Your insurance agency handles lots of important data. From the financials to client information, you need to have access to the data at all times. A computer virus, formatting errors, and other problems can cause data loss, harming your insurance agency. Fortunately, you can keep data secure by using our customized cloud backup for insurance agencies. The system will back up and store your data on the cloud. Then, you’ll always have access to your data, even if something happens to your hardware or network. Let’s review some reasons that make cloud backup essential for your insurance agency.

Limit Downtime by Restoring Lost Files Quickly

Our cloud backup solution for insurance agencies includes a data recovery plan. If anything happens to your computers or network, we can quickly restore your data. It’s estimated that insurance agencies can lose thousands of dollars per hour of downtime. If you don’t have a backup, your downtime could turn into days, weeks, or months. Sometimes, it can take a year or longer to fully recover. Fortunately, with our cloud backup solution in place, your insurance agency can quickly get up and running again, limiting your downtime. In fact, our team will handle the recovery and restoration process for you, so you can focus on serving your customers.

Keep Important Marketing Leads

Insurance relies heavily on leads. Your agents warm up leads to turn them into customers. Without a data backup plan, you may lose all those leads if anything happens to your network. Then, your agents will have to start from scratch, spending their time searching for and warming up leads. This will frustrate your employees and hurt your insurance agency’s bottom line. Our cloud backup solution keeps your insurance agency’s lead information safe, so you don’t have to worry about losing it.

Overcome Agents’ Mistakes

You likely have a team of amazing agents, but even the best can make mistakes. They might accidentally erase critical data on your network or make an unauthorized change to an important document. With an easily accessible cloud backup in place, your insurance agency can access any lost or changed data with ease. This puts less pressure on your agents to be perfect all the time. While everyone strives for perfection, it’s nice to have a safety net in place just in case something happens.

Have a Plan in Case an Agent Goes Rogue

While this is rare, sometimes, insurance agents leave on bad terms and decide to make an impact while walking out the door. They might purposely erase data on your network to harm the agency. This can be a disaster if you don’t have a backup system in place. Fortunately, if you have such a system, you can escort the former agent out the door and restore the data.

Maintain Client Trust With Cloud Backup for Insurance Agencies

Imagine losing important customer data and having to find a way to get it back. You might have to contact your clients and admit you lost all their information in the hopes they’ll provide it once again. Even if the loss is due to a natural disaster or something out of your control, this may erode some of the trust that they’ve placed in your agency. Maintain client trust by using a cloud backup system. Then, if something happens to your insurance agency’s network, you can restore the data without your clients realizing that anything happened.

Avoid Issues With Insurance Carriers

Your reputation is vital for your success. If you lose data, your reputation with insurance carriers will take a hit. It makes carriers look bad, so they might not be as enthusiastic about you selling their products. You always want to look your best when dealing with insurance carriers, so having a data backup system in place is a must.

Choosing Cloud Backup for Insurance Agencies

Jenesis Software’s cloud-based business data backup system allows you to protect your insurance agency’s valuable data. When you use this tool, Jenesis will automatically and continuously back up the data within our JenesisNow system and store it offsite in a data center. There aren’t data caps or surcharges, and you can easily access your data when you need it. With monthly pricing based on the amount of data you need to back up, you can use the system while sticking to your budget. Contact Jenesis Software to learn more about cloud backup for insurance agencies.

Please note that, while our cloud backup solution will ensure that your insurance agency’s management system is backed up, you’ll still want to look into a backup solution for the remainder of your files (like your photos, accounting files, etc).

Starting a new insurance agency is exciting. You can’t help but think of all the money you can earn as the head of the agency. Before you bring in revenue, though, you need to make sure you get everything in order. Find out what you need to start your new insurance agency. Once you have the essentials in order, you can hit the ground running.

Business Plan

Before you start an insurance agency, you need to create a business plan. The plan should describe your company, provide market analysis, and go over your organizational structure. You also need to list the products and services you’ll offer, as well as your sales and marketing strategy. Finally, you must include your financials in your business plan.

Capital

You need to raise capital before you start your new insurance agency. The money you need depends on the type of agency you want to run. Some small insurance agencies only need $5,000 to start, while larger firms might require much more. Consider your costs, including rent or mortgage payments, licensing, insurance, staff, office equipment, and software, to determine how much you need to start your insurance agency.

License

You have to obtain a license before you can sell insurance. Depending on where you live, you might need a permit for every line of insurance you sell. Licensing requirements vary by state, but you can expect to go through pre-licensing education before taking the licensing exam.

Carrier Appointments

You will need insurance carrier appointments before you can start your agency. Insurance carriers will evaluate your business plan, location, automation, and business mix when making a decision. They will also review your experience selling insurance, as well as projections for the future.

While getting the first carrier appointment can be challenging, it does get easier as you build your business. Once you reach a certain number of carriers, though, you might have difficulty adding more. Insurance carriers are less likely to provide authorization to agencies that already represent lots of other carriers.

Insurance Agency Management System

You need to have an insurance agency management system in place before gathering leads and selling policies. Choose a system that automates tasks. For instance, you can get a system that includes prefilled ACORD forms, automated carrier downloads, and automated notes. You can also get a system that provides marketing options and more. The right system will help you reach leads and manage your existing clients. It will make your agency more efficient and help you build relationships through cross-selling and more.

Insurance Agency Website

An insurance agency website is also a must. You can use a website to get more leads for your agency and stand out from the competition. Your website can also provide relevant information to warm the leads before they reach out. Make sure that your website is 100 percent responsive, so it looks great on all devices. It should be specific to the insurance industry and explain each line of insurance you offer. Also, make sure the website is SEO-friendly, so it ranks high on Google.

Existing Book of Business (Optional)

When you start an insurance agency, you have the option to buy an existing book of business. Before you go through with a purchase, find out why the agency is selling the book. Often, agents sell books of business because they are retiring. If that is the case, make sure the agent hasn’t neglected clients due to the upcoming retirement. You also need to make sure the carriers line up with the ones you’re authorized to represent. You should also consider the current market value of the book. Is it a good deal, or will you overpay for potential business? When you’re just starting out, you may not know the answer to those questions. In those situations, having a mentor that you can lean on can be very valuable. Whether you’re evaluating a book of business, coming up compensation plans, or just trying to figure out which steps you should take next, being able to lean on the experience of successful agency owners who’ve gone before you can be an amazing resource.

You also have the option of generating your own business. This can take a bit longer, but you can hit the ground running with the right insurance agency management system and website.

Start Building Your Insurance Agency Today

Opening your insurance agency is hard work, but it can pay off in dividends if you do it correctly. Make sure you follow all the steps to position yourself for success.

 

Here are six things that your insurance agency’s website should have in order to become a powerful lead-generation tool.

Unique, Mobile Responsive Design Customized to Your Agency’s Brand

Far too many insurance agencies use basic templates when creating a website. These templates all look the same, making it difficult for your insurance agency’s message to stand out. You’ll have difficulty building trust and generating leads if your website looks the same as everyone else’s website.

You’ll also experience difficulty if your website doesn’t display correctly on all devices. You need to use a mobile responsive design so that people can easily navigate the site and access the pages, regardless of the device they use. Don’t create separate websites for desktops and mobile devices, either. Provide the same seamless experience regardless of the device with a mobile responsive site.

Unique Content for Each of Your Insurance Products

In order to generate organic traffic from the search engines, your insurance agency’s website needs to contain high-quality content that’s unique to your agency. Your content is the foundation of your SEO strategy and is critical to your website’s success. Good content can help you drive more traffic, connect with your customers and prospects, and position yourself as an industry thought leader.

Optimize With SEO Best Practices in Mind

Search engines like Google analyze a number of different factors when determining the order to display websites. You can get your insurance agency website to the head of the pack with the right search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. The proper SEO strategies will allow you to get a prominent ranking in the search results to reach more potential clients.

Start with a round of keyword research to determine which phrases your prospects are searching for. You’ll use these keywords in your content and behind the scenes in your website’s meta data, URLs, and more.

Also, as we previously mentioned, search engines expect a website to have high-quality, unique content. If your content is copied from another source or doesn’t provide value, you won’t be able to compete organically. Ensure that your content is well optimized by incorporating your target keywords throughout the copy.

You can also help search engines better understand your content by using internal links. These links show search engines the relationship between the pages on your site and can make it easier for your visitors to find more of your content.

Finally, make sure the website loads quickly and is easy to navigate. Slow loading sites that are difficult to navigate typically end up near the bottom of the search results. You can test your website using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool.

Includes the Best Local SEO Strategies

Local SEO is also critical for insurance agencies. The right local SEO strategy will show the search engines that you serve a specific market. When people search for things like “insurance agency near me” or “auto insurance in Omaha, Nebraska,” your insurance agency’s website will have a much better chance of showing up with the right strategy in place.

Schema markup should be a part of your local SEO strategy. Search engines analyze the microdata to understand location-based information, such as your agency’s address and phone number. This makes it easier for search engines to know when to display your website in local searches.

You need to utilize other local SEO strategies too, including creating and optimizing your Google My Business profile and attracting incoming links and citations. Gathering reviews from sites like Google and Yelp can help with your local SEO strategy. As a bonus, reviews also make it easier to build trust with your market.

Strong CTAs and Lead Generation Capabilities

A successful insurance agency website does an excellent job of generating leads. This begins with strong calls to action (CTAs) throughout the site. Use CTAs to compel people to take the desired action, such as filling out a form or calling your agency. You then need a way to collect the leads. Add a form that people can fill out to request quotes on your site. You should provide a form for each product you offer.

Also, consider including live chat on your website. A live chat feature allows people to ask and get answers to important questions. You can also use the tool to collect lead information that you can pass on to your insurance agents. Finally, live chat support is an essential tool for your current customers. They can visit your website to ask questions about their policies, as needed.

Analytics Tracking

Some insurance agencies build websites and then forget about them, never taking the time to analyze the data to determine what’s working and what isn’t.

Using something like Google Analytics, you’ll be able to see where your traffic comes from, which sources provide the best conversions, and what people do when they visit your insurance agency’s website. Analyzing this data will allow you to make informed decisions about your website and marketing campaigns.

Unless you are a professional web designer, building a website with these features can be challenging. Fortunately, you don’t have to do it yourself. Here at Jenesis Software, we specialize in web design for insurance agencies. Interested in learning more? Request a demo, today!