Unoccupied Residential Property Newsletter Jan 2018

Jan/Feb 2018

Unoccupied RPO

magazine

(Including property undergoing works) The Specialists in the Let and Unoccupied Property Market

Welcome Why ABACUS unoccupied residential property owners insurance including properties undergoing works?

Brokers and our unoccupied property insurance cover (including property undergoing works) Unoccupied property insurance cover (including property undergoing works) in a nutshell Marketing ideas and articles Facebook Marketing 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 market-leading 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 (including property undergoing works) insurance We have created this magazine to explain everything you need to know about our unoccupied residential property insurance (including property undergoing works); 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 or email: agency@sabacus.co.uk. 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 let me know.

ABACUS will be sponsoring the Marketing & Customer Engagement Category at the UK Broker Awards in September 2018.

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 Property Insurance?

Our unoccupied residential property insurance product is for anyone who owns (or has financial responsibility for) an unoccupied residential property - for example: l l l l

other unoccupied property insurance / property undergoing works insurance providers such as: l Subsidence (all levels) l P roperty owners liability up to £5m (all levels) l M alicious damage by tenant landlords who own a residential property (levels 2 and 3) and who are awaiting a tenant; l Escape of Water (levels 2 and 3) someone renovating an empty property These are typically all included as standard (including structural works); (depending on the level of cover chosen – policy executors of a property in probate; limits and risk based restrictions also apply). 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 A bility to switch the policy to an occupied

Plus

l p eople buying an empty property at auction; l w here a house is standing empty awaiting sale; l and so on.

Unoccupied properties undergoing works Our unoccupied property insurance (including properties undergoing works) product is also suitable for residential properties being renovated - no matter whether they are to be let or owner-occupied after the works have been completed.

let or owner-occupied product mid term

l Easy to get a quote and buy online l F or every quotation request you submit we will provide you with a quotation for each level of cover available l F lexible cover options including short term policies of 3, 6 and 12 months l W e can cover most unoccupied properties undergoing works including: redecoration, redevelopment, restoration, extensions, renovations etc. l W e have flexible limits to the value of the works being under taken.

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

What about exclusions?

The policy excludes damage caused by the Contractor (which should be covered under the Contractor’s own insurance).

Plus, some of the key features of our unoccupied residential property owners product include benefits not always offered as standard by some

Where structural works are taking place no cover is in force for any part of the building that is either being constructed or worked upon.

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Brokers and our unoccupied residential property owners insurance (including properties undergoing works) residential property owners We are proud of our unoccupied dergoing works as not only does insurance including properties un er and great value for your it offer, in our opinion, fantastic cov brokers - many benefits too: customers, but it offers you - our

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S 3 levels of cover immediately. Or, if it receive your quotation for all three quickly with our Terms “refers”, we will come back to you ’ own unique 3C ost-effective, flexible cover to meet your customers needs s cover all the standard risks arket-leading product - Our policie 3M nce including many elements of associated with unoccupied insura property insurance policies from protection which some unoccupied other providers exclude 3P olicy documentation available immediately online m. le from our Sales & Marketing Tea ilab ava dily rea t por sup and elp

H 3

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Unoccupied residential property owners insurance (including properties undergoing works) 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 with

l F ull standard cover

earthquake or aircraft 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.

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.

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

Note: Escape of water due to burst pipes has a £2,500 limit within first 30 days of policy.

Remember Some of the key features of our unoccupied residential property owners product including properties undergoing works 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 residential property 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

Online marketing ideas In this issue we are going to deep dive into social media and how you can use it to increase your revenues and grow your customer base. While there are a huge number of social media platforms and new ones being developed all the time, in this issue we are going to focus purely on

Now before you dismiss Facebook, which we hear people do all the time, just carry on reading anyway.

Humour me. You can find your customers on Facebook.

Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can use Facebook.

Company Page Your company needs to have a page on Facebook. If you haven’t, you are really missing out on a growing amount of traffic and exposure as people spend more and more time within the Facebook ecosystem – and Facebook are always looking to increase that.

Here are some numbers: lT here are 1.15 billion mobile daily active users

(Mobile DAU) for December 2016, an increase of 23 percent year-over-year. (Source: Facebook as of 01/02/17) lO n Thursdays and Fridays, engagement is 18% higher. (Source: Bit.ly blog) lA verage time spent per Facebook visit is 20 minutes.

(Source: Infodocket).

Without a doubt, Facebook is huge and without a presence you are missing out. From our experience we can find ANY type of customer you can think of.

If you have a customer avatar, they will be findable on Facebook. This includes Property developers and renovators.

Other Company Pages There will be other types of businesses that cater to unoccupied property clients. Builders, tradesman, plumbers, etc… Connect with their pages on Facebook and send them a message to let them know you can help with them with any client insurance needs for empty property undergoing works.

You will also find some savvy landlords have their own Facebook pages for management, letting and portfolio building. Reach out to these too.

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Groups

Lead Targeting Options

One of the biggest untapped resources on Facebook is Groups.

With over 200 targetable characteristics, you can find and advertise to your target audience in a number of ways.

https://www.facebook.com/groups As they say on the tin, a group can be a collection of property developers, or landlords and anyone in between. There are hundreds of groups on Facebook that you can join and interact with. Make sure you follow the group rules on advertising but these can be great gold mines of potential business. They can also be a great place to ask questions and get content ideas.

Here are a few to start you off: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ UKProperryTraders/ https://www.facebook.com/ groups/1448411078795338/ https://www.facebook.com/ groups/1776199236025884/about/

Advertising Options There are several of different advertising options with Facebook and it is growing all of the time. Here are a couple of options to get you started. https://www.facebook.com/advertising

Lead Ads Facebook ads can be a great way to drive relevant niche leads to your business. In fact, it is something we are using a lot right now. One potential upside is being able to send the leads automatically from Facebook into a CRM system or onto a email list so you can follow up with enquirers.

l Direct Lead Ads l Lookalike Audiences l Customer Audiences l Retargetting Ads.

Do make sure you install the Facebook tracking pixel to give you a much broader range of options to reach your target audience.

Supporting Renewals At renewal time you can upload your customer database to reach and offer your clients promotions to get them to renew. In this way, you can use a more immediate and easier to track method of advertising and chasing up renewal business.

It will connect the customer email addresses you have with those Facebook accounts that use the same email address. This means you can be sure to get your brand and renewal notice advertising in front of the right people at the right time.

What is a chatbot?

A chatbot is a small piece of software that is configured to interact with users who can ask simple text based questions and the bot will respond with prewritten responses that can include links, images and videos.

They can be multi-level – so if the user asks something, they get a response. You can then have the bot follow up with another question based on the previous answer that can be presented with something

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else – so it can be quite a complex interaction but based on a simple flow of questions and answers.

Think of it like an interactive flowchart.

Even simple bots can free up a lot of time dealing with easy questions and move potential clients further along the buying process.

How to use a chatbot?

As they can be accessed by clicking on a web link, you can easily share a link to your bot in your marketing and support materials.

These work really well on mobile devices as it is basically a Facebook Messenger service. This can be a great value-add for claims support, perhaps. Or, could work fantastically well for real time chats for travel clients looking for initial help with claims outside of office hours for example.

Other uses for a bot include: l Starting a conversation around a product or service lU sing it as a virtual assistant to deal with basic user

enquiries

l Handling frequently asked questions lE ducating customers on a new product or service

and then handling any enquiries.

Right now the only limit to your bot is your imagination.

The beauty from a compliance point of view is that as each action and response is pre scripted, these interactions can be compliance checked and approved before putting your bot live.

How to build a Facebook Bot There are a growing number of services you can use to easily build a bot. There are a number of free solutions.

We have played with two of them and they are listed below. Both work in similar ways and their output via Facebook is similar.

The key to success is the time and effort you put into structuring the bot sequences. Also it should be said, you don’t have to have one bot doing it all.

You could have a number of bots doing specific tasks for you.

ManyChat – www.manychat.com ChatFuel – www.chatfuel.com

Promoting a chatbot and building an audience Once you have built your chatbot, you should look to promote it in the same way you do with other marketing tools or content.

Clearly Facebook advertising is a key way to promote your chatbot, as it is a Facebook messenger based bot service we are highlighting, but contact your customers via email to say you now have a bot available to help them manage their claims enquiries with a link to it can be a great way to build up an audience. Write about it on your blog. You can even send them a SMS message with a link to it if you need to.

Also add a link to it on your website at the relevant key points. Share it on your social media channels and you can even submit it to bot directories so those people looking for a bot can find you.

The added benefits of both Manychat and Chatfuel is they will show you who is interacting with your bots so you can see how effective they are at carrying out their tasks for you.

Summary Facebook is really the tip of the iceberg with bots.

There are facilities and technology so you can build a standalone bot, but for now there is a huge amount of scope for bots interacting with Facebook users. It could be a great way to attract new business or help maintain customer service with existing ones.

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Free tool: Sample social media updates Simply replace the [link] text with a 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]

Refurbishing your empty property and need insurance? Get a quote [link]

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

We can help with insurance cover [link]

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

We can help with insurance [link]

Insure your unoccupied properties undergoing works.

Get an online quote [link]

Looking for unoccupied property insurance for properties undergoing works?

We can help [link]

Insure your unoccupied properties with the option of 3 levels of cover [link] Executor of a will with a property in probate? You need unoccupied property insurance.

Get a quote [link]

Unoccupied property undergoing works? Looking for insurance cover?

Get an online quote here [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! (Read this article here for more information).

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