Learn best practices on how you can manage and maintain clean data in your AMS to make the most of marketing automation tools to send right-time, right-place client communications worry-free.
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Considerations for AMS data best practices.
Before we dive in, we wanted to clarify that questions about managing your AMS data should always be directed to your AMS provider.
We’ve established these best practices over the years through our work with insurance agencies and the advice we share to help them maximize their impact when using our Fuse marketing automation platform. These tips may be helpful if you are using other similar systems.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about the best practices for managing and maintaining your AMS.
The table of contents.
Here’s what we’ll cover throughout this resource on AMS Data Best Practices for Insurance Agencies.
- AMS data and marketing automation 101.
- The difference a true AMS integration with Fuse makes.
- The importance of keeping clean AMS data.
- Contact information best practices.
- Personal details best practices.
- Policy information best practices.
- Multiple locations and branches best practices.
- Employee account management best practices.
- Adding new leads best practices.
- Stay in sync with your AMS.
AMS data and marketing automation 101.
When using marketing automation technology to streamline your agency’s client communications and operations, how you manage and maintain your AMS data matters.
Why? Data-driven smart automation systems connect with your AMS. However, unlike other systems, our Fuse marketing automation platform features a true AMS integrations that securely connect key client data points, allowing you to simplify your client marketing and communications.
Simply put, this means that, given you have your AMS data clean, here are just a few things you’ll be able to use a solution like Fuse marketing automation to help you:
- Send right-time, right-place emails to your clients at key milestones, such as birthdays, policy renewals, and even welcoming new clients after signing up.
- Create audience segments based on a wide range of client data points, including age, birthday, policy type, location, carrier, and more.
- Conduct one-to-one communication via text message through our Business Texting feature, which also includes an automated option to associate it with the client’s number on file.
- Route form submissions and client feedback survey responses directly to the email inboxes of the agency team members working with those clients.
- Send automated, personalized emails using your agency’s team members’ emails and signatures to make them look and feel handwritten.
In this marketing resource, we’ll review best practices to follow, especially if you plan to leverage smart automation as part of your agency’s marketing strategy.
How is a true AMS integration with Fuse different?
Unlike other marketing automation services, Fuse connects client data from your AMS to unlock the full potential of smart automation.
The setup is simple and secure, and once an agency completes our streamlined onboarding process, you’ll have access to a content library full of ready-to-use campaigns that take the work of marketing and client communications off your plate, so you can focus on building one-to-one client relationships and selling more policies.
Where the power of the AMS comes into play is in how the campaigns, audiences, and interface support back-and-forth communication between it and the Fuse marketing automation platform, so there’s no need to jump between platforms or double-entry. Everything you need to run a successful campaign is there and ready to go out of the box.
The end result is personalized communications sent directly from your agency to your clients, without you having to do all the manual work of sending those emails—the system knows when the best time is to connect with your book of business, based on built-in parameters and customizable audience targeting.
With this in place, clients will be hearing from you more often, and we’ve seen, on average, agencies saving upwards of 5 hours a week per agent on marketing work because of the Fuse platform.
As mentioned, there are some best practices to follow to make the most of Fuse and similar platforms.
Fuse is compatible with the leading AMS platforms used by the majority of insurance agencies.
Experience the difference a true AMS integration makes.
Did you know that Fuse has true integrations with the top AMS on the market? This means we can help you sync your data and set up automated marketing campaigns that work for you—sending emails, text messages, and even physical postcards to your book of business, with communications that are timely and specific to each client.
Learn more about what our marketing automation platform can do, and confirm that your AMS is compatible.
Get the Power of Marketing Automation
The importance of keeping clean AMS data.
Your AMS data is your agency’s source of truth for the policy details, and it’s what helps your team handle service requests and policy updates with ease. The same goes for smart automation—systems like Fuse securely pull AMS data as the source of truth to determine who to communicate with and when.
This is all seamlessly done for you through automation. But the important thing to consider is how accurate and up-to-date your AMS data really is.
The most common reasons AMS data is not “clean” include a few minor but important issues. We’ll also give you clear guidance on how to easily fix the common issues we see insurance agencies face.
- Missing or invalid emails for your book of business. This means you won’t be able to send an email to people without valid contact information.
- Names and other details in all caps. Having your clients’ names in all capital letters can mean the difference between an automated email reading “Dear LUKE” instead of “Dear Luke,” which can make that communication feel less personalized than it would otherwise.
- Active agency employees are not being properly added. Having this information wrong in your AMS can cause the system to not know who is assigned to a policyholder’s account, and instead redirect it to a default team member. It’s also essential to have up-to-date, unique email addresses for each employee in order for the system to send emails on behalf of your team, and for them to get email replies from their clients right to their inbox.
As you can see, the power of a smart automation tool is amazing, but there are many details that are defined from your AMS data, which means to get the best results, you need to make sure you put in place processes and best practices to ensure you can make the most of your marketing system.
But don’t worry, there are safeguards and systems in place to help get your AMS data to where it needs to be, particularly as part of our Fuse marketing automation platform.
Follow these best practices to manage and maintain your database, streamline operations, and ensure automation runs in the background.
Contact information best practices.
As part of any AMS audit, ensuring you have the accurate contact information for your clients and leads in your system is key. Primarily, this includes name, phone number, email, and address.
Things change, so it’s important to make sure you are actually capturing this information in the first place, and implementing checks to confirm it’s up-to-date.
Here are some simple strategies to help you keep this information accurate:
- During onboarding with a new client, always be sure to capture their contact information.
- In every interaction with a client, consider adding a step to your process to ask whether their contact information has changed.
- Confirm with your clients if they have a separate cell phone number you can send text messages to, so you can keep that on file and potentially send automated communications via text.
By having an AMS database that has accurate information, you’ll be able to send communications seamlessly. And with our Fuse marketing platform, you’ll be able to send automated emails, text messages, and even physical postcards by keeping these details up to date.
As part of Fuse, we have a campaign (Unable to Email). This will pinpoint who in your book of business does not have a valid or working email address, and over the course of the year, it sends email notifications to the assigned agent or CSR to remind them to reach out with the information you do have to obtain a viable email.
Personal details best practices.
For an automated marketing system to function at peak efficiency, it needs to have details such as birthdays and client anniversary dates, as well as names. Here are some best practices to consider in order to gather and maintain accurate data for personal details:
- When a client first signs up for a policy with you, be sure to capture their birthday information so you can keep it on file.
- When contacting a client in your database, if you notice names are written in all caps, be sure to update their name in your AMS so they appear as intended (“Luke” instead of “LUKE,” for example).
- Review and update any client accounts that have multiple names—instead of having “Jane and Jim Smith” as the name, change it to “Jane Smith” as the primary contact and “Jim Smith” as a secondary contact.
- If you ever switch AMS from one provider to another, this can sometimes cause client anniversary dates to be the date of the transfer. Be sure to check with your AMS provider before and after a transition to make sure this data is retained.
Having personal details like this within your AMS unlocks the ability to send even more personalized communications, whether it’s a birthday message or even a milestone celebration of their anniversary as a client of yours—and it ensures that every message looks and feels like it was handwritten for the recipient.
If you ever switch AMS from one provider to another, this can sometimes cause client anniversary dates to be the date of the transfer. Be sure to check with your AMS provider before and after a transition to make sure this data is retained.
Policy information best practices.
When it comes to policy information that would sync to a marketing automation system, like Fuse, having your client policy data updated and consistent is essential. In particular, sending out marketing campaigns that target clients with specific policies (or lack thereof) can run into a barrier if you don’t have accurate information.
- Every time you interact with a client, review their policy details to ensure it is accurate (this is already probably part of your process, but a good rule of thumb nonetheless).
- Make sure your policy types are pulling in accurately. To do this, audit your audience list in your marketing automation system by creating and exporting a segment (for example, active clients with an auto insurance policy) and cross-referencing it with your AMS list to ensure your policy types are properly mapped and match.
- When adding or updating policies in your AMS, ensure expiration and renewal dates are accurate and marked as active or inactive.
Taking these best practices into consideration will help ensure you can send targeted communications based on policy data and provide up-to-date information in automated policy renewal campaigns.
Multiple locations and branches best practices.
If your agency has multiple locations, or even if you simply have multiple branches set up in your AMS, you’ll want to make sure this information is accurately reflected in your client accounts.
- Review how your AMS database is set up and confirm whether or not you are using multiple branches, and if so, identify which branch goes with which office location.
- If you are using Fuse and have recently added a new location (or will be in the near future), be sure to connect with our Client Experience team to help you set up location mapping.
By following these best practices, your marketing automation tool, such as Fuse, can tie communications to a specific office location, ensuring clients not only hear from the right location but also have the contact information to reach out.
Employee account management best practices.
Client communications always do best when they are coming from a person they know, like the agent or CSR they reach out to for help with their policies. That’s why it’s crucial to clean up your employee accounts on your AMS.
- Regularly review your employee information in your AMS, and be sure to consolidate duplicates.
- Put a process in place to move accounts from past employees over to active employees.
- Run an audit of your clients and make sure that the correct team members are assigned to the right accounts. If you have Fuse, an easy way to do this is to create and export a segment of active clients assigned to a producer or account rep, and cross-reference that list of accounts with your AMS data.
- Check your AMS to ensure all current employees are active and have a valid email address so emails can be sent on their behalf.
By implementing these checks and balances on your employee information within your AMS, you’ll be able to confidently send out communications from the right people to increase engagement and further build relationships between your team and your clients.
Adding new leads best practices.
Effectively managing your prospecting process is crucial for turning potential leads into clients. By adding leads who are expecting to hear from you (requested a quote, reached out to your agency, or made a connection with them) directly into your AMS, you can ensure accurate data entry and communications. Here’s how to optimize your prospecting efforts within your AMS:
- Ensure that quoted policy statuses are correctly labeled as a quote or prospecting in your AMS to maintain clarity and organization.
- Conduct routine checks of your data to ensure accuracy and completeness, reducing the risk of lost opportunities due to outdated information.
By implementing these best practices, your agency can enhance its prospecting strategy, ensuring a steady flow of leads and successful conversions with the help of Fuse.
Stay in sync with your AMS data.
As we mentioned before, your marketing automation platform is powered by your AMS, and keeping your data up to date by following these best practices will ensure communications are sent to the right people at the right time.
Keeping your AMS in sync is a common concern we hear from agencies. The good news is that on our Fuse marketing automation platform, we built it with a focus on keeping your data synced as often as possible to give you the most up-to-date information from your system.
We also put an emphasis on keeping you informed if your AMS connection is ever impacted, with smart notifications that let you know immediately when there is a disconnection. The best part? We make it easy to reconnect your data if this ever does happen. Plus, if you are a client of ours, you can always reach out to our Client Experience team for help!
About Agency Revolution.
Agency Revolution is the leading provider of client engagement tools for the insurance industry. Forge, our cutting-edge website platform designed specifically for insurance agencies, provides a seamless online experience for both agents and clients. Fuse, our flagship marketing automation platform, streamlines communication with clients and prospects, allowing agencies to stay connected and engaged with their audience.
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