Insurance agencies have many methods of promoting their business at their fingertips: direct mail, email campaigns, texting, websites and more. However, rather than thinking of them as independent channels, it's best to view them as cogs in the same marketing machine.

The classic expression “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" sums up the driving concept behind omnichannel marketing. Not only can these marketing channels build off one another for greater messaging impact, but key integrations can help personalize the lead nurturing experience.

Here are three tips to successfully implement omnichannel marketing:

1) Don't treat all contacts the same. The more you can segment your contacts, the better you can tailor marketing messages to the individual. You can split your audience into subgroups by whether the contact is a prospect, current customer or former customer. You could also segment by the type of insurance they purchased or expressed interest in. You can even segment your contacts by previous content interactions and different demographic groups.

2) Map out a lead nurturing journey. It's foundational to your omnichannel marketing success to understand which messages and media resonate most at each stage of your customer's journey. With this in mind, you can craft an omnichannel experience that purposefully guides prospects down the lead nurturing funnel with interactions that build on one another step by step until eventually resulting in a sale. An omnichannel marketing nurture could look like this:

• Awareness: A prospect sees a Facebook ad promoting affordable home insurance.
• Engagement: They click the ad and download a free "Home Insurance 101" guide after entering their email.
• Follow-Up: The agent sends a personalized email with a link to a short explainer video about coverage options.
• Consideration: The prospect receives a follow-up text offering to schedule a quick consultation.
• Decision: After the consultation, the agent provides a custom quote via email, followed by a call to answer final questions.
  

3) Invest in integrated marketing automation tools. The right MarTech stack will consist of marketing tools that connect with your customer relationship management (CRM) or agency management system (AMS) to create advanced automations that will allow your omnichannel marketing to scale.

However, no one nails marketing on the first try, and past successes don't guarantee future results. Tracking and comparing the results of different marketing channels, messaging and scheduling will provide valuable insights into prospective customers and ideas for how to modify your strategy.

Make the most of your findings by equipping yourself with essential data to tell a complete story. This means tracking initial engagement metrics like email open rates, organic site visits and paid ad interactions. You'll also want to determine and document key performance indicators (KPIs) that reflect subsequent experiences and lead quality.

For example, let's say a blog post offering tips to prevent car theft brings in thousands of site visits. Initially, this might look like a success. However, if visitors spend only a few seconds on the page or fail to explore other parts of your site, these metrics suggest that readers seeking car theft information may not be the audience best suited for insurance sales.

It's important to connect the dots between the various stages of lead nurturing to determine potential weak spots that generate the highest attrition. Also, evaluate the quality of the leads against a channel's initial marketing cost to ensure you're getting an acceptable return on investment (ROI).

While printed materials are a little harder to track, they can still be a great part of an agency's omnichannel marketing. When possible, tie printed materials to digital actions or tracking. For direct mail, include a unique URL that recipients can visit—either a simple website address to type or, even better, a QR code to scan. This approach allows you to track engagement with your offline campaigns and even lets you make multiple versions to test which one recipients like best.

Above all, remember that your tactics and messaging need to evolve as the industry and customer priorities change. Continually adapting and testing marketing strategies is crucial to staying competitive.

Aleksandra Spiric is the growth marketing manager at Voxie.