There’s no doubt that the current global pandemic has affected the way businesses are run. While we patiently wait for life to get back to ‘normal,’ it’s important to continuously evolve our sales and marketing strategies to make them work in today’s market. For many of us, this involves looking for new ways to support the businesses we work with, whether that be through additional assistance, or by providing free services to offer some relief during this time.
For insurance wholesalers, this concept of offering free value is nothing new. In fact, many of the insurance carriers we work with have been using value-add programs to help advisors fulfill their continuing education (CE) needs for years. However, with the current situation, many clients have been adapting to a more “virtual” CE strategy.
For some, Webinar CE delivery has become large part of their digital strategy, but another popular trend we’ve seen is the use of digital voucher codes, which are redeemable for online continuing education credit. More traditionally, companies have distributed value-add CE voucher cards to advisors for years, but as businesses are adapting digital strategies more rapidly, digital voucher codes are becoming increasingly popular.
As a versatile CE option, voucher codes provide a great way to connect with advisors when classroom CE events are unavailable. In fact, our 2020 Financial Advisor Survey results showed that 85% of advisors would be “very,” or “somewhat” likely to redeem a voucher provided by a wholesaler if classroom CE wasn’t available. So even if traditional classroom CE has been a large part of your sales strategy, our research shows that voucher codes could work as a viable alternative.
The great thing about voucher codes is that if you’re willing to get creative, there’s truly no limit on how you can leverage them to connect with hard-to-reach advisors. If you’re looking for a simply way to ‘check-in’ with advisors, try sending a personal email with a voucher code attached. Or maybe you could incentivize advisors to sign up for an upcoming webinar by giving out CE voucher codes after-the-fact. Aside from some of these more traditional methods, other carriers and wholesalers have leveraged codes by sending them in mailers or welcome kits, including them on their business cards, using them as a bargaining chip when launching a new product, and much more.
Thinking about including CE voucher codes in your sales and marketing strategy? When you work with Quest CE to run your voucher code program, you receive a custom-branded web portal that recipients are directed to when redeeming their codes. Additionally, all voucher code redemptions are tracked in a centralized location, providing wholesalers with the ability to follow-up with advisors once they’ve been used.
If you would like to learn more about how CE voucher cards can help you shift to a digital sales strategy, reach out to a Quest CE sales associate at (877) 593-3366, or sales@questce.com.
