Many advisors wonder exactly how often they should be in contact with their clients. According to Morningstar, 30% of clients prefer weekly emails from their advisor, and 36.6% prefer to receive them monthly. More than half of your clients want to hear at least once per month from you. Is that something you’re offering? It could be the channel your digital marketing strategy is missing.
Why is Email So Effective?
When you send your prospects and clients a marketing email, they can choose to interact with it at whatever time is convenient for them. At the office, while they’re watching TV, in a waiting room, or wherever life takes them. They don’t have to wait until business hours and get on the phone in order to hear from you. This helps keep you top-of-mind, without needing to reach out individually to each of your contacts. A regular email newsletter and other campaigns help remind them that you offer the financial expertise they need.
Email is the perfect tool for busy financial advisors. It is easy to grow your email list as your business grows. Whether you have 50 contacts or 500, sending automated emails and email newsletters will take the same amount of work. Plus, email is low-cost. Instead of paying for individual stamps for each contact, you can send a message out to all of them with the click of a button.
Fundamentals of a Great Email
A great email is one that keeps you connected, strengthens relationships, and encourages the recipient to visit your website, contact you, or refer you to someone else. In short, it lives on beyond a single exchange.
What does it take to send a great email? You need:
- Segmented contacts
- Strong subject lines
- Engaging custom content
By spending a little extra time to create great emails, you’ll experience higher open rates and better conversions.
Let’s get started with this guide to email marketing!
Segmented Contacts
If you had a dog, and your veterinarian constantly sent you emails about cats, you would probably get annoyed. You might even find a new veterinarian! The same is true with your clients and prospects. If you continue to send irrelevant emails to your contacts, they may unsubscribe or lose interest in working with you.
You can avoid this by building segmented email lists. At the very least, you should separate your contacts into clients and prospects. This way, you can send each of those groups individual emails when appropriate.
But you can go one step further! Try separating your contacts by age group, investing priorities, financial interests, and more. This will help ensure your emails are targeted to the relevant groups, and no one gets bombarded with emails that don’t apply to them.
If you use a CRM like Redtail, you should set up those groups there, then sync with your FMG Suite dashboard or your other email tool.
Strong Subject Lines
A great subject line will save your email from the trash bin. This blog post goes over the steps you need to take to create click-worthy subject lines. In general, they should:
- Be short and sweet – under 40 characters
- Not include any spammy words (FREE, $$$$, etc.)
- Use natural language
- Offer value
- Be unique!
If you aren’t sure whether your email subject line is working, there are a number of tools that help you test them out, like this one and this one.
Engaging Custom Content
The best way to keep your prospects and clients engaged is with emails that include content that’s interesting for them and unique to your firm.
A good place to start is with a monthly email newsletter. This newsletter should be 90% educational and 10% promotional. This is your chance to educate your clients about financial questions, common terms, and market news. You can also cover whatever causes, charities, or fun things you care about. You can also inform your contacts of upcoming client events or community events they may want to know about.
An email newsletter is where your knowledge about your client group will come in handy. If you have a lot of young families, maybe you want to fill them in on an event in the community their kids might enjoy. Older clients might want to hear about that new wine bar that just opened in town. It all depends on your audience and your firm.
Then, fill that 10% promotional aspect with a link to schedule a consultation with you, download an ebook, or fill out a referral form on your site. If you fill your newsletter with content that is engaging and interesting, you’ve earned a spot to give your firm a plug.
Email Marketing FAQs
There are a few questions we hear all the time from advisors just like you.
- If I’m already sending FMG Suite’s automated emails, why should I also send custom emails?
The FMG Suite automated email campaigns are a great way to keep you top-of-mind and kickstart your email marketing. But if you really want to build strong relationships and set yourself apart, custom emails that speak to who you are as a firm and who you serve are key.
- What are the metrics I should aim for with my emails?
For financial advisors, the industry average is 14.65% open rate, 6.53% click through rate, 10.13% bounce rate, and 0.02% unsubscribe rate. Your results will depend greatly on the size of your list, how targeted it is, and who you are contacting. If your numbers are drastically different, look at your subject lines and try segmenting your emails into groups.
- Can I include a video in my email?
Video is tough. Many email clients, including Gmail, don’t support video playing directly in an email. So you’ll want to use a screenshot of the video and put that in your email, then link it to your website, YouTube, or wherever the video is located. This will ensure everyone can get access to the video, whether or not their email program allows for it.
- Can I include an attachment in my email?
Marketing emails should not include attachments. This could get your email sent to spam folders, as most email providers are suspicious of attachments sent in bulk. Instead, put the document on your website, then include a link to the page in your email.
We recently had two email marketing webinars that covered the Basics of Email Marketing and How to Build a Great Email Newsletter. Both are available as a replay to watch on your own time!
