Loyalty Marketing: Creating Incentives Needed To Motivate Agents

In addition to rewarding top-producing agents, you should celebrate and publicize their success so they can be recognized among peers. Use vehicles like newsletters, flyers, direct mail/e-mails and your Web site to acknowledge them and include their photos and bios where possible.

To further honor the winners, your company could establish a “Producers Hall of Fame.” Also, acknowledge them at seminars, company outings and other forums. Such frequent positive reinforcement can go a long way in building loyalty to your company.

Timing is also critical with an incentive program. Establish a deadline that creates urgency, spurring agents to act now, while giving enough time–generally six, nine or 12 months–to realistically write the required amount of business.

Personal contact is critical. If you want to jumpstart an incentive program, plan face-to-face contact with agents within 30 days after a program is launched. Use forums such as CE classes, workshops and on-site presentations to explain product features, strategies for closing sales, and your commitment to servicing their clients. This promotes good will and gets agents excited about selling your products.

Over the course of the incentive program, take every opportunity to talk to agents in person at events such as trade shows and industry meetings. Schedule lunches with key producers and consider holding golf outings, company picnics and other informal get-togethers to further bond with agents.

One of your biggest challenges is getting agents to pay attention to your products–and not the competitions. Be creative in the incentives you select and the means you promote them.

And dont be afraid to have fun and make agents laugh! Unleash your own style of creativity by thinking out of the insurance industry box to give your program some snap, crackle and pop. Below are some examples of innovative incentive programs and promotions:

Create a retro “S&H Green Stamps”-like promotion, where each policy written would earn an agent points or promotional certificates that could be redeemed for a valuable gift.

Upon launching a contest for a resort island, send a beach towel or a message in a bottle with sand and seashells. Both gifts should include your company logo.

Send dynamic four-color e-mails, featuring sound and animation such as winks, blinks, flashes and explosions to announce your incentive. Wherever possible, use colors, which are far more effective than black-and-white in selling products and which can increase comprehension.

Place eye-catching ads in trade publications that connect your company to the reward being offered.

In conclusion, loyalty marketing works. It can provide you with a huge opportunity to stand out from competitors and increase revenues. But it needs to be part of a sophisticated and ongoing incentive program, developed by your internal staff or an outside firm.

One-shot incentives almost always fail, just like a seed you planted, which will dry up and die without watering. Studies have indicated that the biggest reason an agent stops working with a carrier is because he or she feels ignored. So keep the creative incentives flowing and youll keep building loyalty.

is president of The Right Stuff Incentives, a Freehold, N.J.-based firm that specializes in incentive programs for the insurance industry. She can be reached via e-mail at info@therightstuffincentives.com.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Life & Health/Financial Services Edition, October 7, 2002. Copyright 2002 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.