Good Fulfillment: Insurers Key to Open Enrollment Succe by Leslie Barton

Winter is almost over, and for insurers, another open enrollment period has come and gone. How well did you do? And did your fulfillment company help or hinder you?

A good fulfillment partner contributes to your open enrollment success in three critical ways:

#1: Gets the right materials to the right place at the right time. During open enrollment periods, insurance companies often send sales reps to enrollment fairs to promote their products. If any printed materials fail to arrive on time, your company is at a serious disadvantage.

It's also critical that the right materials get where they're going. What happens if your sales rep arrives with a plan description for Idaho when the fair is in Illinois? Or what if a recent regulatory change required additional or revised text in some of the materials, but there was no time to get reprints before the enrollment event?

You need a partner that can prevent missteps like these with an online inventory and fulfillment management system. An effective inventory management system:

Provides detailed tracking of usage patterns and supply levels and sets up automatic reorder points, so you never end up out of stock or having to pay expensive rush reprint charges.

Prevents unauthorized individuals or groups from accessing materials they shouldn't have - like the Illinois agent who accidentally ordered materials for products sold in Idaho, and

Can maintain a digital library of documents that may require frequent changes, allowing you to make last-minute revisions and still produce them on time with digital printing.

The resulting control, accuracy and cost-savings give you peace of mind and a better bottom line.

#2: Makes you look good. Insurance is a highly personal business. At its heart, it's a business of caring for others. So why are you giving prospects the one-size fits all treatment by sending generic materials and blank forms in a nondescript envelope?

Your company should also help by:

Pre-filling forms with personal data like names, addresses, birth dates, etc. pulled from your customers' employment databases.

Assembling custom kits with materials tailored to different job levels, company locations, life stages and more, with your choice of packaging (imprinted folders, spiral or perfect bound booklets).

Customizing materials to be relevant to prospects' needs helps increase enrollment, while personalizing forms shows recipients you know something about them and care enough to make their enrollment a little easier.

#3: Keeps you compliant. Insurance is a heavily regulated business, with forms and other requirements that can vary significantly from state to state. Ensuring that all of your marketing materials, policies, plan descriptions and other documents are accurate, complete and up to date is a formidable task.

A better fulfillment company can automate many key compliance-related document production tasks, making the job faster, while reducing the risk of error. They'll also employ strict safeguards with regard to personally identifiable information and other sensitive data, as well as maintaining strong security against data breaches.

Because fulfillment is at the end of your communication supply chain, it's often easy to overlook its importance. But partnering with the right company can strengthen your bottom line with savings that run into six or seven figures annually, as one Iron Mountain case study demonstrates. If you're not getting top-notch solutions, service and savings from your vendor, it may be time to talk to us.

For more information on how Iron Mountain can help you with keeping your customer communications compliant and boost revenues read Insurers and Marketing Fulfillment: Making it a Not-So-Risky Business. And feel free to contact us for more information.

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2016/service-lines/marketing-production-...
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