Norvax Product News

What’s new?
-Aetna FL, PA, CA, DE, DC, VA, MO, and TX: 4/1/08 rates are available to quote.
-Anthem Midwest (OH, WI, IN, KY and MO): 4/1/08 rates are available to quote.
-Anthem NV: 4/1/08 rates are available to quote.
-American Community: Updated rates are available to quote.
-Coventry GA: 4/1/08 rates are available to quote.
-Kaiser GA: 4/1/08 rates are available to quote.
-Unicare TX: 4/1/08 rates are available to quote.
-Vista: 4/1/08 rates are available to quote.
-Celtic: Celtic’s Quick Link Program, a new feature making it easier for your clients to apply online and get straight to the application, is now available. Please be sure to update your account with your new 6-digit ID in order to use this new feature.

Login to your BrokerOffice to see new states and plans or click here for the latest updates.

Ask The Expert

How Can My Office Get On The Green Marketing Trend?

Q: It seems that green marketing is all the rage now. How can my office get on the green marketing trend?

A: My first tip is to be authentic. Green marketing is big. But there’s also a backlash. Seven of every 10 Americans recently surveyed in an Ipsos Reid study felt that when a company called itself or a product “green,” they were just using a marketing tactic. There are steps businesses can take to profit from the green movement, but they need to start with authenticity.

Authenticity means beginning with your office and taking steps to “go green” and minimize your environmental impact. Here are 5 steps you can take right away:

• •Go paperless.
  It’s nearly impossible for an insurance agent to go completely paperless, but you can make great strides as you move to emails, e-faxes and e-application. Move toward an emailed proposal, instead of printing out pages and then using snail mail. You should also rely on an email autoresponder and e-newsletter for your marketing, instead of traditional mailers.

  If you use Internet leads, get into the habit of NOT printing them out. If you must print them, try using recycled paper. Going paperless is more of an ideal goal; few companies are able to go completely paperless. But everything you can do to move in that direction will help.

• •Recycle.
  Examine your office trash and look for what can be recycled – and practically everything can be recycled. For recycling advice, check out Earth911.org. Recycling will take extra effort on everyone’s part, but our environment needs it. There’s also a potential cash benefit in having less regular trash, especially if you pay for private garbage service.
• •Energy conservation.
  In addition to helping you market yourself as green, looking for ways to cut your office energy use helps your bottom line. Start by switching to compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs, then invest in light timers and dimmers so that you’re not wasting unneeded energy.
• •Carbon reduction and offset.
  Although environmental concerns have been with us for more than 50 years, public awareness and concern kicked into gear when we learned how 2 centuries of industry and carbon emissions has torn a hole in our ozone layer and severely affected our climate.

  Today, carbon offset is the big buzzword. Check out CarbonFund.org to calculate your office’s carbon output and learn how you can reduce it – as well as donate to projects that will offset whatever remains.

• •Community involvement.
  Now you’re ready to move outside your office. Search your community for environmental projects to which you and your team can regularly volunteer your time. These projects range from adopting and cleaning a stretch of highway or park to organizing a recycling campaign or conservation workshop for your business association.

Unless you’re a one-person shop, you’ll probably need to get everyone in your office to “buy” into this program. This will probably require explaining the need and the benefits.

Once you’ve implemented changes to your own operation – and established your authenticity – green marketing will be a relative breeze.

Let clients and prospects know about your commitment to environmental conservation. Include a page in your website, as well as a small blurb in your newsletter or drip marketing email. Be careful not to sound like a blowhard, but don’t be shy about publicizing your team’s efforts. Your self-promotion should be okay as long as you don’t sound preachy or let it overshadow all your other marketing content.

Lastly, you should invite clients and prospects to consider joining you in making changes to the way we use the environment. Give them suggestions about small steps they can take immediately that will have tremendous impact in the long run.

Green marketing is a permanent trend that will only grow stronger as consumers become more aware – and concerned – about the cost of climate change. Many consumers already prefer to shop with “green” businesses even if they charge a little more. In the future, it may no longer be a preference, but a consumer demand.

3 Customer Experience Tips to Boost Your Internet Conversion Ratios

The Internet has done wonders to the health insurance industry, but it’s still a work in progress. A 2005 Shop.org research study found conversion rates for all retail websites averaged only 2.5%. And Forrester Research reported in 2006 that only 1 out of every 4 online consumer was satisfied with their shopping experience.

That means that 3 out of 4 online shoppers weren’t satisfied.

It’s a dismal stat. But it also means opportunities for greater conversion ratios and sales to producers who provide a better customer experience – especially if they deal with Internet-generated leads.

Here are 3 tips to improve the customer experience you give to your prospects, clients and website visitors.

Constant Touch

Although online health insurance buyers like the freedom of researching and shopping on their own, they don’t want to be forgotten. Top producers understand that online shoppers take longer to make their buying decision; but once they do, they will act quickly.

The challenge for smart producers is to stay with their online shoppers as they use the Internet to educate themselves before making a decision – and then be there when that shopper is ready to complete an app.

That’s easier said than done if you’re dealing with dozens of new leads each week – unless you have an email autoresponder. An autoresponder is a top producer’s best friend, because it allows agents and brokers to stay in touch with thousands of prospects and leads with very little effort.

It begins by sending out a welcome email to all new leads, preparing them for your initial call. It then follows up with weekly and later monthly emails to continue reminding them. But these should not be “nag” emails. Ideally, they should provide links to updated quote engine proposals and informational materials that can help the shopper make their decision.

Your emails should also have links to your quote engine and e-applications. So when the prospect is finally ready to buy, a couple of clicks will get them updated pricing quotes and into a secure online application.

What’s a practical “constant touch” schedule? Here’s one that many top producers follow:

• •1st day: call within 24 hours of receiving the lead.
• •2nd day: follow up with a thank-you email and info.
• •3rd day: follow up with a call.
• •5th day: send a follow-up email
• •7th day: email a marketing follow-up
• •10th day: call to check status and interest
• •14th day: email a marketing message
• •21st day: email a marketing message
• •28th day: call to check in

The second month, move to a weekly schedule of email marketing messages. After two or three months, you can switch to once-a-month emails. But semi-monthly messages are better.

Your email autoresponder can automate most of your email “touches.” However, an integrated lead management system, like BrokerOffice, helps to track your autoresponder campaign with other phone calls and appointments you make with each lead.

Personalized Touch

Personalizing your marketing content sends an important signal to your prospects and clients. It tells them that they’re more than a number for you. It also tells them that you care and can be trusted.

But personalizing to the hundreds or thousands of people in your mailing list is a daunting task – unless you have an integrated sales automation system that keeps track of each lead and remembers the details of their request.

For example, if a prospect comes to your website’s quote engine and requests a pricing quote for a particular plan, an integrated email autoresponder will imbed current pricing information for that plan in each email it sends.

Personalizing your marketing approach also has a flip side. Before prospects and clients can trust you, they need to know you:

• •Company contact information.
  Make sure your website and emails contain contact information for your company, including a physical address and phone number.
• •Your story.
  Provide detailed information about who you are and why you do what you do. In addition to providing a mission statement or putting your vision into words, tell visitors more about the people who make up your company. Including pictures next to bios and statements is a big plus.
• •Write conversationally.
  When you write your email message and even some of your website content, imagine that your client is sitting across the table from you. Write in a conversational tone and avoid formal 3rd-person styles.
• •Provide references.
  Testimonials are powerful marketing tools. Collect testimonials from your satisfied clients and include parts of them in your website and emails. Again, adding pictures of the satisfied client will only make that testimonial stronger.

The more information you can realistically provide about yourself and your company, the more trust you can build with a prospect. And that trust is the crucial first step for building a relationship with that client.

Clarity

Finally, make sure that your website and emails are well designed and organized. The buzzword for websites and marketing emails today is “usability.” Your website, in particular, should be easy to navigate and use.

In other words, visitors to your website should be able to find the information and answers they need, with minimal clicks of the mouse. Avoid needless clutter on your web pages, especially on your homepage.

A good exercise to improve your website’s usability is to put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. If health insurance shoppers come to your website looking for specific information, can they find it? And if so, how hard do they have to work to find that information?

Optimized websites are no longer designed like file cabinets, with everything in its place and a place for everything. Instead, they are designed with the user in mind. What does your user need to know and find? And how can you make it easier for them to find it?

When it comes to emails, don’t try to sell everything. Focus on one product, element or message. If you want to mention secondary products, put it at the bottom and make sure it’s not intrusive.

Nothing frustrates online shoppers more than being hit with poorly designed websites and emails that just end up wasting their time.

Putting It Into Action

Health insurance agents and brokers are finally waking up to the importance of designing their websites for their customers.

The Internet’s novelty has passed. Positive customer experience isn’t just expected in retail stores and regular offices. As more health insurance shoppers are turning online for their purchases, customer experience has become a driving force for producers going online to meet those valued consumers.

And if you’re committed to long-term success, you need to have a similar commitment to improving your customer’s experience.

Selling Individual Programs in Traditional Group-Oriented Markets: An Interview with a Pioneer: Part 1

Drew Reardon and Innovative Benefits Consulting are blazing new trails with individual health insurance in the Southeast, using technology, a commitment to educating consumers and a belief in the future of individual policies.

This is part 1 of an informative two-part interview.

Interviewer: Please tell us about Innovative Benefits Consulting.

Drew Reardon: We’re based in Alabama, but we’ve got offices all over the Southeast. We have about 100 years of combined experience within our organization, adding a little bit more all the time with new and experienced agents. We started off basically doing individual, but we have kind of pioneered the defined contribution setup here in the Southeast. We’ve actually been working on that over the last couple of years.

That’s our big push now. Even though we still do individual health insurance, life insurance, supplemental policies, Medicare and that sort of thing, our main goal right now is to really try to help solve the healthcare issue here in America. We’re doing it by partnering with the nation’s leading carriers to be able to offer the best products to people and really trying to take it more towards defined contribution.

It lets people have their own policies, get a tax-free allowance from their employers and be able to have their insurance set up separate from their employer – which is definitely in their best interest.

Interviewer: What’s your view of the current health insurance marketplace?

Drew Reardon: We’re finding that in the Southeast it’s kind of behind the times, especially here in Alabama. Alabama is in a unique situation where it’s really dominated by a monopoly that’s set up by one carrier. And they own up to 85 percent of the market in Alabama. But in the surrounding states, it’s a little bit different.

We’ve found that when we’re going out and talking with employees and companies, they’re very excited about the opportunity to have their own policy, to be able to take savings over the pure price reduction. They’re excited about the chance to switch to an individual policy from a group policy and put money into an HSA for their future costs – and even build up a retirement account.

So it’s a very, very exciting situation whenever we meet people who don’t already know about or have even heard about an HRA or an HSA. We let them know how it works, why it’s a great thing for them, and then take people through the enrollment process. We handle it from point one all the way to the end.

Interviewer: How do you handle consumers who are hesitant about non-traditional plans?

Drew Reardon: Obviously, people still have the choice as to what they want to do. If they want to maintain a traditional co-pay plan or something like that, we’re more than happy to take care of that for them. But we do feel that HSA, HRA and similar programs are the future of healthcare and definitely in their best interest. So we do spend a great amount of time educating them on HSA and HRA options.

With individual clients, that’s normally where I start. Many people say they’ve been waiting their whole lives for something like this, and they’re just the perfect candidate for an HSA. Once people understand how it works, most consumers are often eager to get started.

Interviewer: When arranging individual policies for group members, do you promote HRAs or HSAs?

Drew Reardon: We do both. It just depends on how the employer wants to set it up. We can do a group HRA or a group HSA, depending on if the employer wants the employee to have the money that they’re saving for themselves or if employees want to try to keep it for the future.

Employers are basically saying “Okay, look, every year we’re going to give you X amount of dollars to go towards your medical expenses so that you don’t have to pay as much out of your own pocket. Each year that you work here, whatever you don’t use will go over to the next year.”

So then they can accumulate a huge amount of money, while the company will have a very limited amount of risk. If the employee has a few thousand dollars in deductibles, employers know that in any given year, that’s a maximum amount they’re going have to spend.

For employees who have been there for ten years or so without any major medical issues, they know they’ve got at least $20,000.00 in future medical expenses that are paid for.

That’s a huge thing to be able to tell the employer: “Look, we’re going to get you this amazing tool so you’ll be able to attract and retain the greatest employees that you can find, a program that other companies aren’t doing out there.”

And employees are saying, “Wow, that’s just amazing. If my employer is going to give me all this money, that’s better than a raise, that’s better than standard benefits.”

It’s really just a great tool for consumers all the way around.

Interviewer: Is the potential retirement savings a big draw?

Drew Reardon: Absolutely. If the company is in the mindset of “Look, we want to just have those savings belong to employees, to be their money, to basically double as a retirement account,” then that’s where we would set up the HSA program.

Their unused money would become retirement savings.

Obviously, there’s a great tax advantage for both the company and for the individual. The company gets to write off a huge break on their income tax. And if the employee wants to contribute even more to their HSA, that’s helping even more with their end-of-the-year taxes.

But again, the company pays less income tax, and because they have lower taxes, they’ve got more income coming in. Once people see these benefits, they’re amazed.

Interviewer: What areas do you cover and which carriers do you use?

Drew Reardon: It’s kind of spread out. I represent four major carriers right now. That would be Assurant, Aetna, Humana and Golden Rule here in Alabama. I also service Mississippi, Georgia, and Tennessee. However, the majority of my business is here in Alabama.

As for the carriers I use, it just depends. That’s the beauty of being able to represent multiple carriers. An Aetna drug policy might be ideal for a 30-year-old single guy, but the same policy that does the exact thing on Assurant or Golden Rule or Humana might be a different product.

It’s great to be able to have that flexibility and say to your client, “I’m comfortable with all these carriers. Let’s find the one that fits your situation best.”

Interviewer: What has been your experience with your Norvax/ProspectZone leads?

Drew Reardon: The sales process is a little bit different. Sometimes it might take a month or two. I’ve had a couple of times where people have gone straight to my online application and applied.

Before I could even talk to them, they’d gotten my autoresponder email, went online, applied and had their policies lined up. That’s fantastic.

But I honestly would like to be able to talk to people to make sure that they fully understand what they’re getting, that they know exactly what they’re doing and that they’ve got the right program for them. But hey, if you feel like you know what you’re doing, go right ahead and I’ll get out of your way.

Check next month’s newsletter for Part 2 of the interview and Drew’s review of email autoresponders, quote engines and the best way to call new leads.

Using Autoresponders To Increase ROIs with Minimal Effort and Cost

Every business looking to survive in a competitive environment needs to keep a lean but productive operation. If you’re looking for a way to increase conversion ratios and ROIs, an email autoresponder may be the secret weapon you’ve been seeking.

This low-cost marketing automation tool does the job of a staff of sales assistants – guiding old and new leads to your app:

• •Prep new leads for your sales call
• •Wake up dormant leads & prospects
• •Easy to set up this 24/7 low-maintenance marketing staff

Prep New Leads For Your Sales Call

As soon as a lead enters your system, your email autoresponder can send out a welcome email. In addition to letting them know to expect your call, your welcome email can lay the groundwork for your sales pitch.

This welcome email is like the warm-up act before the main feature – your call.

It should provide information about your array of products and links to more educational material on your website. The welcome email can also answer some of the questions and concerns that may put wary shoppers on the defensive:

• •Choices.
  Make sure to highlight the some of the plan options you can offer them, so that they don’t think you’re steering them towards just one product. With the LeadMiner autoresponder, you can segment which plans you would like consumers to view. Agents find it helpful to put between 3 and 5 plans from each carrier that reflect the most common needs of their clients, ranging from low to high premium plans as well as H.S.A. options, where available.
• •Premiums.
  Anticipate price shoppers by previewing the full range of prices your programs allow.
• •Service.
  Don’t just tell them that you’re committed to serving them – show them. Shower them with links to informative resources on your website. If possible, include a brief testimonial from satisfied clients and, if available, a Better Business Bureau designation.

Most importantly, your welcome email should include a “call to action” that links your ready-to-sign-up prospects to an electronic application. You should still call the prospects who jump straight to an application, but now you can present specific details for the plans they’re requesting.

After the welcome email and your initial phone call, LeadMiner will continue to send marketing emails to each lead on a weekly basis or every few days. These reminder emails will continue to guide new leads toward a buying decision – and your application.

Wake Up Dormant Leads & Prospects

If you’re like most experienced producers, you probably have hundreds of seasoned or dormant leads in your database – maybe even thousands. It’s a common scenario.

Producers need to focus on the newer leads and feel they don’t have the time to keep calling these unsold or hard-to-close prospects. Too many producers look at seasoned leads that don’t close within the first few weeks as throwaways and typically abandon these leads as acceptable losses.

Having the LeadMiner autoresponder in your toolbox means never having to say goodbye to a lead just because they don’t close right away. For the price of a daily cup of coffee, LeadMiner can put that prospect into a “drip marketing” campaign.

It’ll send monthly or semi-monthly emails to mine for the gold buried in your database. If you have a complementary quote engine, LeadMiner can include personalized up-to-date quotes for each recipient in your mailing list.

Many agents and brokers have reported resurrecting long-dormant leads up to a year after they first called them. LeadMiner won’t convert every lead, but it will help you find and close on the prospects other agents typically abandon.

Easy To Set Up This 24/7 Low-Maintenance Marketing Staff

Perhaps the greatest advantage of LeadMiner is how easy it is to set up and use. Just choose from the sample email templates and select the schedule of personalized emails you want each lead to receive. LeadMiner then gets to work on every inputted lead.

LeadMiner automatically welcomes new leads that use your Norvax Quote Engine or enter your BrokerOffice lead management system. You can also input old leads that you want LeadMiner to resurrect. Savvy agents will often buy cheap seasoned leads from various lead providers and use LeadMiner to turn them into current buyers.

For example, you can purchase a set of 1,000 health insurance leads that are over 30 days old for less than $750. You should import them into LeadMiner using your online Quote Engine, so that you can imbed links to personalized quotes in your messages. LeadMiner can then put these seasoned leads into your “drip marketing” program.

Even if you only convert 1% of these seasoned leads the first year, that’s still 10 closings – and more than enough to cover your $750 investment.

Getting Started

Easy to set up, easy to use, but possibly the best marketing assistant you’ll ever have. If you’re ready to see how LeadMiner can improve your conversion ratios and ROIs, call your Norvax product specialist to arrange a demo – and don’t forget to take advantage of this month’s special offer.