Renewal season is the annual opportunity to review and revise benefit plans for clients, ensuring they align with changing needs and regulatory requirements. It also serves as an opportunity for benefits brokers to build and maintain relationships with their clients. While preparing renewals, brokers can demonstrate their ability to provide valuable services such as plan analysis, negotiation with carriers, and efficient administration, thus promoting client satisfaction and retention. 

But as the year moves along and you take a moment of reflection on the hard work and value you've brought to your benefits clients, the need to communicate, build and maintain customer relationships remains strong! Once you've closed the deal, it's essential to show your clients that your service and partnership don't just end when you close the deal. Here are three post-renewal communication strategies that can prove that you are a vital partner who is committed to the success of your clients currently and into 2024.

1. Ask questions

It's crucial to continue the conversation after renewal. The right questions will strengthen your relationship and provide greater insights into the wants and needs of your clients.

The quality of your questions shows the quality of your commitment, so it requires more than just a check-in. According to a survey from Salesforce, 66% of customers expect companies to understand their needs, so be sure to ask intentional questions in post-renewal to help you understand the client more. Not only will the client feel valued, but these questions can lead you to unearth more goals the clients want to achieve, which creates additional cross-selling opportunities. Some examples of intentional questions to ask your clients include:

• How will your benefits strategy evolve over the next year? 
• Do your financial goals warrant a move to self-funding? 
• Have you aligned benefits offerings with your retention, recruitment, and compensation objectives?

To further continue and maintain the conversation with your clients, benefits advisors can incorporate marketing automation technology to send custom one-off communications or set a more complex reoccurrence of touch bases more quickly and efficiently. Sending thoughtful, probing inquiries will help you deliver the solutions that allow your clients to achieve their short-term goals and fold them into their long-term strategies, while also showing them that you are an invested and trusted advisor who cares post-renewal.

2. Provide personalized education

Every customer has unique needs and a different level of understanding, so providing education to your clients — specifically educational content that is personalized to each customer — is another key component in post-renewal success. Personalizing the education process enables customers to understand their benefits better and builds you up as a trusted advisor. In fact, 80% of consumers are more likely to do business with a company that offers personalized experiences, according to a study by Epsilon. However, taking the time to do that for each client can be tedious, especially in addition to your daily responsibilities. Investing in marketing automation software can help you quickly and easily build marketing email campaigns that deliver the right information to clients at the right time.