5 ways to thank insurance clients

Wondering how to thank insurance clients? Use these 5 tips

With Thanksgiving around the corner, you may find yourself eager, in the spirit of the holiday, to show gratitude to insurance clients for, well, being your clients. It’s a nice thing to do. Some would even say it’s the right thing to do. And from a business success standpoint, your expression of thanks may help you retain clients.

Not that gratitude isn’t worth showing in and of itself, practical concerns aside. How best to thank clients, then?

Let’s get specific. Here are five ways to thank your insurance clients.

1. Make it personal

Sure, Thanksgiving emails festooned with images of pumpkins, autumnal landscapes and overflowing cornucopias are seasonal go-to’s, but they’re a bit, well, tired, aren’t they? They code a thank-you note as generic, even auto-generated. They’re a good way to show that you pretend you care.

So this holiday season, forego that sort of mass email in favor of a set of personal emails. You can use much the same wording in each, but show some humanity: Offer good wishes to John’s family members by name; let Jill know that her dog’s always got a place at your table. Congratulate clients on major life events that occurred during the course of your project, or shout out their individual contributions.

If you’re a good listener and a conscientious co-worker, this shouldn’t be arcane information. In the course of working closely together, people often share just these sorts of details. Clients aren’t just numbers in an Excel document. Show them that you know that.

2. Do it the old-fashioned way

People are realizing that there’s something meaningful about printed books, vinyl records, and all manner of little tactile things that exist in the material world rather than as visual files in a vast and impersonal online database.

Bear this in mind before firing off a thank-you email. Handwritten notes can mean a lot to people. In fact, according to no lesser an eminence than the Emily Post Institute, there’s simply no debate: Anything other than a handwritten thank-you note falls short of proper gratitude etiquette.

So grab a pen. You don’t have to be a calligrapher—in fact, it may be best if you aren’t. A couple sentences’ worth of honest ink can touch the heart, in some mysterious way, more than any email.

3. Go modern

Of course, there are few hard and fast rules in life, and in some cases a handwritten note may not be the right way to thank a particular client. Especially in the remote work era, a posted card may not make its way around to everyone you want to thank.

In which case, a geographically widespread client may best be thanked via group email. First, make sure you’ve got the appropriate email list. From there, write a couple sentences, more or less the kind of thing you’d write in a handwritten note. No need to go overboard. And as mentioned, don’t be overly tempted to cheese things up with stock holiday imagery.

A further note: Some clients may particularly enjoy a thank-you via social media. Your praise and gratitude will be posted on their feed for all to see. It’s a form of symbiotic free advertising, really: It announces that your client does good work while emphasizing the classiness of a business—i.e., yours—that bothers to thank clients at all.

Not a social media native? Vital Design and Hubspot list these ways to say thanks electronically:

On Twitter, give a client a thumbs-up for a great post, a great website, or just for being a loyal client.
Endorse a client on LinkedIn or even write them a recommendation.
Like, share, and retweet posts that a client has made.
Feature a client in your posts—make them the hero of the story. Everyone loves a hero.
Post a fun photo of your team on Facebook with a thank-you message or quick video.
If you have a blog, feature a client in a post or ask the client to guest blog.

4. Everybody likes stuff

Buying little gifts for everyone involved is a nice way to say thank you.

Giving cash is tacky, though. Gift cards, on the other hand, can strike just the right note. Consider cards for:

Popular restaurants
Common coffee proprietors
Gas
Stores—department stores, digital app stores, etc.

If you can theme your gift cards, all the better. A forestry client may appreciate a card for a home and garden center, for instance; an auto insurance client may be thrilled with tire replacement discount cards. It just kind of wraps things up nicely, doesn’t it? You worked together in this or that manner, and at the end said thank you in a thematically consistent way. Everything in its place.

Related: Insurance agency email tips during the holidays

5. Say it with flowers

Floriography—the language of flowers—is an age-old way to get messages across in an expressive, and sometimes secretive, way. Flower-talk shows up in the plays of William Shakespeare, the novels of Jane Austen and Emily Brontë, and even in the Biblical Song of Songs.

Some flowers have religious connotations; others inhere on the language of courtly love. Flower bouquets were also used, from time to time, as a clandestine way for spies to express political fealties in a way that would go undetected by those outside their organization.

These days, however, you run little risk of being accused of an attempted seduction by sending a client red chrysanthemums, or of supporting the House of York by proffering a clutch of white roses. Just pick something, well, pretty, and have it delivered by a trusted courier.

Related: Your guide to business gift giving

And please allow all of us at Arrowhead to take this opportunity to give an authentic and hearty thank you to all our carriers, producers, business associates and employees. You make heavy burdens light. We look forward to many more years of mutual success.