Between self-driving cars, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet of Things, it’s hard to turn a corner without encountering some sort of automated bot. Technology is on the rise and more and more tasks are being automated to increase efficiencies.

As a financial advisor, you have likely seen these developments in robo-advising platforms, wealth management technologies, and mobile popularity. We want to explain some of the smartest automation tools you as a financial advisor can implement and show how they can boost your productivity.

Chatbots

Customer service and marketing now work hand-in-hand and for an independent financial advising practice, this relationship is extremely important. But you likely don’t have the time or resources to manage all client communication through email and social media. Chatbots are a new trend arising in digital communication and can help streamline a lot of this communication.

For Facebook Business pages, the social media giant offers its own chatbot technology to respond to messages on a company page. Outside of social media, Slack is the industry leader for chatbots. It integrates with a number of other platforms to bring all of your marketing automation pieces together. While Slack might be too advanced of a tool for many financial advisors, it’s worth noting its popularity and growth.

Appointy

If you or your assistant get tired of the back and forth of scheduling meetings, you’re not alone! Trying to find a time to meet over email or on the phone can result in so much feedback that one or both parties often gets lost. This is where Appointy comes in.

Appointy provides a link you can incorporate into your email signature for meetings and it integrates into our websites, as well. Check out Eric Flaten’s financial advising site, for example. Through his “Schedule an Appointment” page, new and existing clients can easily schedule a meeting with Eric without all the back and forth of finding a time.

CoSchedule

In addition to our automated content library, financial advisors on our platform know that they have to post their own content to be successful. CoSchedule provides an easy to use content calendar to keep track of your blog and social media posts to guarantee your strategy is as robust as possible. According to their website, users can “create a unified workflow for every project” and “sync your teams in a collaborative, cross-functional calendar for social, content, emails, events, and more.”

G Suite

Google has simplified many marketing tasks through their various apps and they are always building new ones to accommodate business needs. You’re likely familiar with Gmail, but Google also has Calendars, Drive, Docs, Sheets, and more. All of these tools are cloud-based, meaning you and your team can work on a project remotely and see changes in real time.

HelloSign

HelloSign is an interesting one, as it allows users to sign legal documents right in Gmail, without having to print and sign an actual document. We hesitated including HelloSign because of the strict scrutiny financial advisors face with compliance, but it might be worth looking into if only for internal documents.

Their website claims that “all signed documents are legally binding and automatically backed up in your HelloSign account,” but we suggest that as a financial advisor, you reach out to your compliance department for further details.

These tools will help increase your marketing productivity and save you time. We are also working on advancements of current FMG Suite tools and launching new ones that will help with automated marketing in the near future. Stay tuned for those releases!