COVID-19 is keeping health insurance brokers at home and away from clients and prospects. This means that digital outreach to your clients is more important than ever. Looking at your personal inbox or social media feed recently, you’ve probably been overwhelmed by the amount of companies reaching out daily – and your clients and prospects are in the same boat. So how do you engage them when you’re competing with more online content from competitors than ever before? Here are some trends and tips surrounding three major avenues of online outreach.

1. Email

The pandemic has led to a huge increase in sales and marketing email campaigns. Recently, there has been a 27% increase in emails compared to before COVID-19. Customers and prospects are getting a lot of emails, but open and click rates stayed strong throughout most of April. That means emails are still a great way to engage with your customers, remind them you are still here to help, and keep them thinking about their benefits during quarantine. Here are some tips to help you keep your emails successful.

• Focus on engaged prospects: Sending emails to unengaged prospects will most likely not be successful. With so many emails flooding peoples’ inboxes, they probably won’t prioritize emails from someone they aren’t familiar with. Focus on creating valuable and thoughtful emails for your current clients and engaged leads in your pipeline.
• Valuable and relevant content: It is hard not to mention the COVID-19 pandemic in your emails. After all, it’s what people are talking about, what they care about, and it’s drastically affecting their lives. But make sure the emails you send are relevant to your services. Educate your prospects on things like taking care of their health at home, telehealth services, and how you are here to assist them. Focused content is much more engaging than one more email about how to wash your hands and social distancing!

2. Social Media:

With people staying at home and keeping their eyes on their screens, social media engagement with companies is increasing. This means posting on social media is even more important now, with even higher engagement opportunities with your prospects. Make sure you use the correct platform for your audience, post relevant content regularly, and use images to keep people engaged! For some more tips on making social media efficient for your business, check out our blog here.

3. Chat

HubSpot also reports a 26% increase in chat conversations, including chatbots and messaging, compared to before COVID-19. This growth means that it is a great time to implement a chat function on your website! Website chat functions are widgets that allow your visitors to ask questions to your staff or a chatbot in real-time on your website. Chat is an awesome way for health insurance brokers to engage visitors and turn them into prospects and sales in an instant! Here are some tips to get started with chat during COVID-19:

• Choose a chat service: You probably don’t have the time or resources to design a chat feature for your website by yourself – and there are much more time effective options. There are tons of chat software online for you to pick from, and they will generally help you get it set up online. Some common ones are IntelliTicks, Botsify, and Instabot. But before you start shopping, check with your website provider – most websites building tools already have chat features ready for you to use.
• Get a chatbot: Chat allows you to interact with real prospects in real time. You aren’t waiting on an email, and neither are they. As soon as they ask you a question you can answer and start to help them! But what if you aren’t around when someone reaches out? That is where a chatbot comes in. Chatbots will engage the users on your website, answer their common questions, and can even schedule a consultation for you! 
• Check your chat software: Most chat functions have a chatbot option and tutorials to help you set it up. If you don’t have access to a chatbot through your software, you can learn more about setting one up here.

While email, social media, and chat aren’t the only ways to reach out to clients and prospects online, they are three extremely effective ways to engage your audience during COVID-19 and beyond. And if you are looking to take your online footprint to the next level, check out our FREE LinkedIn Guide below to help you gain an edge over your competition!