Should an insurance agent start a local newsletter?

I spent nearly twenty years in insurance before this, and I think insurance agents might be the best people to run a local newsletter. I've already helped one of the five largest agents in a major carrier's network launch local newsletters in his community.

"Every single insurance agent should own the local media in their town."

Why insurance agents and not realtors?

Two things line up. Agents make a lot per client, roughly $4,000 to $5,000 in lifetime value, and every single local person buys insurance. How many people buy a home or get a new roof each year? Maybe 2% or 3%. With insurance, everybody's buying. A realtor only needs a couple of deals; one a year and they're good. An insurance agent can win eight or ten clients from the same audience, and they'll pay for that.

Their readers are also my readers. An agent's target audience is upper middle-class homeowners, which is exactly who reads what we do. Mortgage brokers and home service owners (lawn care, HVAC, roofing, window cleaning) fit for the same reason: every reader might be a client.

What's the newsletter actually for?

The primary reason to start a local newsletter isn't to sell ads. It's to build influence in your community, with you and your high-value business as the back end. Ads in the front, your own business in the back. I call it a Trojan horse.

Compare it with how agents get clients now. Many spend $20,000 to $50,000 a month buying leads, and most of those leads are bad. Buying leads and running ads means hitting people over the head who don't want to be hit. A newsletter gives people something they actually want to read. Once you have their attention, you can run your own ad any time. You own the channel instead of renting it from Facebook.

It also changes how people treat you in a room. When I introduced myself at chamber events as an insurance agent, people's faces said "I'm done with this guy, he's going to pitch me." Introduce yourself as the person who runs the local newsletter and business owners line up to talk. I once had a city council member stop me in line at a chamber event, say he'd seen me in the newsletter, and ask to get coffee.

Carrier systems also limit what agents can do with their own marketing, and a local newsletter sits outside those constraints.

How do I mention my agency without being pushy?

Subtly, and over a long time. You don't own the database, you own access to it. When I worked in insurance I had everybody's email, but I couldn't just send emails because I wanted to. If someone looks at a list of 10,000 local readers and decides to email them every day about how great they are, that destroys the business. In the franchise models I've designed, the owner gets one non-newsletter send a month to say whatever they want, reviewed so it's nothing too crazy.

Inside the newsletter, mix it up:

• Write about what you're doing in the editorial one week.
• Run a full ad for your agency another week, but never the same full ad every issue.
• Use a small text ad at the bottom another week.
• Every fourth week or so, mention a customer you helped with something.

Nobody calls you the first time they hear it. Nine months later, they've seen your ad seven times and heard you mention insurance three or four times, and when insurance comes up they think of you. The survey after signup can do some of this directly: swap a question like "do you own or rent your home?" for "are you interested in getting a quote on your home?" and leads arrive the moment someone subscribes.

Don't name the brand after your agency. I watched a young, successful agent smartly try to build local influence on Instagram, with a page named after his agency. That misses the point. It should be a neutral local media brand where most of the content has nothing to do with insurance.

How can the newsletter win referral partners?

One of the best things an agent can do is partner with a mortgage broker, because every buyer needs insurance before closing. The problem is every insurance person in town is courting them. Maybe you bring donuts twice a week instead of once. Or you offer something nobody else can: free ads for them in your newsletter in exchange for their clients. Nobody spends any money and you've beaten every other agent. The same trade works with realtors.

Who should actually run it?

Probably not the agent personally. Most agents are 50-year-old guys who don't know social media, though they know how powerful it is. A spouse or a key employee makes a better face. Agencies already have sales muscle, too. If you have 10 salespeople in the office, have one spend four hours a day on it.

The budget case is small. I'd put 2% to 4% of the marketing budget toward an owned channel. Some of these agencies spend 20 grand a month on marketing, so 5% of that on a venture that takes little work is a small bet. Because it can deliver leads from the moment someone signs up, I think it makes sense for an agent to pay $1,500 to $2,000 a month to have someone run it.

Treat it as its own business, not a marketing tactic. A local media company is an actual business that happens to help your agency. Keep it separate from a client newsletter to your own policyholders, and be careful in that client newsletter about recommending other companies, because your carrier's rules may restrict it. I'm not a lawyer, so check those rules.

What about a done-for-you newsletter for agents?

That's a different product, and it isn't local. The model I've sketched is about $250 to $300 a month. Every agent gets the same issue twice a month, branded to them: agency name, photo, contact details, their calls to action, header and footer, plus an optional short update or photos the agent sends in through a greetform form.

The content is roughly 30% fun insurance material (wild or funny real claim stories, scams to watch for, surprising claim facts) and the rest simply entertaining: a meme set, a light video of the week, one big interesting story. It only works as a business if adding the 80th agent costs almost no human time.

How long before it pays?

It's a long-term play. You will not make much money in the first year, and that's the hardest part of the model. I'm also pessimistic about direct leads from the email itself. The value is being seen constantly, so that 10 or 15 months later, when someone needs insurance, they call you. The leads you do get are much better.

Measurability is the big objection. An agent friend walked me through his lead math: he spends $2,500 a month, talks to 12% of the leads, quotes half of those and sells 25%, which he says makes about $3,600 a month short term and $9,000 long term. A newsletter can't promise that. My answer is the data: more than half of new subscribers fill out our survey, including whether they have money and whether they're interested in things like real estate.

Of the first two agents I pitched, one immediately wanted two newsletters of his own, and the other liked it but worried about when he'd get paid back. My takeaway is that big agents are the ones for whom this is a no-brainer. My own network of agents could probably get me to 100 partners on its own, but local business owners want proof of closed deals before they buy in. That's fair.

Know why you're doing it. If it's trust and clients, this is a fantastic strategy. If you just want newsletter revenue, focus on the money side, not the design and the events. And the downside case is decent: an owned list of 10,000 to 15,000 local people paying attention to you.