re-Engagement Strategy #4: Looking for Answers and the Last Chance

Recent EMI blog posts discussed the growing importance of email engagement and the roles of preferences and pursuing new tactical and multi-channel approaches in re-engaging customers. But even after you deploy all of these tools, some customers will inevitably remain unengaged. Typical engagement best practice advice will tell you that this is the time to pull out the ultimate arrow in the re-engagement quiver: the Last Chance email. But this is a scary step, especially if you are a company that nurtures a relatively small email list. A Last Chance is, after all, the end of the road—a non-response shuts down all email communication.

For this reason, if the number of remaining non-responders is great enough to justify the investment, we recommend conducting primary research among the unengaged to learn:

  • Are they chronic non-responders? That is, do they sign up with other companies as well and then not view or click on emails?
  • If not, what are the content, messaging, and media elements that drive their response to other companies’ emails?
  • What is their actual, current level of interest in your product and their position in the buying process? 

If this research indicates that there is little hope that changes to the re-engagement program would deliver a strong return, then the Last Chance is an appropriate next (and final) step. If you do implement this tool, think of the Last Chance as a series of emails rather than a single one. Over the course of two or three emails, introduce the recipients to the idea that you will be ending their email communications and then incrementally increase the pressure on them to respond. With the final email in the series, you close the book on the non-responders and treat them like unsubscribers, secure in the knowledge that you have done everything you could to re-engage them.