ABACUS Unoccupied Property Magazine

Apr | May 2017

Unoccupied RPO

magazine

The Specialists in the Let and Unoccupied Property Market

Welcome Why ABACUS Unoccupied Residential Property Owners insurance?

Brokers and our unoccupied cover Unoccupied property insurance cover in a nutshell Marketing ideas and articles ‌ Online Marketing Ideas Microsites / Mini Sites Free tool: Sample Social Media Updates

Welcome!

At ABACUS we are committed to our broker members by offering what we believe are desirable, cost effective products that offer marketleading benefits for your customers.

We also strive to provide the best marketing support for our brokers, by offering motivational material and tools.

Unoccupied Residential Property Owners product We have created this magazine to explain everything you need to know about our unoccupied property insurance product; the benefits to both you and your customers of the product; plus some marketing tips and ideas to get you started.

We hope you enjoy this magazine and it helps with your marketing efforts. If you have any questions or queries in relation to this or any other product, or with getting a property insurance quote, please do not hesitate to contact our Sales & Marketing Team on 01702 606 312. They will be more than happy to help.

Alternatively, if you have any feedback on this magazine or would like us to focus on another of our products, please contact us.

ABACUS will be sponsoring the Marketing & Customer Engagement Category at the UK Broker Awards in September 2017.

Richard Richard Burgess, MCIM, ACIEH, Cert CII Director | ABACUS

ABACUS is a trading style of Alan Blunden & Company Ltd which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority No.309694

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Why ABACUS Unoccupied Insurance?

Our Unoccupied Insurance product is for anyone who owns (or has financial responsibility for) an unoccupied residential property, for example: l andlords who own a residential property and who are awaiting a tenant; someone renovating an empty property (including structural works); executors of a property in probate; homeowners who are having an extended holiday (such as a gap year) or working away from home for more than around 45 consecutive days, leaving the property empty; l people buying an empty property at auction; l where a house is standing empty awaiting sale; l and so on. l l l l

Three levels of cover available + added value benefits We have three levels of cover available, meaning you can offer your clients a choice of cover to suit their own unique requirements.

Plus, some of the key features of our Unoccupied Residential Property Owners product include benefits not always offered as standard by some other unoccupied property insurance providers such as: l l l l

ubsidence (all levels) S Property owners liability up to ÂŁ5m (all levels) Malicious damage by tenant (levels 2 and 3) Escape of Water (levels 2 and 3)

These are typically all included as standard (depending on the level of cover chosen – policy limits and risk based restrictions also apply).

Plus l A bility to switch the policy to an occupied let product mid term l Easy to get a quote and buy online l For every quotation request you submit we will provide you with a quotation for each level of cover available l Flexible cover options including short term policies of 3, 6 and 12 months l Policy documentation delivered immediately by email.

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Brokers and our Unoccupied RPO cover t Residential Insurance cover as no We are proud of our Unoccupied tastic cover and great value for fan , on ini op r ou in er, off it es do only : - our brokers - many benefits too your customers, but it offers you

3 Up to 25% commission el of insurers - providing a variety pan our to ess acc ine onl ate edi 3 Imm ers of cover options for your custom l online in the usual way and you wil 3 Simply complete your quotation ee levels of cover immediately receive your quotation for all thr ’ own unique 3 Cost-effective, flexible cover to meet your customers needs s cover all the standard risks icie pol r Ou ct du pro g din lea etark 3 M nce including many elements of associated with Unoccupied Insura property insurance policies from protection which some unoccupied other providers exclude

3 Policy documentation available immediately online Marketing Team.

3 Help and support readily available from our Sales &

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Unoccupied Property Insurance cover in a nutshell 3 levels of cover to choose from …

Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

l F ire, lightning, explosion,

l F ull Standard cover

l F ull standard cover

earthquake or aircraft

with cover limited for theft, malicious damage and escape of water to £2,500 (a £500 excess applies to escape of water) l S ubsidence, ground heave or landslip (unless specifically excluded at quotation stage) l £ 100 policy excess increasing to £1,000 in respect of subsidence l P roperty owners liability up to £5,000,000

l S ubsidence, ground

heave or landslip (unless specifically excluded at quotation stage) l £ 100 excess increasing to £1,000 in respect of subsidence l P roperty owners liability up to £5,000,000

Level 1

including theft and malicious damage and escape of water (a £500 excess applies to escape of water) l S ubsidence, ground heave or landslip (unless specifically excluded at quotation stage) l £ 100 policy excess increasing to £1,000 in respect of subsidence l P roperty owners liability up to £5,000,000 Level 2

Remember Some of the key features of our Unoccupied Residential Property Owners product include benefits that are not always offered as standard by some other unoccupied property insurance providers such as: l l l l

S ubsidence (all levels) P roperty owners liability up to £5m (all levels) M alicious damage by tenant (levels 2 and 3) E scape of water (levels 2 and 3)

Level 3

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Marketing ideas and articles At ABACUS, our focus is on our brokers and supporting you with your marketing.

Here are a few ideas for promoting the Unoccupied Insurance product online and offline.

If you have any questions relating to this or need help with your marketing, please contact us and we will be very happy to help.

Website Make sure your website is up to date and has a page of useful information on Unoccupied Property Insurance.

To make things easier or to offer clients the ability to apply and buy online, do make sure you are using your ABACUS white-labelled web links. If you don’t have yours and wish to get these added please get in touch with us.on 01702 606 312 or email agency@sabacus. co.uk.

If you have a blog or article section on your website do make sure you add content regularly. Also, make sure that any content pages you have are up to date and current.

The more up to date and active your site looks, the better chance it will have of driving web traffic and potential customers.

Email Email is still a huge driving force for traffic. We are not talking about spamming but about using your client lists and those who have opted in to it to get your newsletter or messages.

Don’t have a newsletter?

Then think about starting one, there are plenty of tools and services out there to help. A mailing list and monthly newsletter is a great asset in your business to drive traffic and sales – as long as it is useful stuff of course!

There is also a more dedicated section in this guide on building a mailing list.

The other big opportunity we all miss is using a current email signature file. Imagine how many emails you send in the day to day running of your business. Now imagine a small ad on the bottom of each one. Over time that can be a great way to drive enquiries and only has to be a single line with a link… for example: Do you need Unoccupied Property Insurance?: Visit X and get an online quote Or Visit X and get an online quote for your Unoccupied Property Insurance

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Social Media Social media has become the love/hate part of online marketing. Some people swear by it and others just don’t see the point and think it is a waste of time. We would urge you to make sure you at least have a presence on the main channels Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

The others can be nice-to-haves, or if they work for you, then that’s great. From an unoccupied property point of view you can find nuggets or sub groups of potential clients (e.g. people looking to work abroad who will be leaving their home empty).

Don’t market too hard, engage with them, share content, give advice, nurture relationships, and don’t be too aggressive in trying to drive the sale.

Some suggested activities

l P ost on your Facebook page l P ost on your Twitter feed l P ost on your LinkedIn company page

l F ind and join relevant groups on Facebook or LinkedIn

l P ost in relevant groups.

Don’t have these? Then get them - they are free to do. Or get someone to build them for you at a low cost. Your customers, like it or not, are using social media to find products and services. In fact, independent research last

year found that 50% of consumers use social media to research an insurance product.

The only way to have a fighting chance of being found is to be there.

You will find some sample tweets and status updates you can use in your social media marketing efforts later in this guide.

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Pay Per Click (PPC)

Pay per click (PPC) can be a great and easy way to drive traffic. Pay per click can also be a great and easy way to spend a lot of money if you are not careful.

We would suggest targeting very specific phrases - going after the main keywords for unoccupied property insurance will be very, very costly and if you don’t have systems in place, you can spend a huge amount of money with little return.

Some PPC options will be determined by user intent, so the keywords they use to find answers. Other PPC services will be based on users and their profile (Job title, interests, location, hobbies etc).

In this way, targeting based on profile means you will know your ad is being seen by your target audience. The key is to make sure you fully understand your customer profile in order to target correctly.

Some sites to check out for pay per click marketing options:

l l l l l l

G oogle Adwords B ing Ads Y ahoo Gemini F acebook have PPC ad options T witter Ads L inkedIn Ads.

There are a huge number of different ways to drive online traffic to your website. Hopefully this will give you some food for thought.

Whatever you decide to do, start small and make sure you are testing and recording activity so you can see what works before adding in other techniques.  

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Microsites / Mini Sites Mini or Microsites are small, focused sites that are built around one product or service. This can mean that traffic driven to it is totally specific to that product. It also means you can widen out your content around a particular niche.

One of the more advanced ideas is not sending people to your main website at all, but rather creating mini sites around a particular product.

This works well if you have a complicated product offering or you want to share a lot of information to a user in a way that still focuses on one product.

They don’t simply send customers to their main website and let them rummage until they find what they are looking for.

Most online attention spans are very limited, so if you are paying for traffic, you need to make sure it converts as best as it can.

In terms of content for this mini site, answer as many questions as you can using the keyword when creating the content. This is due to the fact that many people will search for an answer to a question.

So this leads us to our extra benefits.

Extra Benefits A second benefit of a mini site is providing search engines with much more focused content that allows them to rank a site higher.

This leads to increased content exposure and therefore more relevant site visitors that your main website would not have reached.

We have seen many big Google updates that are now looking to serve up the best-related webpage that they can and not simply the most relevant website.

This doesn’t seem like much but it is a pretty big fundamental shift in the way SEO companies will be working on site rankings in the future.

In terms of unoccupied property you could build a microsite:

l specifically on the product l o n renovation projects – a

common time for property to be unoccupied l f or those travelling for more than 30 days l o n those taking a career break l f or those working overseas for a period of time., etc.

So indirectly this can drive a lot of lower cost, but still very targeted, traffic.

While not an exhaustive list, reviewing your marketing by actually looking at where you are sending people can be the difference between losing business and growing business online. None of the ideas are difficult to implement and now is as good a time as any to step back and review your processes.

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Free tool: Sample social media updates Simply replace the [link] text with link to your website or the online quote and buy links tailored to match your online branding we can provide you with…

You can use these on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn as status updates:

Do you have properties that are unoccupied?

We can help with insurance (Link)

Working away for more than 60 days and leaving your home unoccupied?

We can help with insurance (Link)

Do you have properties that will be empty for more than 30 days?

We can help with insurance cover (Link)

Looking for Unoccupied Property Insurance?

We can help (Link)

Insure your unoccupied properties.

Get an online quote (Link) Insure your unoccupied properties with the option of 3 levels of cover We can help (Link)

Unoccupied property? Looking for insurance cover?

Get an online quote here (Link)

Executor of a will with a property in probate? You need Unoccupied Property Insurance.

Get a quote (Link)

Need photos?

Do you need to spruce up the links with images?

Depositphotos.com

offer a great array of low cost images. Do not simply use images you find on Google, they might not be copyright or royalty free – we don’t want you to get into trouble!

ABACUS is a trading style of Alan Blunden & Company Ltd which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority No.309694