Email Drip Campaigns for Insurance Leads: Automate Your Follow-Up
Insurance leads rarely convert on the first contact. The average Medicare prospect needs 5–7 touchpoints before making an enrollment decision—and most agencies lose leads not because the prospect wasn't interested, but because follow-up dropped off after the first call. Email drip campaigns solve this by automating a sequence of personalized, timed emails that nurture leads through every stage of the decision process. Combined with SMS follow-up strategies, drip campaigns ensure no lead falls through the cracks, even when your agents are busy with live calls.
What Is an Email Drip Campaign?
An email drip campaign is a pre-written series of emails sent automatically on a schedule, triggered by a specific event or action. Unlike one-off promotional blasts, drip campaigns are sequential and personalized—each email builds on the previous one, guiding the lead from initial interest to decision. The term "drip" comes from the concept of delivering information gradually, like a drip irrigation system, rather than flooding prospects with everything at once.
Trigger-Based
Starts automatically when a contact matches criteria—call disposition, tag, or form submission
Timed Sequence
Emails are spaced at strategic intervals—immediately, 2 days, 5 days, 10 days, etc.
Personalized Content
Merge fields pull contact data—name, agent, product interest—into each message
Email Templates for Every Stage
Pre-built sequences for the four most common insurance lead scenarios
The most effective drip campaigns match the email content to the lead's stage in the decision process. A prospect who just received a quote needs different information than one who hasn't responded in 30 days. Here are four sequences every insurance agency should have ready:
Sequence A: Post-Quote Follow-Up (5 emails over 14 days)
Sequence B: New Lead Nurture (4 emails over 10 days)
Sequence C: Re-Engagement (3 emails over 30 days)
Sequence D: Post-Enrollment Onboarding (4 emails over 30 days)
AWS SES Integration & Domain Verification
Send high-volume emails at pennies per message with enterprise-grade deliverability
AgentTech integrates with Amazon Simple Email Service (AWS SES) for sending drip campaign emails. AWS SES is the same infrastructure that powers Amazon's own email delivery—it handles billions of emails daily with industry-leading deliverability rates. For insurance agencies, this means your emails actually reach inboxes instead of spam folders, at a fraction of the cost of standalone email marketing platforms.
Setting Up AWS SES
Setup Steps:
- Create an AWS account — Sign up at aws.amazon.com and navigate to the SES dashboard
- Verify your sending domain — Add the required DNS records (DKIM, SPF, DMARC) to your domain's DNS settings. This proves you own the domain and dramatically improves deliverability
- Request production access — New AWS SES accounts start in sandbox mode (limited to verified recipients only). Request production access to send to any recipient
- Generate SMTP credentials — Create an IAM user with SES send permissions and generate SMTP username/password
- Connect to AgentTech — Enter your SMTP credentials in the AgentTech email settings. The system will verify the connection with a test email
- Configure sending identity — Set your "From" name and address (e.g., "John Smith at ABC Insurance" <john@abcinsurance.com>)
Domain Verification Deep Dive
Domain verification is the single most important step for email deliverability. Without proper authentication, your emails will land in spam folders—or worse, get rejected entirely. Three DNS records must be configured correctly:
Sending emails without proper SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records can result in your domain being blacklisted. Once blacklisted, recovering deliverability takes weeks or months. Always verify your domain before sending any campaign emails.
Timing Strategies: When to Send Each Email
The right content at the wrong time is the wrong content—timing matters more than you think
Email timing affects open rates, click-through rates, and ultimately conversion. Insurance prospects have specific behavior patterns—they check email at certain times, they need processing time between touchpoints, and they respond differently to urgency based on where they are in the decision cycle. Here's what the data shows:
Optimal Sending Windows for Insurance Emails
AgentTech's drip campaign engine supports timezone-aware scheduling. If your contact is in PST and you schedule the email for 10am, it sends at 10am PST—not your local time. This is critical when your contacts span multiple timezones. Proper tagging with contact tagging strategies ensures each contact has timezone data for accurate delivery.
Measuring Campaign Effectiveness
Track the right metrics to optimize your sequences for maximum conversion
Effective drip campaigns aren't "set it and forget it"—they require ongoing measurement and optimization. The key is tracking metrics at both the individual email level and the overall sequence level to understand what's working and what needs adjustment.
Open Rate
Target: 25–35% for insurance. Below 20%? Test subject lines. Below 15%? Check deliverability and sender reputation.
Click-Through Rate
Target: 3–7% for insurance. Measures how compelling your CTAs and content are at driving action.
Sequence Conversion Rate
Percentage of contacts who entered the sequence and ultimately converted (sale, appointment, or callback request).
Unsubscribe Rate
Target: below 0.5% per email. Higher rates signal content isn't relevant or emails are too frequent.
Email Drip Campaign ROI Calculator
Email Compliance for Insurance
CAN-SPAM, CMS guidelines, and state-specific requirements you must follow
Insurance email marketing operates under multiple regulatory frameworks. In addition to the standard CAN-SPAM Act requirements, Medicare and ACA emails have additional CMS-specific rules. Non-compliance can result in fines, carrier sanctions, or loss of selling authority. Here's what every email in your drip campaign must include:
Email Compliance Checklist:
- Physical mailing address — Every email must include your business's physical address (CAN-SPAM requirement)
- One-click unsubscribe — Must be visible and functional. Process unsubscribes within 10 business days (CAN-SPAM)
- Accurate "From" identity — The sender name and email address must accurately identify who is sending the message
- Non-deceptive subject lines — Subject lines must accurately reflect the content of the email body
- CMS disclaimers (Medicare) — Medicare-related emails must include: "We do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent [X] organizations which offer [Y] products in your area."
- No misleading health claims — Don't use language that could be construed as medical advice or health guarantees
AgentTech's email templates automatically insert required compliance elements—physical address, unsubscribe link, and CMS disclaimers—so agents can't accidentally send non-compliant emails. Pair this with workflow automations to ensure every email sequence follows your compliance rules by default.
Getting Started: Your First Drip Campaign in 30 Minutes
You don't need to build all four sequences at once. Start with the Post-Quote Follow-Up (Sequence A)—it targets your warmest leads and delivers the fastest ROI. Here's your action plan:
This Week
- Set up AWS SES and verify your domain
- Write 5 emails for the Post-Quote sequence
- Configure the "Call Completed" trigger
Next Week
- Build the New Lead Nurture sequence
- Create the Re-Engagement sequence
- Set up analytics dashboards and weekly reviews
Conclusion: Automate the Follow-Up That Closes the Sale
The difference between agencies that convert 8% of their leads and agencies that convert 15% usually isn't the quality of the initial call—it's the consistency of follow-up. Email drip campaigns ensure that every lead receives the right message at the right time, regardless of how busy your agents are. They run 24/7, never forget a follow-up, and cost fractions of a penny per email.
Combined with SMS follow-up campaigns and workflow automations, email drip campaigns create a multi-channel nurture system that keeps your agency top-of-mind through every stage of the prospect's decision process. Start with one sequence, measure the results, and expand from there. The revenue will follow.
Launch Your First Email Drip Campaign Today
AgentTech Dialer includes built-in email drip campaigns with AWS SES integration, pre-built templates, timezone-aware scheduling, and automatic compliance elements. Start nurturing leads in under 30 minutes.
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