The Bateman Group successfully uses Act! Marketing Automation to develop its customer relationships

The Bateman Group is a family operated insurance broker & financial advisory firm specialising in business insurance, personal insurance, pensions and investments. The company has been in business since 1967 and prides itself on the close relationships built with its customers.

Using Act! CRM to add value to customer relationships

The Bateman Group chose Act! CRM to manage its contact database. They also added marketing automation to help build long-lasting, valuable customer relationships.

The goal of the marketing automation strategy is to contact customers around the date of insurance renewal for two reasons: To remind them that the date is approaching and to make them aware of the service provided by The Bateman Group.

The Bateman Group has multiple databases with different audiences, from personal insurance and asset management through to business insurance. They wanted to target each segment with a tailored personalised message to increase conversions.

There were a lot of contact records within the databases that didn’t have this essential renewal information, so the marketing strategy evolved to target those without renewal dates too.

Putting the plan into action

Act! CRM and Marketing Automation has all the tools The Bateman Group needs to manage and grow their customer relationships. However, there was nobody in the business with the time to use the marketing tools effectively.

Keen to get going with marketing automation but without the necessary resources, The Bateman Group turned to Softext’s Marketing as a Service to manage their Act! marketing.

We helped them to design email templates targeting each of their 9 customer segments with bespoke content to encourage website visits and replies.

From these email templates we created two campaigns per segment – one campaign is sent to the contacts where the renewal date is already in the system. The campaign delivers an email two months before the renewal date, with a follow up call scheduled the month before the renewal date. This gives the sales team enough time to engage with the contact before the renewal date.

The second campaign is sent to the contacts that do not have renewal information filled in. These contacts receive an email each month reminding them that The Bateman Group is here to help when it comes to renewing insurance policies. These emails are also followed up with a call from the sales team to find out the renewal date and enter it into the CRM system.

Finally, Rob designed a data capture form which is now embedded in Bateman Group’s website which when completed, transfers the data directly into the commercial insurance database – therefore not only capturing the fundamental important information needed, but also reducing the time required as no “double entry” input is needed.

Enhancing the marketing strategy

Following the success of the first set of campaigns, Julian Bateman – Managing Director of The Bateman Group – asked us to expand on the marketing activities. To add further value to their customers, the company wanted to send regular newsletters to their databases. These newsletters would provide interesting and important information related to the customers insurance needs.

Adding content marketing

To ensure The Bateman Group had enough valuable content to share in their regular newsletters, we developed a content marketing strategy for their website. This includes two blog posts each month on topics that are relevant to the target audience.

The posts are also optimised for SEO to help drive organic traffic to the website.

Small investment, big results

With continued, targeted email campaigns The Bateman Group is developing closer relationships with its customer base and turning cold leads into prospective clients.

Month on month, open rates and clickthrough rates continue to rise while unsubscribes are reducing. The number of contact records with insurance renewal information is also increasing; this shows that as leads begin to recognise the company, they are more open to engaging with them.

The Act! marketing activities are turning cold leads into warm leads, eventually leading them to becoming active customers.

“We are very pleased with the efforts of Rob & Nikki and how Softext has helped us reach a much larger and widened audience. We value their input on the marketing side and they add the value that we just don’t have the time or knowledge to do – and hopefully the results will continue to increase as we refine the strategy and processes involved in the future.”

We’re excited to continue working with The Bateman Group to deliver results using Act! CRM and Marketing Automation.