MARKETING the average length of time clients stay with you . Excellent marketing tactics should deliver a $ 1.00 return for every $ 1.00 spent or better in the first year , but you get a much more robust picture of how profitable your marketing is when you know how long you retain your clients on average .
Item 13 : Website analytics . Your website is your virtual office . Potential clients are researching you before they decide to buy . Current clients are using your website as a source of information . How do you keep track of your website ’ s effectiveness ? Your first step is to install analytics on your website . Talk to your website developer about Google analytics . Once analytics are installed , you can log in and see things such as :
5 How many people visited your website 5 Which pages are visited most often
5 How people find your website ( are they entering through Google or Facebook )
5 If people are clicking your calls to action
Item 14 : Email marketing campaign open rates Understanding open rates are an important aspect of your marketing strategy ; it allows you to take action based on hard data . The key is to know what metrics you need to review and how to interpret them . The top metrics to understand with each email marketing campaign are :
5 Open rates 5 Click-through rates
The industry average open rate for non-sales related email marketing campaigns is between 15-20 %. ( Constant Contact data ) When you first start communicating , you may see high open rates as your clients are curious to read your new communications ; the key is to sustain
the higher rates . As you review your open rates , pay close attention to any dips or trends downward that could indicate that you need to act and respond with communications that have higher engagement . The more personalized your stories are , the higher your open rates will climb . Agencies that focus on community activities , stories about their staff outside of work , and about the charities they partner with quarterly for their referral programs average as high as 40 % with their open rates , with the highest we ’ ve seen at 52 % per month .
Agencies that focus on insurance news and safety tips drop open rates down to the low teens and single digits .
Click-through rates indicate interest in a particular topic or create a potential follow-up for the agency . Monitoring the click-through rate of your calls to action could lead to additional sales for the agency . Click-through links that take people to your website increase your website traffic and , in turn , raise your search engine results . Links to your referral page , staff biographies , in-depth stories about the charities you work with , and regularly updated community calendars do well as links to your website .
Keep tracking each of these metrics monthly . Over time you ’ ll enjoy seeing how your marketing efforts contribute to growth , rising retention levels , and stronger profitability .
About this article : Safeco Insurance ’ s Chuck Blondino studied the differences between high growth agencies in his territory and those that were not growing or growing only marginally . He determined that a key differentiator for the high growth agencies is that they tracked and acted upon key metrics relating to their business ’ s origins , close ratios , revenue and policies per client , retention , and average client tenure . Based on his research , the author then outlines the twelve key metrics agencies should track to maximize their marketing efforts and grow their business . He also lays out how agencies can generate those metrics .
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