Your customers aren’t restricted by CMS regulations, so why not get them to market your insurance business for you? Here’s how to get more Medicare referrals.

Violate any of CMS’s regulations governing how you can market to potential Medicare Advantage customers, and you could face some potentially serious consequences—from substantial fines to the loss of your license to even time in the slammer. (CMS doesn’t mess around.)

Fortunately, as an independent broker or agent, you can steer clear of many possible violations by simply making sure you promote your business and the value you deliver rather than pitching a carrier’s. Or you can do yourself one better: your customers aren’t restricted by any regulations at all, so why not get them to do your marketing for you by freely sending Medicare referrals your way?

Your customers aren’t restricted by CMS, so why not get them to do your marketing for you by freely sending Medicare referrals your way?

When you develop authentic relationships with clients and make them feel like you genuinely care about them, they won’t hesitate to refer you to friends, family, and neighbors who need a Medicare plan or even another type of insurance coverage. The key to building these connections in a way that is repeatable and scalable is to implement a well-defined and systematically executed relationship marketing strategy.

Relationship marketing: a superior strategy for garnering Medicare referrals

As mentioned above, CMS has a number of rules that control how brokers and agents can solicit new Medicare customers, all of which are strictly enforced. Among them are regulations that make cold calling illegal and soliciting referrals a less-than-efficient process. For example, while you can ask for Medicare referrals, asking for or accepting phone numbers isn’t allowed.

These and other restrictions eliminate many of the ways insurance professionals might traditionally connect with leads or otherwise acquire referrals, which is why those who sell Medicare plans need another strategy.

Relationship marketing encourages your Medicare customers to share your name and recommend your business to friends, family, and others in their social circle.

Relationship marketing can help you avoid CMS no-nos by naturally encouraging customers to continue giving you their business and readily refer you to others when opportunities arise. Unlike traditional marketing, which often emphasizes short-term sales and transactions, relationship marketing aims to build and maintain strong, lasting relationships with customers through actions that cultivate loyalty, satisfaction, and appreciation. In turn, they will feel an irrepressible need to reciprocate your kindness and attention—and the easiest way for them to do that is to supply you with referrals.

Because this requires no small amount of effort, commitment, and patience, it’s not a strategy for everyone. However, any savvy sales professional will tell you that the currency of business is relationships, and in our experience, there is no better, fully compliant approach to ensuring a steady stream of Medicare referrals.

To get more Medicare referrals in a proven, compliant-friendly way, adopt a relationship marketing strategy.

Elements of an effective relationship marketing plan

There are a numerous ways to carry out a relationship marketing strategy that will generate a consistent flow of Medicare referrals, but in all cases, your plans needs to include frequent outreach, deliver impact, and build trust.

Frequency

How often should you reach out to customers? It’s a common question with varying answers. Don’t reach out often enough, and you risk fading from memory. Reach out too often with the same message using the same methods, and your customers are going to lose interest.

To secure more Medicare referrals, you need to determine what frequency of communication will work for you to get your customers to know, like, and trust you.

Ultimately, there is no easy answer for the number of contacts needed to close a deal. Relationship marketing prioritizes long-term customer connections over quick sales, so you need to determine what frequency of communication will work for you to get your customers to know, like, and trust you. That said, we recommend a minimum of 26 annual touchpoints, or one every two weeks. If that seems like a high number, it’s not—and as long as you focus on offering a variety of content that engages recipients. (More on this in the next section.) Anything less, and it will be difficult to create the familiarity necessary to keep you top of mind.

Your customer touchpoints need to balance messages that promote your Medicare business with those that engage your sphere after the open enrollment period.

With regard to content, there’s a delicate balance between touchpoints that promote your business and those that keep your customers interested after open enrollment has concluded. It’s why we recommend limiting your promotional content to about 20% of your touchpoints, reserving 80% for other types of content. Additionally, overusing a particular communication channel such as email, for example, can lead to customers filtering or ignoring messages from that source. And relying on a single channel will limit your reach and engagement since different customers will prefer different channels.

Impact

Marketing makes an impact when it’s personalized and promises value to an audience.

Lasting impressions are made when you treat each customer as a unique individual and strive to meet their specific needs. This is where having a contact database that includes specific details about each customer becomes invaluable. In addition, share aspects of your personal life with customers, no matter how mundane you may think it will seem. This is a necessary aspect of forming any relationship—it will help people relate to and get to know you so they see you as someone other than just an insurance professional.

Lasting impressions are made when you treat each customer as a unique individual and strive to meet their specific needs.

As for providing value, you can enhance the impact of your marketing by ensuring that it includes a healthy mix of content that educates, entertains, and endears you to your audience.

• Educational content positions you as a knowledgeable expert, building trust by informing prospects and customers about Medicare plans, changes, and industry news.
• Entertaining content engages your audience with topics like food, travel, and family, connecting with your customers on a personal level.
• Endearing content highlights your community involvement, building goodwill and admiration through stories of your charitable work and volunteer efforts.

Strive to limit your promotional content to 20% while reserving the other 80% to content that satisfy the 3 E’s.

The more places you can be in front of your audience, the better. You can share valuable information by including a blog on your website, sending an email newsletter, hosting educational seminars, utilizing direct mail, or posting to social media. Of course, producing content on such a consistent basis can be a chore, which is why we provide our ReminderMedia clients with a host of automated, high-quality print and digital content that ensures they remain in front of their audiences. (You can read more about what we do for our clients further below.)

Trust

Frequency and impact are important because they contribute to developing what’s most important in relationship marketing and to your Medicare audience—trust. Frequent exposure to you and your brand makes you and it familiar, and we tend to like people and things that are familiar. Meanwhile, providing accurate, relevant, and helpful information positions you as a reliable and knowledgeable resource. Together, these two factors prove that you’re not only credible but also sincerely committed to your audience.

The frequency of your touchpoints and the value of your content contribute to how well you build trust with your sphere.

You’ll also encourage your Medicare customers to trust you when you reflect their values and engage with them in ways they appreciate and respect. As a baseline, you should always act with integrity and be up-front and transparent.

To build deeper connections, be patient, empathetic, and respectful, recognizing that your customers may need extra time to understand Medicare’s complexity. Appreciate their life experiences; actively listen to their stories, finding common ground to foster rapport and trust. Maintain regular contact; few things will brighten a solitary day and demonstrate that you care more than a simple phone call—especially when there’s no immediate business need. And personalize your service with thoughtful gestures like acknowledging Grandparents Day, remembering birthdays, and offering assistance. These actions demonstrate your care and create lasting impressions that they will share with others.

Implementing a relationship marketing strategy requires patience; after all, it takes time to build rapport with your customers. But once you’ve proven yourself, you’ll have a loyal cadre of customers who will feed you a steady stream of Medicare referrals.

Let us help

At ReminderMedia, we’ve spent over 20 years supporting more than 100,000 clients as they build and nurture relationships with their customers and clients—and we can do the same for you.

We provide automated content of the highest quality that your recipients will actually look forward to receiving. In particular, our personally branded magazines are simply unmatched in their ability to get you past the trash can and into the homes of your audience, where each issue will serve as a highly visible reminder of the value you represent.

These 48-page, coffee-table-quality publications offer customization options that further allow you to connect with your customers, including on the Front Inside Cover, where you can personalized the letter down to the individual recipient, at no additional cost.

Incredibly, each issue costs less than a typical Hallmark card yet delivers tremendous value. A 2023 readers survey conducted by an independent third party revealed:

• 20% keep their magazine for 10 weeks or more.
• 31% referred their professional because they received the magazine.
• 69% referred their professional at least once in the previous 12 months.
• 69% were persuaded to conduct repeat business with a professional because they received the magazine.

Click to a free PDF copy of our most recent issue sent to your inbox, and see for yourself what unrivalled marketing looks like.