Getting Started With Fuse
In this article, we'll be covering the Fuse Onboarding process. Onboarding is our process designed to set up your Fuse integration and introductory training.
Our onboarding consists of six calls where we will cover the basics of Fuse, and we assist you in launching your first broadcast and four foundational campaigns. Also, if you have a custom campaign in mind, our Support team will help you accomplish your custom campaign needs. While we do have a soft outline for this process, it can vary depending on multiple factors like your management system.
Here is a summary of the first broadcast and the available campaigns you can choose from:
First Broadcast |
|
High Engagement Campaigns (Choose Two) |
|
Choose two of the following campaigns:
Personal Lines Campaigns | Commercial Lines Campaigns |
|
|
We start with these campaigns because years of onboarding new clients have taught us these campaigns help you understand the foundation of how Fuse works and get great feedback from your clients.
This is an overview of the six onboarding calls and the items we will be covering:
Introduce you to your Onboarding Specialist
Activate your Fuse account
Integrate with your management system
Set Up Tasks
Settings
Domain Setup
Accounts
Segments
Messages
Campaigns
Forms
Outbox
Activity
Dashboard
Business Insights
Alerts
Leaving Onboarding
Let's get started!
Call 1: Welcome and Integration
This call can change drastically depending on your management system. You will need to have someone with admin rights to your management system on this call. It has four main goals:
Introduce you to your Onboarding Specialist: Your salesperson will introduce you to your Onboarding Specialist.
Activate your Fuse account: You will get logged into your Fuse account for the first time. This will be the account administrator managing campaigns; additional users can be added later.
Integrate with your management system: We begin importing your customer data here. The process could change the most depending on your management system. Some systems have a live (automatic) integration, while others have manual integration, requiring you to upload a report to update your customers in Fuse.
Schedule the remaining 5 onboarding calls: We have found that having all calls scheduled helps both parties be ready for the next call.
Note: Once the initial sync/import has begun, it can take several hours to complete.
When we have verified the sync is functioning correctly and scheduled our next calls, we will end our session, letting the import run in the background between calls, and pick up where we left off on the next session.
Call 2: Settings and Mapping
As with Call 1, this call can vary depending on your management system. Our goal is to review the imported data and complete the steps Fuse needs to file your data properly. These can be divided into three categories:
Set-Up Tasks: Please note that this will vary individually. Each management system will require different steps and reflect how carefully you curate the data inside it. For example, you most commonly will be asked to map:
Policy Types, associating the policy type “AutoP” with “Personal Auto” on Fuse’s end
Policy Statuses, associating the policy status “CNP” as “Cancelled”
Employees, associating the producer or CSR “Wendy D” with the employee “Wendy Doe” in Fuse
Settings: We will configure some of your settings that aren’t campaign-specific, such as:
Configuring your Company/Location Information, like your agency name, phone number, address, website, and social media accounts
Entering profile information for your employees or Users and configuring their permissions
Adding some standard email Theme information, including your logo, colors, and email footers
Domain Setup: Configuring your domain (@domainishere.com) so that emails sent from Fuse will be sent directly from it rather than from insuranceservices.com. While this step is considered optional, we strongly recommend completing it. Click here for more details.
Calls 3 & 4: Fuse Training
Accounts
Accounts are the individual active, lost, and prospect clients that have been imported into Fuse. Clicking on an account will give you additional details on them, all of which could potentially be used in building a segment. You will want to review your accounts to ensure that your mapping has been done correctly.
The Account screen will be used for three primary purposes:
Building segments
Reviewing individual accounts for more information
Starting a one-time broadcast message via the Message Center
Inside of an individual account, you will be able to see their:
Activity, or the history of what has happened to them within Fuse
Contact information for both the primary and additional contacts on the account
Tags or custom data markers you may have applied to the customer to group them with others
Policies, including active, inactive, and quotes
Claims, including opened and closed (depending on your management system).
Responses, if the person has interacted with a form built-in Fuse
Campaigns the customer is currently participating in. They can be removed from a campaign from this screen, as well
Additional data that might have been imported from your management system, usually fields that are unique to it
Segments
Segments are the different audiences we have sorted your accounts into.
Building a segment will always be your first step in any process in Fuse. Click here for more details on how to build a new one.
Once built, a segment is semi-permanent. It will be visible in the Segment panel of your Account screen until you manually delete it. These segments can be used on multiple campaigns and blast messages, so there is no need to make identical segments; you can always re-use an existing one. Segments are also dynamic, automatically adjusting based on recent customer data. (For example, a customer who buys an Auto policy will automatically leave a Home-No-Auto segment; or a new customer will enter it if they do not have one.)
Messages
Broadcast messages, sometimes called blast messages, are one-time messages simultaneously sent to large groups of people. The best examples would be customer appreciation messages, follow-ups after storms, custom newsletters, or event invitations/advertisements.
Campaigns
Campaigns are a series of messages tied together and can recur annually. While they might target large audiences, usually only a few messages are being sent at a time. A campaign’s audience is determined by selecting a segment and deciding when people from that segment can enter or leave the audience. Campaigns are divided into sequences, which are comprised of a list of steps as to what that sequence is supposed to do. There are three types of campaign sequences that you will work within Fuse:
Sequence-of-Steps Campaigns, where the customer will immediately hit Step 1 and continue to work their way down the list. This type of campaign tends to react to customer events, such as becoming a new customer or prospect or initiating a claim.
Account-Date Campaigns, where all the steps in the campaign are centered around a date unique to each customer, such as a birthday or policy expiration date.
Specific Date Campaigns, where the steps are set to go out on specific days, like a holiday campaign or an annual October is life insurance awareness month campaign.
Fuse currently has two methods of launching campaigns:
Quick Start Campaigns, Fuse makes it easy to send out professionally written and designed content to the right people, at the right time, with Quick Start Campaigns! These are pre-made campaigns that can be launched with the push of a button. These are great if you're in a hurry to get something running or don't have the time or manpower to make your own campaigns. Quick Start Campaigns cannot be edited.
Custom Campaigns, whether you want to create your campaign from the ground up or like one of the Quick Start Campaigns but want to make edits to it, this is the option for you. Custom campaigns give you the ability to create a campaign that does and says what you need, as well as the ability to make changes to it beyond launch. Click here to learn more! Once out of onboarding, you will be assigned to a team dedicated to helping you set up custom campaigns until you are comfortable doing it on your own.
Forms
Fuse also gives you the ability to create forms that can be embedded within web pages. While we only offer templates for contact and quote request forms, you could create your own for other purposes like a Certificate of Insurance Request. When a customer fills out the form, they are added into Fuse as a prospect (supposing they are not already in it) and can be opted into a follow-up campaign from which they will receive messages. Please note that you currently cannot embed forms within emails sent from Fuse.
Calls 5 & 6: Review
These final calls are more driven by you and your needs. The initial focus is on whatever help you need in editing, finalizing, and launching your selected foundational campaigns. Once a campaign is launched (or at least launch-ready,) we will review how to interact with live campaigns and review metrics and history.
Outbox
Fuse’s normal function for sending emails is to generate and send them when instructed. For example, if a campaign is supposed to send an email in reaction to a customer purchasing an additional policy, the email would be sent immediately when that policy is imported to Fuse. The Outbox gives you the ability to review that email before it is sent.
Emails from campaigns that have been instructed to go to the Outbox will be held there for seven days, during which you can perform three actions to them:
Approve the email, which sends it immediately
Cancel the email so that it will not go out. (Please note, this does not remove the customer from the campaign, so they would continue to receive any subsequent emails from that sequence)
Edit the email before sending it. Some messages can be targeted towards all contacts within an account. When this happens, you will get a single Outbox preview message. You'll be able to approve sending to all contacts on that account or delete all. You will not be able to individually approve/cancel messages for individual contacts. (This only affects the email currently being sent; it does not apply your changes to any future messages that the campaign might send)
If no action has been taken at the end of the seven-day holding period, the email will be sent as usual. It is important to review messages in the Outbox as this can result in a delay, throwing off some date-sensitive campaigns such as birthday messages.
Activity
A campaign sequence’s activity will be its history within Fuse. (Please note that this is separate from customer or Account activity.) Activity will normally fall into three separate types:
Customers that have been added or removed from the sequence.
Emails that have been sent according to the sequence’s instructions.
The status of emails that have already been sent, such as if they bounced or were opened by the customer.
Dashboard
The Dashboard will give you a top-down view of some of your metrics within Fuse. It will be divided into various widgets that focus on different data. Some of these will not activate until several messages have been sent from your campaigns, so don’t panic if most of it is blank upon first checking it. Each widget will have a “?” icon in the corner that will give you more details as to its function.
Business Insights
Business Insights is a sub-section of the Dashboard containing additional widgets. The information contained here, however, is not Fuse-centric and is instead more focused on your agency data such as Policies Per Client or Top Expiring Clients.
Alerts
Alerts within Fuse will be generated whenever the system detects a problem that needs to be addressed. The most common examples are:
If we haven’t received updated information from your management system in a while
If Fuse detects something wrong with one of your campaigns that would result in it not sending
If you have made changes to a campaign or segment but not applied them to the live version
Clicking on the Alert within Fuse will take you to the problem so that it can be fixed. You will receive a daily email reminding you of unresolved alerts and can optionally receive a text message reminder as well.
Leaving Onboarding
At the end of your sixth onboarding call, we will schedule your first follow-up. Your Onboarding Specialist will be on that call for a few minutes to introduce you to your Support team rep. They will be your advocate within Agency Revolution, with the goal of continuing your forward momentum with Fuse. Your Support team will be able to help with specific projects such as launching additional campaigns or reviewing your existing ones in order to improve them. This is where you will be able to work on that custom campaign you have in mind!
You will also have access to our regular Fuse Support for your day-to-day needs. Whether you have questions or would just like someone to double-check your work to make sure that it’s configured properly, support will be the place for you. Support can be accessed by clicking on the chat icon in the upper-right corner of Fuse, or by calling 1 (800)-606-0477.