July 26, 2024

Best Marketing Strategies and Practices for Financial Advisors

July 26, 2024

Email & More Marketing Must-Haves to Grow Your Business

As a financial advisor, you probably know that effective communication with prospects and clients is essential to growing your business, but do you have a defined marketing strategy to guide your efforts?

The C2P Marketing Roundtable is a monthly meeting where financial services industry marketers affiliated with C2P share their strengths, ideas, issues, and needs. The most recent roundtable brought together specialists from The Agency at C2P who shared valuable insights on financial advisory marketing tactics, including email marketing best practices, financial industry email open rates, nurturing campaigns, and video content creation.

Here are some key takeaways and tips to consider if you’re trying to elevate your marketing approach:

Create Nurture Campaigns

You’ve run a lead-generation webinar or posted gated content on your site to attract leads, now what? You are unlikely to get that lead to become a client immediately. Prospects often view three to five pieces of marketing content before engaging in a conversation with you. That’s where nurture campaigns come into play.

Nurturing new leads over time with relevant and appealing content can help get your prospect to take your desired action. With effective nurturing campaigns, you can increase the qualified leads flowing into your financial advisory practice by 50% while reducing the cost per lead by 33%.²

Establish a Content Strategy

What does a nurture campaign look like? A basic email nurture campaign often consists of at least three emails spread over a month’s time.

Use the email nurture structure of a typical campaign below as a guide to craft your next campaign:

Email 1: Content delivery (e.g., an eBook they requested or webinar recording)
- Send right after content is requested or shortly after webinar is held
Email 2: Follow-up expanding on the content, with a soft sell
- Sent a few days or a week after first email
Email 3: A more direct call-to-action to book a call
- Sent a week after second email

Subject Lines:

As for the content of those emails, don’t sleep on subject lines — they’re what motivates people to open your emails. Try to:

Keep them short (around seven words) and intriguing.
Use questions to pique curiosity. For example, “Are you using this tax strategy?”
Include numbers in your subject lines to grab attention, such as “5 retirement planning mistakes to avoid.”

Personalization

Personalization that goes beyond using the recipient’s name in a subject line or greeting is very important and effective. Personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates, making this one of the most impactful financial advisor marketing strategies.³

For highly engaged prospects (those opening 60-70% of emails), consider offering exclusive content, events, or even personalized outreach.

Multi-channel Approach

You can also incorporate phone calls, direct mail, and other touchpoints in your nurturing strategy to keep prospects engaging with your content. For instance, follow up an email with a phone call, or guide mail recipients to a video on your website.

Segment Your Lists to Reach Your Target Audience

Rather than trying to reach the largest possible audience, focus on connecting effectively with a smaller, well-targeted list of prospects. It’s better to have meaningful interactions with 100 good prospects than superficial contact with 1000 unqualified leads.

For example, you can segment your audience by factors like age, investment goals, or even business ownership if that’s your desired audience. This allows you to tailor your messaging for maximum relevance.

Leverage Video Content

Videos can increase email click-through rates by 300% and they continue to be one of the most popular forms of media marketing.⁴

While professional equipment can enhance quality, don’t let that be a barrier to entry to creating your own videos. Modern smartphones can produce good quality video for getting started. As you become more comfortable or the type of content you want to create evolves, you can invest in better equipment. By following a guide of the proper technology and tips, getting started is simple.

For audio, be mindful of noise coming from your background, clothing that might rustle against microphones, and room acoustics. Soft furnishings can help reduce echo and enclosing your space can limit excess sound.

Make sure you have good lighting, frame yourself well, and watch what’s in your background when on camera. Use natural light from a window, if possible. For example, avoid having clocks visible, as they can create continuity issues if you edit the video.

Measure Your Success

Regularly review your metrics and use the insights to refine your approach. What worked last quarter might not work this quarter, so stay adaptable.

Key email metrics to track include open rates, click-through rates, and overall engagement. Look at trends over time and how they correlate with changes in your strategy.

For the financial services industry, aim for open rates in the mid-20s to high 30s. Click-through rates, however, are more varied across platform benchmarks. FMG’s industry average is as high as 6.53%⁶ and others as low as 0.75%.⁷ The Agency at C2P suggests aiming for around 2%, which seems to be closer to the typical average. Keep in mind your specific numbers may also vary based on your niche and audience.

Make Sure to Keep Compliance in The Loop

Always ensure your marketing efforts comply with industry regulations. This is particularly important in the financial services sector where there are strict rules about communications and promotions.

Stay Open to Learning and Experimenting

It’s important to test and refine your approach based on your unique audience and strengths. A/B testing is a useful tool for improving your marketing campaigns. It can help optimize your strategies and boost performance.

With emails, try testing different subject lines, send times, and content to see what works best. For example, you might test a more formal tone against a casual one or compare morning vs. evening send times.

Commit to Marketing and Start Growing your Business

Start by focusing on one or two areas for improvement, and gradually expand your marketing toolkit. By using the strategies mentioned here and sticking to them, you can develop a marketing plan that helps your business grow. Remember, effective marketing is not just about attracting new clients; it’s about building lasting relationships and providing ongoing value to your existing client base.

For more resources on marketing strategies and other aspects of running a successful advisory practice, C2P offers a wealth of knowledge and support. Book a call to explore how you can take your marketing efforts to the next level.

Subscribe to our podcasts to stay updated on the latest news and insights from industry leaders. Our podcasts include The Bucket Plan®, The Rainmaker Multiplier, or A Woman’s Clarity®.

For Financial Professional Use Only

The information provided in this presentation is not intended as investment advice or legal advice. The information provided is for informational and training purposes only. The information in this presentation was accurate as of the time the material was created. Tax laws and rulings can frequently change. Please discuss the client’s current situation with an accountant or tax advisor.

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