Today, Applied Systems announced the launch of Applied Marketing Automation, an application that allows agents and brokers to quickly build and track marketing email campaigns, delivering relevant, timely content to property-casualty and benefits clients and prospects.

Directly integrated into Applied Epic, Applied Marketing Automation extends the value of the management system, eliminating the time and expense of managing separate marketing automation and content management systems.

With marketing—and specifically content creation—a well-known pain point for many independent agencies, one of the distinct features of the software is a ready-made content library containing thousands of content items devised to target p-c clients. Curated and developed by a dedicated editorial team, new content is frequently added and updated to keep communications relevant and timely.

“It's not always the case, but agencies often don't have a lot of expertise inside the agency to market themselves well," says Michael Howe, executive vice president of product management, Applied Systems. “This new product helps them get started with some common tools, common capabilities, and the basics of marketing to make that easier for them, but also removes the burden to have to create the materials that drive good marketing campaigns."

“Applied Systems now employs a team of content writers who generate new content," Howe says. “They are knowledgeable on industry trends, whether it's legislation or specific areas such as cyber, and we create the content and keep it fresh, topical and relevant."

Applied Marketing Automation offers a relatively unrivaled solution to launch marketing communications directly from the management system, ranging from one-off communications to robust marketing campaigns that nurture customers and prospects on relevant topics and subsequently track any marketing-related activities back into the management system.

The application's integration with Applied Epic weds marketing capability with customer data which Howe refers to as “the source of truth" for businesses seeking to manage renewals, cross-sell products and “demonstrate why your agency is better than the agent down the street," Howe says.

The application is “simple by design" and provides embedded reporting to track the messages and content audiences are engaging with the most, allowing agents to easily adapt campaigns for maximum effectiveness, as well as the ability to leverage contact, account and policy information to create targeted campaigns, Howe explains. “We spent a lot of time on the user experience (UX) to make it super, super simple so adoption is easy, and we lower any change management barriers introducing technology into the marketing workflows," he says.

“Marketing automation is the table stakes," Howe adds. “It's the content, the UX and the integration with our AMS that when coupled with the marketing automation makes this such a powerful tool for the independent agent and sets it apart from some of the other products."

Will Jones is IA managing editor.