In today's digital age, many insurance marketers still use traditional direct mail to acquire new customers — and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that! However, many fail to integrate this essential offline initiative with social media platforms.

As social media has grown in popularity, so have the advertising tools and opportunity for businesses to deliver relevant, rich content based on an individual's profile data. This powerful profile data enables insurance carriers to further identify target segments to deliver relevant content and experiences that drive conversions.

These tools are available in both non-paid and paid options, which enables insurance carriers to ease into these tools and then optimize what's working for them. This article highlights our five favorite tools our clients use today to realize KPIs.

The first three ways insurers can use social media to supplement direct mail campaigns are forms of paid social media. This form of social media is popular for a few reasons: it allows businesses to score users based on engagement, it ensures messages aren't repetitive or too frequent and it matches users at a one-to-one level. Many users have one unique cookie assigned to them, so insurance carriers can be confident that they're addressing the user more effectively.

You may ask yourself, "but, can't I do the same thing with email?" Of course you can. However, social media channels provide an additional means of communication and since users tend to be more highly engaged while viewing social media, they are more likely to see and react to your message.

Finally, paid social media options enable companies to integrate CRM data to thread a cross-channel story and create better user experiences.

1. Leverage Facebook's Custom Audiences and/or Twitter's Tailored Audiences products.

Through ID match, these platforms enable a brand to match CRM data with the social platform's data to deliver relevant, personalized messages. Gaining this capability provides marketers with an additional way to reach potential customers.

To maximize these platforms, consider implementing an email subscription capture form on your website for visitors to sign up for future notifications. Then these email addresses can be securely uploaded into these social platforms where a brand can push relevant content to them.

2. Use Facebook's Lookalike Audiences tool.

This tool is an enhanced prospecting technique that enables brands to find contacts that have similar characteristics — like location, age, gender and interests — with the characteristics of their customers. This powerful information can be integrated with the people that like your Facebook page, your CRM data or the IP address of those visiting a brand's website. This technique takes advantage of the information insurance marketers don't necessarily have — in their CRM databases — about a customer and enables them to find more people just like them.