Q&A with an Inbox Brain User: Growth Marketer
Q1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your position?
My name is Sarah Formente and I’m owner and agent at Waters Insurance brokerage. I’m a mother of 4 beautiful young children and wife to my husband Luke. I’ve been an entrepreneur for 7 years and love every stressful minute of it. I’m an InboxBrain client and have been for less than a year.
Using InboxBrain I have been able to increase my year-over-year revenue by 38% and have more time for myself and my family.
Q2. Why did you start using Inbox Brain?
A2. I’ve been running my own insurance brokerage for seven years now and as a small business owner you have to wear multiple hats. First and foremost, you’re the face of your organization and the lead sales person. Secondly, you’re the head of HR. This means hiring, training, payroll and, unfortunately, firing is your responsibility. In addition to my family of six, I’m not left with a lot of time for myself.
At the time I started using InboxBrain one of my sales reps had just quit. That was the second employee to leave in a six month period. Because of this I needed to shift my priorities to rehiring and retraining another employee. I thought to myself: “I can’t work any harder than I already am, short of hiring 5 new sales staff I’m not sure what else I can do to grow my business.”
My organization is more efficient now with four sales staff than it was with seven. Our response rates are up by 26% and our year-over-year revenue is up by almost 38%.
With a family of four young children and as a business owner I don’t have extra time to be training new employees every 6-10 months. I need to concentrate on bringing in new accounts every week and managing my team. I saw a post in a facebook group about email automation, googled InboxBrain and read some case studies. After that I had a call with a rep and started the free trial.
InboxBrain’s email sequences, open & attachment tracking and custom templates I can automate my sales process and free up more time for myself and my family. My organization is more efficient now with four sales staff than it was with seven. Our response rates are up by 26% and our year-over-year revenue is up by almost 38%.
Best of all, InboxBrain is reliable and never quits for a better opportunity.
Q3. How did you find Inbox Brain?
A3. I landed on their website after a few google searches then a sales rep from InboxBrain reached out to me through email. I actually replied to their second email, or the first email in the follow up sequence, which was sent using their product. After seeing the software in action it was an easy sell. I signed up for the free trial and later the annual subscription.
Q4. How long have you been using IB?
A4. It’s been about 7 months now that I’ve been using InboxBrain.
Q5. What’s your favourite feature of the software?
A5. I use the majority of the features available but I would say that the sequence automation is the most profit generating and therefore is my favourite. I mentioned above that I’ve saved roughly 30% of emails sent through the sequence function. That’s 30% of my emails to new clients that have been rescued because they replied to an automated followup through InboxBrain. For other insurance brokers reading this, thats a 30% increase in bound policies.
Read/link click notifications are great for using as an invitation to call.
Q6. Before IB, what was your routine for following up with leads and existing clients?
A6. I’d set a reminder in my calendar to send another email three or four days later however, more often than not when I got the reminder I was busy with another client or training or something else at that time. Needless to say the follow ups were not always sent.
Q7. Do you prefer to pay monthly or yearly for your subscription?
A7. I started out on the month to month plan but switched after month three. By that point I had rescued 30% or so of my emails and switched to the yearly plan.
Q8. You mentioned finding more time for yourself, can you elaborate?
A8. Well any business owner will understand that you are constantly multitasking. You have to do a bit of everything. When one of your employees has a question, your going to be the main source of information regardless of topic. That can lead to some pretty busy, stressful days. Coupled with being a parent, I was really feeling the pinch of juggling so many tasks and reminders at once.
With InboxBrain, it takes the less important tasks off my plate. I don’t have to worry about following up or asking my secretary to call client so and so to see if they’ve had a chance to review the quotes. The sequence takes care of the follow up emails and notifications tell me if they’ve opened and read the documents. Best of all, it’s reliable and cheap.
I’m much less stressed now than I was 6 months ago when I had more staff because of InboxBrain.
Q9. Apart from insurance brokers, who do you think can benefit from using InboxBrain?
A9. It’s a really versatile product. I recommend it to all my friends and colleagues in the industry. Anyone in sales would find it useful regardless of industry though. Brokers of any kind really.
Business owners, like myself, who are looking to find a bit more time in their day could benefit from InboxBrain.
Sarah Formente / Waters Insurance Brokerage
