Increase Your Agency Retention: Client Birthday Cards

There is a general marketing rule that says you need to “touch” your clients around 6-7 times per year.  (Not physically touch, thank goodness.  🙂 )

This kind of touch is simply an effort on your part to connect each customer with your name on a regular basis.  They recognize you, feel more connected to you, get great service from you, and feel more inclined to STAY with you.

There are lots of marketing touches that you do in this area.  Everything from your annual reviews to your social media.  But today, I’m talking about birthday cards.

Birthday cards are a great way to reach out to every client throughout the year with a personal message.  Everyone loves to get a card in the mail on their birthday, right?  (In fact, everyone loves to get stuff  in the mail when it isn’t a bill!)

You can automate the process or bring it in house.  The key is (and I sound like a broken record here) CONSISTENCY!  You can’t start the process and then let it fall apart a month or two later.

Why?  What if you have a husband and wife insured and you only send a birthday card to one?  Not everyone will notice, but some people will.  And then you’ve possibly created a negative image instead of a positive one.

So let’s think about how you can make this happen.

First, you need to figure out how you can get your list organized.  Hopefully, you have an easy way to run an audit of birthdays.  Then you need to decide who is getting a card each year.  All insureds or just the policy owner?  I would suggest maybe just the policy owner and spouse if you need to control your budget.

Then you need to figure out how you will maintain the list throughout the year.  Can you run an audit each month and work off of that?  Will you manually add to it as people come and go?  Decide now!

Now, figure out how you will make and send your cards.  There are services out there that will do it all for you automatically and that could be an easy option.

You could also bring in a marketing assistant a few hours a month and make them yourself!  Not near as hard as it sounds.  We did this for a long time!  I bought blank generic birthday cards and a cute stamp and ink pad.

I had a college student who did occasional part-time work come in, and “decorate” each card and address the envelopes.  Then everyone in the office signed all of that month’s cards and she stuffed and stamped them all.

You could do them in a monthly batch or could break down so that they arrived close to that person’s birthday.  I do like this personalized option, just because you can sign them yourself and it shows a little more thought than a generic card sent from your office.

This is just one of those processes that you can put in place to make sure your clients KNOW you are, LIKE you, and gain a little more TRUST.  These three things are the key to getting and keeping more clients.