[00:00:08] Hello. Welcome everybody, and thank you for joining us. I am M Wind Grove Chief Experience Officer for Aptitude eight, an elite partner in the HubSpot ecosystem. And today we are diving into how insurance teams can modernize their tech stack and level up client experiences with HubSpot. And I'm joined today by Tia.

[00:00:30] Tia. I'll let you introduce yourself.

[00:00:32] Hi, I'm Tia Vigo. I'm the Chief Innovation Officer at Blue Ridge Risk. Partners. Um, I've been with Blue Ridge Risk Partners for about five years, and I've been in a myriad of roles, whether it was, uh, brand and communication, digital marketing, uh, digital solutions, and now in this most recent role of, of CIO and my responsibilities kind of go across a large gamut of covering everything from our digital marketing initiatives, our, uh, tech initiatives, as well [00:01:00] as our personal lines team.

[00:01:02] Thank you, Tia.

[00:01:03] Thanks for being with us today. Let's get into it. What are we gonna cover? I think it makes the most sense to start with the current state of CRMs for the insurance space and what that impact really is. And then I wanna go into how insurance companies can actually win with HubSpot, and who are the key stakeholders who are gonna receive the value points of HubSpot.

[00:01:24] Um, from there we'll talk a little bit about integration versus consolidation. Um, do you integrate the data or do you replace the system? From there, we'll talk about common use cases in insurance, and the best part is going to be an actual case study of tia's, real life experience implementing HubSpot with Aptitude.

[00:01:43] Eight. We'll go through some final takeaways and answer any questions you folks may have. So. Let's get in, let's set the stage. Uh, I, I think it's no surprise that, uh, the way that people buy, the way that people expect to be sold to [00:02:00] the, the buyer journey that they expect, it's changed tremendously.

[00:02:04] Expectations are through the roof. Um, the bar is very high. I mean, when you consider. You're buying experience through the likes of Amazon or Netflix. You've got one click purchases. You've got recommendation engines based off of what I've already bought or who I am or what other people like me have bought.

[00:02:22] Uh, so you think about this just complete seamless experience. And Everybody wants that now. So we've all gotta kind of catch up. And I think, you know, insurance as a, as a industry certainly has some catching up to do and, and it's happening, it's slow. Um, but I, I'll give you this too. It's not just insurance.

[00:02:40] Uh, I think about like banking and legacy tools there. They're all catching up as well. But what, what this presents is, is a big opportunity though, right? We can modernize. We have it, we have the tools, we have the people we can modernize, how we engage with our customers, how we stand out to them, and then hopefully as a, as a result, retain them.

[00:02:59] [00:03:00] So with that Tia, help me understand what the modern or what the insurance tech stack is looking like today, and maybe what some of the problems are that, that you, you're facing.

[00:03:12] Yeah, so I think one of the biggest things to keep in mind with like an insurance tech stack right now is that, um, we're definitely still in a lot of the early phases, right? You talked about banking doing a lot of catch up. I still think there are probably. Quite a few years ahead of where we are in insurance.

[00:03:29] So depending on who you're speaking to from which agency is going to kind of guide what a tech stack looks like. You know, there, there has been a little bit of a sense of, uh, throw some paint on the wall and see what sticks. Um, and you know, that's something to keep in mind is that every agency's at a different level.

[00:03:46] But at the core of just about every agency is going to be an agency management system. So we use Applied Epic. Applied Epic and Vertifore are really the two main ones in spa, uh, in the, in the, in the playing field. Um, A [00:04:00] CRM, you know, either you have one or you don't. There's a little bit of a mix or you try to use your a MS as A CRM, um, and then.

[00:04:07] Email tools. We use a lot of those. We also rely, um, on quoting tools, you know, to do some comparative rating across personal lines and small commercial as well. And then with, you know, the rise of ai, there's a lot of, a lot of fun things from policy checking and few other pieces there that are coming together.

[00:04:23] The biggest problem, and you know, this isn't a new one, it's something that you insert any industry and you kind of see it, is that. One, none of the data is centralized and you are now creating a bunch of small silos, right? So you've got one program over here doing something. Maybe you have to take the data, extract it from your a MS and then upload it in there, which of course causes some, um, lack of efficiencies and a lack of accuracy 'cause you're not always working with the most, um, UpToDate data.

[00:04:49] And then one of our biggest things tied back to any type of automation when we're looking at this from, um. Connecting with customers is that you can't get a full view of where they are [00:05:00] in the lifecycle. So there's not a clear view of start to finish on exactly where they, they are in any type of, uh, journey.

[00:05:09] So those are kind of the big areas, you know, where right now we're in the space of, of adding tools, kind of seeing what works, what doesn't. But at the core of all of our problems, it's still in a lot of instances, is not having that centralized data to make smart segmentations and smart decisions off of it.

[00:05:27] Right. And we'll talk a little bit about visibility later too. 'cause I think it's, it's sort of the bedrock. You, you can't action data if you can't see it or have access to it. So we'll go in a little bit deeper there. I'm curious. So you, you mentioned that some have a CRM, some don't. Um, I, I also noticed that larger producers are, are really the only ones, at least, you know, to my understanding, that are using like, the big legacy tools like cr uh, like, uh, dynamics.

[00:05:53] Excuse me. Why is it that that's not more abundantly leveraged?

[00:05:57] It is, you know, and I, I can't [00:06:00] speak for every, um, agency, but what I can say within ours is that a producer, like a true producer, somebody that's boots on the ground out selling insurance actively, um, is doing a lot more of that full prospecting. Process, right? So the idea has always been give them access to these CRM tools, but what that does it is it eliminates all of the other clients that we have that might have just called in from a phone call and need home and, you know, home homeowners and, and auto insurance.

[00:06:28] So it becomes a very helpful tool for them, but we're missing a big part of understanding a lot of, you know, a little bit more of our client's needs and, and maybe what has changed. So, um, that has been a big, big part of it is that it's not something that we've looked at. Holistically only in smaller segmented, uh, parts of the business.

[00:06:48] Right. So you've got functionality that meets certain needs, but not everybody has the same needs. And, and as a result, I'm, I'm guessing that things get a little siloed or disjointed. And so it [00:07:00] forces the conversation of, well, where does, which tool plays, what role and how does it all fit into the overarching tech stack?

[00:07:06] Um, but anyways, going on to, to silo data and, and opportunity cost, what does that look like as a result?

[00:07:13] Yeah. So, you know, I think one of the biggest things to keep in mind, and anybody that works in the insurance industry would be able to, you know, I'm sure they felt a lot of these same pain points, is that you are almost operating a business within a business within a business, right? So the needs of personal lines versus the needs of commercial lines versus the needs of benefits versus the needs of life and health, they don't all add up to the same type of needs, right?

[00:07:37] So finding a platform that kind of fits all of those. Can be incredibly different. So that's one thing to keep in mind is, you know, where we can do a lot more transactional, so to speak, emails or correspondences with personal lines, folks, we don't wanna do that with some of our higher, you know, our higher ticket clients.

[00:07:57] And it's not because we don't value one versus the [00:08:00] other, it's you've gotta know your audience. Right. So that's an important step is being able to call out those of we have their personal lines, we also have their commercial. Don't send these communications to 'em 'cause they require a little bit extra touch, you know, and we weren't able to do that before.

[00:08:16] So those are kind of things that were an issue with siloed, um, with our siloed set up before because they weren't speaking to another one, uh, one another. And then another thing is that we really, you know, it's listed here, we didn't have a great solution for renewals. Um, you know, something to really get in front of the client and where we did have a solution for this.

[00:08:35] Kind of in advance. There was nothing for post. Right? And it's great we can talk to somebody and reach out to 'em over and over again prior to a renewal, but what are we doing after that renewal? You know, we've gotta show that we still care about them a afterwards. So creating that entire journey that is now about 150 days long is incredibly important during that renewal period.

[00:08:55] Right, and going back to visibility, if you don't have the visibility, you [00:09:00] can't do anything. So double clicking here and going one step deeper, it means that either you can't do something or you have to do something manually. Can you expand a little bit on that? I.

[00:09:09] Yeah, so, you know, prior to us starting with HubSpot, we did have, um, the a MS system that we used did have an email solution, but it was very minimal, so you could set up. One email and then you have to set up another. But there was no true like flows, so where we could still get a similar. Experience it did require updating, you know, uh, way more instead of one big push out like we can do in HubSpot, and it created just a lot of issues.

[00:09:40] Maybe something didn't go to the right person. There was something like that because once again, going back to the idea of not really being able to always tell this commercial or personal, do we have both? We weren't able to to differentiate that as well. Then what you also would have is an angry client.

[00:09:55] Like, why am I receiving this email? I always work just specifically with such and such. Right. [00:10:00] So that was a really big part of it. And, and then, you know, the lack of retention. Um, we've had in the last, the, the insurance industry has changed rapidly and it's no surprise, just like everybody else has impacted by inflation, insurance has been.

[00:10:14] Drastically impacted by that as well. And we are really missing a lot of marks to try to retain those clients. So making sure we're creating that good story, leading up to renewals, checking back in with them throughout the year, you know, has become really important. And we couldn't do that. Um, couldn't do that before.

[00:10:31] Um, and then definitely the cross sell and upsell o uh, optimization. I would say it's a bigger opportunity for us to do cross sells and upsells in, um, something like HubSpot. That's just because of all the policy information not being available. 'cause it's not something we would share. Um, but, you know, setting up campaigns and say, all right, we have their home in auto, why don't we have an umbrella?

[00:10:51] Let's send them something as something that we're having success with. Um, and then once again, you know, this allows us to control that client narrative so that we know that the [00:11:00] client's getting the best experience across the board. And we just didn't have that before I.

[00:11:05] Right. And a lot of what you just described is really where HubSpot shines. And I know we're gonna talk a good bit about, you know, what tool is supposed to do what function, but this is a gap that I think a MS. Tools certainly have that. HubSpot fills very well. So let's talk about distilling down the key values, um, for of HubSpot for insurance companies.

[00:11:26] And the first one for me that comes to mind that I hear the most from our customers across all industries is how user-friendly it is. Um. and How that balances itself Well with its customizability and its customization and its extensibility. So a lot of these, like really user friendly, fun, hip, cool platforms, they're, they're, you're in the black box, you're stuck.

[00:11:46] You can't do a lot of customization. Um, but with HubSpot, they strike the balance of extremely user friendly and extremely extensible. You can build almost anything inside of HubSpot. So that's one of the key values for me. What else for you are you seeing [00:12:00] Tia?

[00:12:00] Um, I, I would say though that you definitely hit the nail on the head with the idea of being able to make it as customizable as you want and still understandable. Um, and that was actually gonna be one, one of the things that I mentioned was that all these other tools that are. Pretty, you could only do what, what it was built for.

[00:12:15] You know, like if you wanna add another line or pull in a little bit of information, it's not going to happen. Um, I also really, really like, uh, their reporting dashboards in the ease of using those and setting them up. Um, I love looking at data. If I could, I would just look at it all day. Some days I do.

[00:12:33] Um, and HubSpot makes it really easy, not just with reports that they're reporting on, but also things, you know, can connect to your Google Analytics and into a lot of your stuff. So it can show you a nice, really big, broad picture of what's really going on across your digital footprint upfront.

[00:12:48] That's right. We're back to visibility again. Tia

[00:12:50] Uhhuh, it just keeps coming up. It definitely keeps coming up.

[00:12:54] Right, and we'll talk more about like the visibility of data and where that data originates from and where it should come [00:13:00] from, and whether it should live at HubSpot and how we get it in there. But before we get into that, you know, the value of HubSpot for insurance is huge. Uh, but from even before you're evaluating vendors and selecting a CRM to implement.

[00:13:13] You have to figure out who is involved in that decision, not only in which one we're gonna get, but how we implement it, when we implement it, how we roll it out, and then how we use it for forever and ever and beyond. Um, who are the most important stakeholders when it comes to making that dis those decisions and, and what sort of value is each of those stakeholders going to see?

[00:13:33] Yeah, so, you know, definitely first and foremost is that we have to have the buy-in of whoever's going to approve the, the budget for something like that. And, and in my instance, it's a CEO and, and in our situation here, it was an easy sell because of the efficiencies that we could see that HubSpot was going to bring.

[00:13:50] Right. You know, right. Uh, right away. Because if we have somebody manually doing these many emails or trying to do these reach outs, it's not possible. Period. They're gonna [00:14:00] miss somebody. Something's not gonna work correctly. So that is one of the really big pieces. Another pieces that the nice sell is the.

[00:14:06] The really nice reporting dashboards that I had just mentioned in the tool as well. Being able to see those and send those out monthly to our senior leadership team is something that's really helpful too. Um, next, also, a big piece of this is, uh, what our salespeople as well as our account managers are really able to get out of this tool.

[00:14:24] It goes back once again to the pe uh, the idea of this kind of being an overdrive. It's working for them. It's not something that they have to. Put a lot of work in to get it to do what they need to do. You know, with our data being connected directly into Epic, they can work specifically in their a MS, get what they want in there, and then it pushes directly into HubSpot.

[00:14:44] Our account managers and producers aren't using HubSpot themselves. We have all of this set up in the back end where all of this stuff is working. On their behalf. Um, now we might down the road, if we decide to roll this out for full, like CRM usage for everybody on the accounts, give them access. [00:15:00] But right now it's working really, really well because it hasn't become another tool they have to use daily.

[00:15:05] They have one point of entry and the work's done for them. our marketing team absolutely loves this tool. Uh, they were a really big part in this decision making process as we went through it. Um, and you know, I think some days they are blown away by some of the stuff that we can get out of the tool, and then I.

[00:15:21] You know, lastly, from an ops perspective, one thing, especially from an it is we know that we live in an age where there's a lot of issues with, with, with, um, with compliance and making sure that things are up to date and that we're not out of compliance with something that we're doing. And the fact that HubSpot takes care of all of those pieces is a really big help as well.

[00:15:42] Um, and then also a tool like this just across the agency really. Really supports the idea of change management in moving us forward in the direction that we need to be going. You know, um, it wasn't very long ago that a lot of insurance agencies and some that we've even acquired in recent years we're still using paper.

[00:15:59] Um, [00:16:00] you know, that's, it was, so this is a really big step to start to understand, oh my goodness. We can do a lot of these things and appear as though we're contacting all these clients and we're reaching out to them, and we're reaching them when they want to hear from us. But it's not requiring us to manually do that.

[00:16:16] Um, is is a really huge win in setting us in that right. You know, those tides of change that are, are continuously coming right now in insurance.

[00:16:26] Right, right. And to sort of double down on the, the marketing team, I'll tell you this, I, that is no surprise to me. With all of the clients that we support across all the different industries, we never have issues with. The marketing team adopting HubSpot. They're always the first ones in and they're like, actually, I'm good.

[00:16:40] I'm just gonna start digging and keep going. So I love that your team is having that experience. Awesome. So I wanna touch specifically on whether or not we're gonna replace your a MS or integrate with your a MS. And I will tell you straight away, replacing your a MS is not [00:17:00] recommended, right? It, it's gonna have features and functionality that I.

[00:17:03] While maybe, maybe you could replicate those things in HubSpot, you really shouldn't. Um, you should leverage your a MS, you should use HubSpot, um, to compliment it, right, to fill the gaps. Like the a MS is not gonna be good with lifecycle reporting and tracking things through, um, from start to finish, from sales through marketing and service.

[00:17:20] Um. But that's where HubSpot comes in. And HubSpot's not gonna be great at, you know, some of the specifics within your a MS tool. You wouldn't want HubSpot to manage some of those processes. So integrating with it is really the recommended approach here. And obviously that's what we did with, with you at Blue Ridge Risk Partners.

[00:17:36] But just wanna make that, you know, extra clear that we're not here to, to take your a MS away, you need your a MS keep your a MS, but let's leverage the most critical data points from the a MS to empower and enable you to take marketing and sales action. All right. I wanna talk about some common use cases, uh, that you can employ in HubSpot, uh, for the insurance space.

[00:17:57] And the first one here is [00:18:00] a marketing, uh, geared workflow, and it's for upselling cross sells. So. This workflow targets policy holders that have health insurance that covers a dependent that's under the age of 18, but they're not associated to a life insurance policy yet. So we use that trigger A covered dependent under the age of 18 to send personalized email, introducing life insurance as a way to protect their family, their family's future.

[00:18:26] That makes sense. It is relevant, it is timely, it is value add, uh, not some generic upsell like, oh, hey, maybe you wanna buy this random product that has nothing to do with you at this time. Um, this type of targeted outreach is very likely to increase conversions because it's a real that you're selling into a real life scenario, uh, not just, you know, pitching a product.

[00:18:46] So, th this is a mar a workflow. You can use workflows for all kinds of things. This is a great idea though, for marketing upsell and cross sell. Next up I've got, uh, pipeline. So this is more geared towards sales. [00:19:00] This is a fully customizable pipeline that's built for insurance. Uh, you can track a deal all the way from inquiry all the way to closed one and for your space insurance.

[00:19:10] That might include stages like quoting, uh, underwriting approvals. Whatever your process is, you can fully customize it in your sales, uh, pipeline. You don't have to rely on some default stage name that you're like, oh, well that means actually that. No, you can call them whatever you want them. Um, and then reps will know exactly where each of their opportunities sit.

[00:19:30] Managers can then forecast accurately. Teams aren't relying on spreadsheets anymore, or the, the one person who somehow keeps it all in their memory, um. And the other thing here too is you can drag and drop each of these deal cards from stage to stage. Yeah, you can manually drag and drop them. You can also automate the stage, the the deals moving from stage to stage.

[00:19:49] You can trigger new marketing activities or sales outreach, depending on which stage they're in. So it's all organized, it's all clear. The visibility, we're back at it again. Um. [00:20:00] But it can help increase the velocity of your deals if your sales reps know who to talk to and when. Uh, so that's a great, uh, pipeline view there.

[00:20:09] Staying on with the sales theme, and something you mentioned before is, is important to a lot of the stakeholders is reporting. Um, HubSpot has so many out of the box reports, uh, but in the event, the random event that, that you can't find the report that you need. They have fully customizable reporting.

[00:20:25] You can do one object multi objects looking across all different kinds of data. Um, so you know, simple questions like, how, how much revenue am I gonna produce this quarter? You can get that in the drop of a dime. With HubSpot reporting, you can see not only what revenue you expect to bring in, but are my producers pacing, uh, towards their goal to bring in the, the revenue.

[00:20:46] Are we seeing enough activity to fill our pipeline for next month or next quarter? With HubSpot, you, you really don't have to guess. It's, it's all there visible for you to track in real time as well. This is very cool. [00:21:00] This is also in the sales theme. There's two features. The first one that's pictured here is the prospecting workspace.

[00:21:06] So this aggregates all of your leads, what stage those leads are in. If you're using lead scoring, this would be a great time to help you prioritize those leads. But you can come in each day and look at your, your meetings. You can look at the, the calls that you have on the books, the summary of all of your leads, and know exactly what to do.

[00:21:24] Now the other side of this feature is the prospecting agent. This is so cool. It is an AI feature that lets you target research and enga, like actually engage with prospects. It's, again, it's ai. So, and it's an agent. It's not just like a let's search through and see what information it can tell me about my database.

[00:21:43] Know that it can actually go to work for you. Um, so this is really, really cool and um, we're starting to use it with a lot of our clients as well, so that's exciting. This is my favorite use case for insurance because a little known fact about HubSpot is that they, they have a CMS product. It's called [00:22:00] Content Hub.

[00:22:00] So you can build your website, marketing site, whatever you want really. Uh, on HubSpot. In this case, we put together a use case for a membership portal, because that's one of the features of the, the content hub. And what that actually means is that whatever data you have in your database, you can now.

[00:22:17] Display it onto a webpage that someone has to log into to see. And going back to the point of, of security and compliance. You can hook up SSO into those logins so you can have all your people logging in, seeing what is my policy information, who is my person? Again, I forget who my point of contact is that I need to call.

[00:22:35] When is it renewing? And that creates this transparency that I think, especially in insurance, people really, really seek and, and require. They wanna, they wanna, they wanna trust their insurance company, they want to trust their agents. And when you give them the information that they can sort of. Serve themselves in a way.

[00:22:51] I think it creates a lot of that trust, which then, uh, hopefully leads to retention. But this is such a cool, uh, feature that, and by the way, as user [00:23:00] friendly as the CRM is the, the sales hub and the marketing hub content hub is just as easy to use. So you can drag and drop, build these pages like nothing.

[00:23:08] Um, so definitely gets the wheels turning for sure. Um, all right. Let's talk about your experience and your journey, Tia with implementing HubSpot, working with Aptitude Eight. Um, we already talked some about the integration, so I know we'll wanna dive deep there. But let's start with what your life was like before HubSpot.

[00:23:25] I.

[00:23:26] Yeah, so, uh, pre HubSpot we did not have a centralized place to do a lot of our, uh. Email automations like I spoke before, we did utilize the system that, uh. That our a MS had, and it worked to a degree, but there was a lot of, there was a lot of downfalls. One, we couldn't send any emails to prospects unless they were fully built out in our a MS.

[00:23:46] So we missed a lot of opportunity right off the bat, where if you were trying to engage with somebody or they reached out to us via our website to really, really do any of that, um. Next is that all of the data just lived in HubSpot. It made it really, really [00:24:00] difficult to try to connect with anything else that was outside of that ecosystem and to really, you know, really leverage anything that we had.

[00:24:07] And then, um, there was no way to really segment things out in a great way. So I couldn't really easily say, okay, send this to somebody who only has personal lines or, okay. We see that they have both personal and commercial through the associations and hub. Spot, we're going to send something separate here.

[00:24:24] So there was not a great way to be able to just segment data out in a way where I knew I was targeting the person that I wanted to. Right. So it resulted in us being able to do some little renewal emails, but mostly just like newsletters. The opportunity wasn't there. Um, and then another big downfall was that we could not upload any information into.

[00:24:43] The system directly, unless we build them all out as contacts within our a MS, which we don't want them all to live in there as, as prospects if they haven't reached that, you know, even really that stage yet. And, and sometimes we get email lists and things like that that we can use. So HubSpot allows us to [00:25:00] kind of, to actually own our, our marketing and our CR our CRM information and do with it as we please instead of relying on, on our a MS to be able to kind of act on it.

[00:25:12] Let's, let's talk about. About some of the data because there's critical information that you need inside of a MS, and then there's how you use that data in HubSpot and how those objects sort of talk to one another. The object schema, as it were, how did you work through getting it all sorted and matched?

[00:25:31] Um, I, I went through really screen by screen in our a MS and looked at the things that I knew that we might want to. Market off of, or things that would be important to us, even from like a reporting perspective. So we built out all of that and then I worked very closely with, um, with the folks at Aptitude eight to actually get that connected.

[00:25:53] Um, you know, and, and I'm not gonna lie now, that we were definitely like, um. We had a lot of [00:26:00] learning experiences with us on our side because of this being the first time we used the data here. So there were things that, you know, would show up one way on the front end, but on the back end they meant something else.

[00:26:09] So it was definitely a lot of back and forth on getting those matched, you know, but it really was going through the list and looking at everything and saying, okay, we're going to need to take action on A, B, C, D, E, you know, basically all the way down to Z um, and this is what we're gonna need to pull over and this is how it should be utilized in HubSpot.

[00:26:27] I, I think one of the big things that somebody, you know, needs to do if they're thinking about doing this is really taking a step back and thinking about what they need and not just saying, okay, I want everything, because there's so many data points within the a MS system that it's not going to make sense to pull everything in, but really understand, here's what we're gonna need and here's what we wanna do with it, you know?

[00:26:48] So, actually. Setting, setting a responsibility and a job for each of those data points instead of just pulling it in for the sake of saying we wanna include this, um, is a really good way to, to kind [00:27:00] of start making those decisions and then start getting it integrated with HubSpot after that. Okay.

[00:27:06] That is Sage advice to you. Although we may want all the data, it might not make the most sense to pull it all.

[00:27:13] And we might never stop sinking, right? Like just be in a constant.

[00:27:20] Of course, but of course. And a hundred percent parody among all systems. Yes. Um, anyways, so the, the business impact, how, how has implement, how has implementing HubSpot really impacted your business? Sort of what's, what's the result? The end result

[00:27:36] One. I think the biggest thing is that, um, we, our marketing team is actually able to do something that they. I don't wanna say wanna do, it's something that they should be doing and do it with confidence, you know, like actually be able to set up marketing campaigns and know that they're going to be executed the way that we want them to is huge.

[00:27:54] Um, another piece that I really like, and it's separate from the portals, but is also being able to create. Personalized [00:28:00] landing pages so that, you know, we can see if we have a contact, if somebody's visited the page three or four times, and then shoot them a different type of email than people that only visit the page once.

[00:28:10] And that has been really interesting on some, some certain, um, uh, cross sells that we have going on. And, you know, for me, I think one of the bigger things too, is the digital prospecting. As I mentioned, we never really had a way to. To quickly respond to people before when they reached out. So this has made a huge, huge impact there on the timeliness of being able to respond.

[00:28:32] And so far we're seeing great open rates. Um, I don't have enough data on the prospecting piece to say how are those converting, but I can say, you know. The open rates are incredibly high on those and we're seeing the clicks as soon as they come through. Um, so we definitely are starting to, you know, kind of close that gap as well in a much faster perspective.

[00:28:51] 'cause as you mentioned, we live in the day and age of Amazon where you want it and you want it now. Um, so if you're not the first to respond, you're [00:29:00] gonna be the first to lose. Um, so that's, you know, this is definitely helping in that area a lot.

[00:29:07] Well, the open rate certainly indicates that there's engagement among your users, so congrats there because that's not, that's a, that's a high open rate.

[00:29:15] So good for you all.

[00:29:17] I know on insurance emails, it's pretty, it's pretty impressive, isn't it?

[00:29:22] I'm blown away. I'm like over here, like on the side Googling, like I'm pretty sure for customers, like the standard is 30%. So that's awesome that you guys are achieving that. Uh, and I hope that that then turns into more expansions and upsells, more retention for you all.

[00:29:37] Mm-hmm.

[00:29:39] All right. What are, what are some of our final takeaways?

[00:29:41] I can tell you one thing that I've learned from this conversation that insurance is not the same as traditional B2B. And just looking at the, the objects and the, the schema on the, a few slides ago, it's definitely not the same. You gotta have multiple policies potentially associated to one person or multiple people, one-to-one, one to many.

[00:29:59] Uh, so it's [00:30:00] certainly different. Uh, what are some of the other big takeaways?

[00:30:03] Uh, for me, one of the big things is, is. The visibility again, right? Like knowing your data and making sure that you, that you are having it work for you and not against you. Um, you know, really diving into utilizing things like your segmentation and, and reaching the person at the right time and not just.

[00:30:26] Communicating for the, for the heck of it, right? Like making sure that you have that right, that right piece. And then also start small. You know, I think there can be a sense of we wanna do it all and oh, this isn't going to be able to accomplish everything we want on day one. Well, Rome wasn't built in a day, you know, so if you're really not starting with, we're gonna take this one space, you know, you heard me reference our renewal emails that are now built out to a whole hundred, and I think it.

[00:30:52] Literally spans 150 days. It goes a renewal. Pre-renewal started out, which is 60 days prior to renewal. And we keep [00:31:00] adding onto that as we're learning more about the data. We're able to see within this, you know, we're getting ready to connect Trustpilot into that piece. And if we would've gone into this thinking, we're doing all this right now, we probably still would not have launched anything at this point.

[00:31:14] Right. So really starting smaller in building and then. Number one in my mind, I mean all of these, but number one is that you have to sell. The product that you're wanting to implement, right? So before you can even begin all of this, make sure that you have the right stock stakeholders buy-in and not just, yeah, yeah, I understand that we need to do this, but like they understand the importance of something like this.

[00:31:36] The importance of A CRM, the importance of marketing automation, because without that. Even if you continue down, he down this path and you get it implemented. If people aren't bought in, it's never gonna work internally and especially in insurance where a lot of people were used to only having their one tool, and it's been that way for a long time.

[00:31:55] Introducing more things can be a little, can be a little challenging. You know, people, [00:32:00] people are always a little afraid of transformation, so keeping that in mind is incredibly, incredibly important.

[00:32:06] Yeah. I'll also rehash the integrate. Don't replace,

[00:32:10] Yes.

[00:32:10] has super robust APIs so you can get the data. That you need, um, without sacrificing functionality of your other platforms, so. Awesome. Well, let's see if we've got any questions. I see one in here. How did you manage making decisions internally around which a MS data should flow into HubSpot?

[00:32:32] And how did your systems owners and department leads get aligned on requirements for that data?

[00:32:38] Yeah, so I think I touched on a little bit a about this, and really it came down to looking at every single. Data point that comes in through our a MS and understanding, do we need this to do another job for us? Can we take action on this information? And if the answer was yes, we needed to do a job for us, yes, we can take [00:33:00] action on it, then we had it pulled into to HubSpot.

[00:33:04] Um, when it came to getting stakeholders on board with that, that wasn't much of a, that didn't take much, convincing, mainly because the information was there and it's, it was pretty easy to see. This is what we're going to use this data for, but it was something that I definitely shared with, we're going to pull in all this information and here are the reasons why we're going to be able to A, B, and c.

[00:33:27] With it and so forth. Um, and that, that was what really worked with us. I also spoke to the other folks in, in several of our other departments and commercial and benefits to get an idea of what their needs were as well. You know, mine's mostly personal lines and the digital side, so I miss, I miss sometimes what their needs are.

[00:33:43] When we were reviewing all that data as well, so it wasn't done in just a silo. We pulled multiple folks in, um, to get their opinions as well.

[00:33:52] Well, good on you and your team because that is no easy feat to get department leads all aligned on what their requirements are, making [00:34:00] decisions efficiently as a group. 

[00:34:01] I won't say everybody was aligned, but we got to a final decision.

[00:34:07] Well, I was gonna say that's one of the bigger challenges I think almost every single client that we've ever worked with faces is you got a, a group of people that all care tremendously, um, and all have their swim lanes and melding those things together and, and gaining alignment is definitely tough, but it's worth it, you know. Let's see. How do I convince my executive team that we should implement HubSpot or a CRM like HubSpot?

[00:34:36] I, I think in this case, efficiency is the name of the game, number one, right? If you can start to show, especially, I mean, I bet you thought I was gonna say visibility and what we're gonna get out of it, but if you can start to show. Where this can impact the bottom line. Show the things that it's gonna be able to do for you and what this would manually cost or what it might be costing you right now.

[00:34:56] To do a lot of this manually, it becomes a no brainer. [00:35:00] Um, in my opinion. You know, we're talking about things and you start looking at more of those sales solutions of being able to see more precisely how many, you know, how many, um. Policies or how many clients somebody has won versus where they have not won.

[00:35:15] Clients, being able to kind of move them through a full pipeline by, alright, you started a conversation here, now we're gonna send them an email. Alright. We send 'em a bookings link and seeing that entire, that entire customer journey and actually having a tool that can deliver on all of those steps in a customer journey.

[00:35:33] To me it comes down to efficiency. You know, and I don't know anybody that doesn't want any, any leader on an executive team that doesn't wanna be able to save money. Um, so that is always almost any tool that I ever pitch. That's the approach that I take, is that if it's not going to add efficiency, it's not worth exploring.

[00:35:53] Um, so that would be my start, is definitely showing how this can, this can help, uh, improve [00:36:00] efficiencies across the, the board and save a lot, a lot of time.

[00:36:04] Love it. I, I'm having a flashback to a time where I was trying to get my executive team on board with something, so I was tallying up the minute that I was estimating every person was taking to

[00:36:13] you know, like, how long does this take? Well, it takes about 11 minutes. Okay, so 15. Like, we just gotta keep it easy here, you know? So.

[00:36:21] Right, right. Oh, well, Tia, much respect to you and your team for leading the charge and, and leveling up your tech stack and, and your customer experiences. We so appreciated working with you on, on your implementation. We thank you for joining this webinar and sharing with, with your peers and folks in your space, uh, what that journey was like and what to look out for.

[00:36:43] So thank you so, so much and if you guys have any questions for us at Aptit 2D, you can contact us right here. Thank you very much.

[00:36:51] Thank you.

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