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Not Just a Pretty New Face

June 25, 2013

Old Web Site

The iMGA home page circa 2009.



If you’re reading this then you already know the big news: we have a brand-new look to our website.

Our old website served us very well for our first few years of operation, and we made a few small changes on it over time, but it was time for a fresh look and a more informative format.

New Web Site

The 2013 home page with just one of the rotating primary image banners.


The Update Includes Important Changes

  • The new site is mobile-friendly and incorporates social media connections (links to our Twitter account, Facebook page and LinkedIn company page) at the top of every page.
  • We separated the Make a Payment and Report a Claim information into two distinct pages to reduce confusion.
  • The new web site integrates the blog and all of its articles with the site as a whole, making it easier for agents to find useful information.
  • We have moved the site to a specialty hosting firm that will ensure that it is more responsive, faster loading, and consistently and automatically backed up.
  • This change separates our web site front end from our agent portal, ensuring that we do not have a single point of failure and an outage with either one would not cause a total outage.
  • While our old site used a content management system that allowed for fairly easy page additions and changes, the new site is on a much more powerful, secure, more frequently updated and easier-to-use system. As a result we’ll have more flexibility, control and security going forward.

Our new site is just one of the steps we are taking to make life easier for our agents. We hope you like it and welcome your comments, suggestions and questions about it or any of our Texas Personal Property products.

Categories: Systems Tags: , ,

Is Your Agency’s Web Site Updated Regularly?

September 30, 2010

No one enjoys things that are out of date.

Sour cream past its expiration date.Prospective insureds coming to your agency’s web site are looking for reassurance, rapport – a reason to trust you with their business. Having no web site is terrible – you’ll never even be considered. Having a web site with no information is really bad – they won’t see the reasons to trust and want to be in business with you. But having a little info that is very old is just as bad – and may be worse.

This is why online marketing experts strongly suggest having a blog. A blog is the easiest way possible to add fresh new content to your web site on a regular basis.

Adding fresh content via a blog causes a helpful cycle to start:

  1. One of the ranking items from search engines is how recently a page or site has been updated. Having fresh content means that when someone searches for words that are found on your site the link to you will come up higher than it would have if you had not had recent updates.
  2. That higher ranking causes more people to come to your site.
  3. When those people come to your site they see that you’re active, that you care about providing relevant information, and that your information is not old and stale. This increases their confidence in you and therefore will increase your conversion ratio (the percentage of those people who will call, email or otherwise contact you to proceed through the sales process.

Doing a blog takes effort. You may not feel up to the challenge. In all likelihood you already get more than enough good ideas from your current customers and their insurance questions to fill hundreds of posts. At iMGA we get great ideas from our agents constantly, and we use those to make sure we produce at least one new post each week. It’s not setting the world on fire, but it is consistent, and after a year or so we’ll have 100 posts. That’s 100 pages of content on our web site, 100 updates to Google and the other search engines, and 100 pieces, some of which will have value to each visitor who finds us, especially if they’re Texas Independent Insurance Agents looking for a great personal property market. 🙂

Last, but not least, it keeps our web site fresh.

Categories: Agencies, Marketing Tags: , , ,

The Impact of a Clear Focus

March 24, 2010

Out of Focus Sunset

At iMGA we know how important it is to stay clearly focused. It’s the reason we’re focused completely on Texas Personal Property Insurance.

That focus is definitely producing dividends, as it’s already allowed us to make the following changes:

  • New secondary home eligibility. You can now cover unsupported secondary dwellings on the HOA and TDP products, opening up additional opportunities to meet those customers’ needs.
  • Mobile Home product improvements. You can now add Replacement Cost coverage and quote higher limits for adjacent structures and personal property than before.
  • Integrated ISO protection class look up. You don’t have to worry about which is the responding fire department or what their rating is any more.
  • Automatic ISO replacement cost calculation. In most cases all the needed data is now pulled from public records. Even if not, you only need to complete a couple of fields to get the value.
  • Independent inspection of the property. You don’t have to worry about having photos of the dwelling any more.
  • Easier quoting. By starting all quotes using the StartAllQuotesHere option, you no longer have to remember which program each risk qualifies for – the system will handle that automatically.

We’re constantly working to make things better, because at iMGA we’re focused on becoming the best MobileHome, TDP1/TDP3, HOA/HOA+ and Vacant Dwelling market available. So, please, quote one with us now.

Because with a clear focus, things just turn out better:

Clear Sunset

Categories: Systems, Texas Personal Property Insurance Tags: , , , ,

Internet Browser Version Experience

March 22, 2010

Last week we learned that several agents couldn’t see the left hand navigation bar on the logged-in portion of our web site (the part in the picture above that shows “home”, “Online Quoting”, etc. below the logo).

Of course we jumped on that immediately and made it so that the problem doesn’t exist any more. If you were one of the people who were not able to see the navigation bar, please log in as soon as possible and verify that you can see it now.

While we were investigating it, though, we learned that the problem was limited to people using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6.0 as their browser. Microsoft released Internet Explorer 6.0 in 2001, and according to Secunia, it is a significant computer security problem, with 24 unpatched security vulnerabilities as of February 9, 2010. Also, according to Microsoft, their much more recent Internet Explorer Version 8.0 is both safer and faster.

For a much better internet experience, therefore, we strongly suggest that if you are using Internet Explorer 6.0, you either upgrade to Internet Explorer 8.0 (out for over a year now and automatically carries over all your bookmarks, saved passwords, etc.) or switch to the very highly respected alternative browser Firefox. Updating to either of these will likely prevent or fix viewing issues on multiple sites, not just ours.

We’re constantly working to make things better for you – not just on our site – because at iMGA we’re focused on becoming the best MobileHome, TDP1/TDP3 and HOA/HOA Plus market available. So, please, quote one with us now.

Thank you VERY MUCH to those of you who emailed and/or called last week to let us know of this problem. We can only fix the things we know about, so please keep those comments coming and we’ll keep improving as much and as fast as possible.

Categories: Systems Tags: , , , , , , ,

Welcome Quirk Agencies!

February 23, 2010

We’re so honored to be doing business with you!

iMGA has been handling the servicing of the former Quirk & Company standard personal lines products (MobileHome, TDP1, TDP3, HOA, HOA+ and Vacant Dwelling) since February 1.

We’ve had the pleasure of speaking to many of the great agents that worked with Quirk & Company over the years, and visiting many, but we haven’t made it out to everyone yet (and didn’t get to see everyone in those agencies we have been able to visit), so we’d like to take this opportunity to address some of the questions that have come up in the meantime.

Who is iMGA?

We are a team of Texas-born and/or Texas-raised long-time insurance veterans. We are a new MGA, started last year, but our team has decades of experience and relationships in the industry and in Texas. You can read more about our people here if you’d like.

Our objective is to be the specialty MGA of choice in our chosen programs for retail producers because we are the easiest to interact with; while providing the best products and customer service in the marketplace, delivered by people who are having fun doing their jobs. While we have a bunch of insurance experience, we’re not a stuffy insurance company.  Heck, that is why we started iMGA, to escape that bureaucracy.  We’re real people having fun providing great products through fantastic agents.

What is iMGA’s relationship with Quirk?

Our relationship with the Quirk Group is a long and rich one that literally goes back generations. Among other things Bob Quirk is an officer of iMGA and board member of its parent. iMGA purchased the right to service the Texas Personal Property insurance products that were formerly handled by Quirk & Company, and those products are still being underwritten by San Antonio Indemnity Company, a member of Quirk Group, rated B++ by A.M. Best & Co.

What kind of a market will iMGA be for our agency?

Long term we intend to offer a few very targeted programs. In the near term, though, we are completely focused on Texas Personal Property. That means our relationship with you on the MobileHome, TDP1, TDP3, HOA, HOA+ and Vacant Dwelling products is the most important thing to us. This is why we have worked to make our system as easy as possible and are incorporating your suggestions for improvement as fast as we possibly can. One huge improvement – the reduction of the minimum down payment to 15% plus the policy fee – was implemented earlier this week as a direct result of agent suggestions. Please add more suggestions as you think of them!

So, “Howdy”! We’re very pleased to meet you, and can’t wait to get to know you better, If your agency hasn’t already contracted formally with us, please have the appropriate person complete the new agent signup form so we can, among other things, make sure your commission payments are deposited correctly. 🙂

Please don’t hesitate to call or email if you have any questions at all!

Categories: Texas Personal Property Insurance Tags: , , , ,

EASY Texas Personal Property Insurance Quoting

January 24, 2010

Are you a new agency with iMGA or a new CSR who has just joined an agency that represents iMGA? This handy guide will show you everything you need to know to get started:

First, go to the iMGA Web Site and click on the Log In button on the top right of the screen:

The Log In button is at the far right of the navigation bar at the top of the page.

Second, enter your email address in the username field and your password in the password field and click “Submit”. (If this is your first time to the site, click on the “Register” link. If you have forgotten your password, click on the “Forgot Password” link.)

The username and password fields pop up after you have clicked on the Log In button.

Next you’ll see the agent welcome screen. This screen includes news, helpful links, automatically updated information from our blog, and links to policy servicing functions, including quoting a new policy. That button is the second one down on the left of the screen and is labeled “Online Quoting”.

Click on that, select the “StartAllQuotesHere” option from the dropdown, click on the small calendar icon to pick the effective date, enter the customer’s name in the Account field if you wish, and click on “Submit”.

Select StartAllQuotesHere and select an effective date using the calendar button.

The rest should be very self-explanatory. Happy Quoting and let us know if you have any questions!

Categories: Systems Tags: , , , , , ,
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