Unlocking Potential: Build Your Business With These Tips for Marketing Effectively and Compliantly

[A note for our agencies – feel free to use these articles in your communications with your agents.  Please include any disclosures that appear with the article.]

Being an insurance producer can be an amazing career – as a producer you have control over your schedule, there is nearly no limit to how much you can earn, and you help individuals, families and businesses protect against the unexpected and prepare for a better future.  The drawback? As a self-employed business owner, you are constantly on the lookout for new clients.  That is why learning how to market effectively, and in our highly regulated industry – compliantly, is so important to a producer’s practice.

According to Constant Contact¹,

• 79% of marketers surveyed placed email marketing in their top 3 most effective methods;
• Over 4 billion people globally use email actively; and
• 55% of consumers surveyed preferred to receive business communications via email.

Seems simple enough. You merely email product information to everyone you know, and the world will beat a path to your doorstep, right? Unfortunately, it is not quite that simple.  There is email marketing, and then there is effective email marketing. And of course, when you work in the financial services industry, there are rules and regulations to consider.

Effective Email Marketing

Not all email marketing is effective.  Case in point, look at your junk email folder.  Odds are that it contains dozens, if not hundreds of emails that were marked as spam or junk.  Ask yourself, what will lead you to keep, open, and read an email sent to you by someone else?  Likely it is not one trying to sell you something.  However, if the message is educational, interesting, or entertaining, it might be worth a read.

There are many financial publishers that sell subscriptions to newsletters that contain a mix of financial news and general interest stories.  These can be an effective form of “drip marketing” that keeps your name in front of a client or prospect, so they think of you when a financial need arises.

If you subscribe to a financial website provider, you may already have access to a wide array of articles and tools for scheduling email campaigns.

National Life Group offers dozens of professionally designed emails to create interest in life insurance, annuities, or for recruiting to our business. These can be found in the Marketing section of the Agent Portal, available to all our agents, and you only need to submit your personalization of them for approval.

Beyond these resources, a quick Google search will yield hundreds of articles on effective email marketing, including tips for segmenting your message for specific markets, testing variations on a message, creating campaigns, and other time-tested methods.

Keeping it Compliant

As mentioned earlier, the financial services industry is highly regulated.  In addition, email marketing in general is regulated across all industries in the United States.  As regulated by the Federal Trade Commission, the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 (“CAN-SPAM”) Act took effect on December 16, 2003, and is designed to put controls around “spam” or unwanted and repeated emails.²

The CAN-SPAM act applies to all commercial emails, even just one email sent to one consumer, and lists certain requirements such as having an opt-out option, and promptly honoring that opt-out if a consumer asks not to receive your emails again.  Other requirements are to indicate that the email is an advertisement, to identify a physical location where you do business, and to not use misleading subject lines or headers – the “to” and “from” fields.  There are other requirements, and they can be found at FTC.gov by searching on CAN SPAM.  It is worth your while to know the details of the CAN-SPAM Act – potential fines for violating the requirements can be over $50,000 per email that is out of compliance.

There are general principles that apply to all financial advertising, including email marketing. It should not be misleading. It should provide enough information that the reader can make an informed decision and it should actually state what type of product you are talking about, if applicable.  All statistics should be current and sourced.

Depending on your licensing with the companies of National Life Group, your email may require prior written approval from our Advertising Guidance Team (“AGT”). If you are registered with our broker/dealer and registered investment adviser – Equity Services, Inc. (“ESI”) – nearly all marketing you create or personalize will require prior review and written approval.  If you are an agent and not registered with ESI, then the following would require prior approval from the AGT:

• Mentioning National Life Group (“NLG”), or one of our affiliated companies
• Mentioning a product issued by a NLG company
• Mentioning a product feature unique to NLG, such as our Critical Injury Accelerated Benefit Rider, our Alzheimer’s Rider, our Lifetime Income Benefit Rider, etc.
• If the communication is used in one of the 403(b)/457(b) plans where NLG is a provider
• If your sole intent for the communication is to sell an NLG product specifically

For any of the above situations, the process for submitting your email for approval can be found once you log onto NLG’s Agent Portal under Training>>Compliance>>Advertising/Social Media.  The AGT is here to help ensure you avoid falling astray of one of the advertising regulations of which you may not even be aware.

If you have further questions, especially if your marketing requires our review and preapproval, the AGT is available at adreview@nationallife.com, or by calling (802) 229-3129.  We wish you successful marketing!

1 Constant Contact, 2023 Email Marketing Statistics: Facts, Trends & Figures, 2023. https://www.constantcontact.com/blog/email-marketing-research-and-statistics/

2 Federal Trade Commission, CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business, August 2023.

https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business

National Life Group^® is a trade name of National Life Insurance Company, Montpelier, VT, Life Insurance Company of the Southwest, Addison, TX and their affiliates. Each company of National Life Group is solely responsible for its own financial condition and contractual obligations. Life Insurance Company of the Southwest is not an authorized insurer in New York and does not conduct insurance business in New York.  Equity Services, Inc., Member FINRA/SIPC, is a Broker/Dealer and Registered Investment Adviser. In CO, MO, NH and WI, Equity Services, Inc. operates as Vermont Equity Services, Inc. All companies, unless otherwise noted, are affiliated and are located in Montpelier, VT.