SMS Marketing For A Life Insurance Agent?

InternetMarketingSmarts · 27th Sep 2012, 10:18 PM

My financial advisor/life insurance agent is a good buddy of mine. He's coming over to hang out tonight & I'm planning to introduce him to the power of sms marketing for appointment reminders.

I already know from our past conversations, that cancelled or last minute reschedule appointments is a source of pain for him. Is there any other angle or ways that text messaging could help his business.

I thought scheduled policy renewal payment reminders might be another.
He sends out birthday cards which are a nice touch. But I thought setting up birthday text messages would be a nice added benefit as well.

Any creative thoughts on how this can benefit his business as a life insurance agent and financial planner/advisor. This may all be for nothing because I'm pretty sure he'll have to get everything approved by his compliance officers which may totally kill the idea.

debml · 28th Sep 2012, 01:00 PM

Compliance requirements are going to depend on how many people will receive the message. Correspondence is defined as a message to one person, and usually doesn't require advance compliance approval.

If sent to 25 or more clients within a 30 day period, it still can be considered correspondence or may be considered sales literature and needs to be approved prior to use.

Regarding appointment confirmation - there are two schools of thought. One says confirm all appointments to avoid wasting time. The other is to not confirm any appointments to avoid giving prospects the opportunity to cancel or reschedule.

Your friends viewpoint regarding confirming appointments will determine how he wants to use SMS marketing.

The biggest concern your friends broker-dealer may have with SMS is that it can't be monitored and archived like email and social media. They may not allow your friend to use SMS at all.

Hope this helps and good luck!

InternetMarketingSmarts · 28th Sep 2012, 03:17 PM

Originally Posted by debml

Compliance requirements are going to depend on how many people will receive the message. Correspondence is defined as a message to one person, and usually doesn't require advance compliance approval.

If sent to 25 or more clients within a 30 day period, it still can be considered correspondence or may be considered sales literature and needs to be approved prior to use.

Regarding appointment confirmation - there are two schools of thought. One says confirm all appointments to avoid wasting time. The other is to not confirm any appointments to avoid giving prospects the opportunity to cancel or reschedule.

Your friends viewpoint regarding confirming appointments will determine how he wants to use SMS marketing.

The biggest concern your friends broker-dealer may have with SMS is that it can't be monitored and archived like email and social media. They may not allow your friend to use SMS at all.

Hope this helps and good luck!

Thanks for the insight! It sounds like you work in the compliance department! I'm sure he'll bring these concerns to me. There is actually a record of the texts that are sent and received. There is online Inbox that could easily be accessed by compliance if need be. It's actually the interface that he would have to use to schedule texts anyway So I don't know if that helps.

Kevin Z · 28th Sep 2012, 06:38 PM

Originally Posted by InternetMarketingSmarts

Thanks for the insight! It sounds like you work in the compliance department! I'm sure he'll bring these concerns to me. There is actually a record of the texts that are sent and received. There is online Inbox that could easily be accessed by compliance if need be. It's actually the interface that he would have to use to schedule texts anyway So I don't know if that helps.

If he works for a big brokerage chances are they keep their marketing very tightly controlled However noting is stopping him from running campaigns under his own name with no mention of his company etc..You will however want to find out from him what can and can't be done due to regulations of the business he represents.

InternetMarketingSmarts · 28th Sep 2012, 07:46 PM

Originally Posted by Kevin Z

If he works for a big brokerage chances are they keep their marketing very tightly controlled However noting is stopping him from running campaigns under his own name with no mention of his company etc..You will however want to find out from him what can and can't be done due to regulations of the business he represents.

Yeah I just talked to him and he wouldn't be able to implement this because of his company. But fortunately he knows a lot of businesses such as restaurants and bars that can use it! So he'll make some introductions for me. =)

debml · 29th Sep 2012, 06:56 PM

Originally Posted by InternetMarketingSmarts

Yeah I just talked to him and he wouldn't be able to implement this because of his company. But fortunately he knows a lot of businesses such as restaurants and bars that can use it! So he'll make some introductions for me. =)

Sorry it didn't work out with your friend, and congrats on a new referral source.

And, no, I don't work in the compliance department

InternetMarketingSmarts · 29th Sep 2012, 07:26 PM

Originally Posted by debml

Sorry it didn't work out with your friend, and congrats on a new referral source.

And, no, I don't work in the compliance department

It's okay Deb. He's a good buddy of mine and has referred other clients to me for SEO.
So it was just nice practicing my SMS pitch & demo on him. I used one of WillR Local SMS Marketing Video landing pages to give him the overview. Then walked him through how it could be use for appointment reminders. Then I gave him a live text demo. He saw the value immediately after all that! Obviously he couldn't do it because of compliance issues. But he still wanted to know the price. He argued that was the only thing that played out in his mind after my presentation which makes sense. It wasn't I'm not sure if this would work. It was more like I can see how this could work, so much is it going to cost? So I'm just fine tuning my approach to have that already addressed and figured out based on the questions I ask the business before my pitch starts such as:

1. What is the average dollar amount earned per customer or sale?
2. How many customers do you currently have?
3. How often are they coming in the store?

Now that I have Jay's ROI Calculator:
http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...ls-plugin.html

I can use the initial information I gather from the prospect to price my services accordingly which will be easy to illustrate with the spreadsheet I got from this wso. It was one of the missing pieces I needed. It won't do all the work for me but it will help me with that pricing aspect and hopefully the closing when they see the numbers and how sms may be able to make slight changes to their business that has long term impacts to their bottom line.

I'm excited about the prospects of this business.

Thanks again Deb!

P.S. If you don't work in compliance. Maybe you were a compliance officer in a past life because you mentioned a lot of the things I use to have debate with compliance officers in my former career. lol

27th Sep 2012, 10:18 PM	#1
InternetMarketingSmarts HyperActive Warrior War Room Member Join Date: 2006 Location: New York Posts: 288 Thanks: 128 Thanked 70 Times in 51 Posts	SMS Marketing For A Life Insurance Agent? Share on: My financial advisor/life insurance agent is a good buddy of mine. He's coming over to hang out tonight & I'm planning to introduce him to the power of sms marketing for appointment reminders. I already know from our past conversations, that cancelled or last minute reschedule appointments is a source of pain for him. Is there any other angle or ways that text messaging could help his business. I thought scheduled policy renewal payment reminders might be another. He sends out birthday cards which are a nice touch. But I thought setting up birthday text messages would be a nice added benefit as well. Any creative thoughts on how this can benefit his business as a life insurance agent and financial planner/advisor. This may all be for nothing because I'm pretty sure he'll have to get everything approved by his compliance officers which may totally kill the idea.

28th Sep 2012, 01:00 PM	#2
debml Active Warrior War Room Member Join Date: 2012 Location: San Jose, CA Posts: 76 Thanks: 31 Thanked 35 Times in 21 Posts	Re: SMS Marketing For A Life Insurance Agent? Share on: Compliance requirements are going to depend on how many people will receive the message. Correspondence is defined as a message to one person, and usually doesn't require advance compliance approval. If sent to 25 or more clients within a 30 day period, it still can be considered correspondence or may be considered sales literature and needs to be approved prior to use. Regarding appointment confirmation - there are two schools of thought. One says confirm all appointments to avoid wasting time. The other is to not confirm any appointments to avoid giving prospects the opportunity to cancel or reschedule. Your friends viewpoint regarding confirming appointments will determine how he wants to use SMS marketing. The biggest concern your friends broker-dealer may have with SMS is that it can't be monitored and archived like email and social media. They may not allow your friend to use SMS at all. Hope this helps and good luck!