The Medicare Annual Election Period may only come once a year, but you should still be engaging your customers continuously throughout the year. If you are only reaching out to your clients once a year (or less for some agents), then it is difficult to maintain a good rapport or attain a high level of customer retention when AEP does swing back around. Keep reading to learn what customer engagement means and get ideas on a few easy ways you can keep your name in front of your customers.
What is Customer Engagement?
Customer engagement is the deep connection that a customer has with a brand. Your Medicare company, even as an independent agent, is the brand and your Medicare recipients are the customers. Highly engaged customers show more loyalty and are more likely to buy, refer, and promote the brands they are engaged with. This is important since Medicare recipients have a lot of information and choices being thrown at them. Engagement throughout the year reminds your clients that they have an agent and it helps keep you at the top of their mind when they think of Medicare.
Customer engagement does not need to be hard, time consuming or expensive. Here are a few engagement activities that you can use to keep your name and face in front of your current clients.
Newsletters
You can engage with your current customers by sending out a regular newsletter to include useful information on Medicare or Health related topics. This newsletter can be an email newsletter, which is probably the easiest and cheapest. You can send them monthly or quarterly. We use Constant Contact to create and send nicely organized, easily formatted emails, but you can easily use any other service or just create one in your email. The information in your newsletter can include Medicare updates and news alerts, general healthy living information, fun updates about you and your agency to give your brand a face and make your clients feel like they know you better. Medicare.gov has a lot of useful Medicare topics under their blog page. The health insurance companies usually have pre-approved materials to engage with your customers. For instance, UnitedHealthcare has a Health Perspective customer facing Newsletter you can use. You can download and customize the topics directly from the UHC Jarvis portal.
Social Media
Baby boomers are becoming more tech savvy and a good majority have at least one social media account. According to research, Facebook is the most used social media platform among baby boomers, with approximately 75% of them with an active account. Making sure your company has a presence on Facebook is important to engage with current and perspective Medicare customers.
There are many places to pull content to share on social media so you can regular post updates. Again, you can use medicare.gov blog posts for up to date information on Medicare. You can also find relevant information and posts from the carriers you are contracted with, as well as create and share any of your own website posts. You can check out our customer facing blog HERE to see the types of information we create and share on social media. Whatever you decide to share, be sure you do regular posts and have your Facebook business page on your website, email signature, and anywhere else your customers find you. A Facebook page is also a great way to share what you do with your existing friends and family!
Birthday & Holiday Cards
This is a pretty simple thing to do and people really appreciate the thought. It is also one more reminder that you are their agent. Just keep an ongoing list of all your clients that have birthdays in each month and send them off with a nice note wishing them a wonderful day. As for holiday cards, we usually send Thanksgiving cards rather than other holiday cards so our card stands out and doesn’t get lost with the other holiday cards.
Annual Customer Assessments
As you approach the Annual Election Period each year, your clients should know you are on top of any Medicare changes and that you are there to ensure they have the best plan. The best way to do this is by mailing out letters at least a month before Annual Election Period begins to update your customers on the election time, and to contact you for a free annual assessment if their needs or health situation have changed from the prior year.
As always, be sure you stay compliant by adhering to any Medicare guidelines when providing any information or marketing materials to your customers. You can check out our post on “Medicare Marketing: The Do’s and Don’ts” for some pointers on the rules and regulations with marketing Medicare.
Please feel free to call and speak with one of our friendly broker managers if you have questions or are interested in becoming an agent. CONTACT US HERE!
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