With the current popularity of social media, online advertising, and increasingly sophisticated websites, you might think email marketing has finally gone the way of the dodo. But that is not the case!
Email marketing is still the most effective way to reach your clients and prospects. According to Forrester , people are twice as likely to sign up for your email list as they are to interact with you on Facebook. A case study also found that 72 percent of consumers prefer email as their source of business communication.
Email marketing should absolutely play a major role in the marketing strategy for a financial advisor . And a regular email newsletter should absolutely play a major role in your email marketing. A newsletter, whether it’s sent weekly or monthly, is the best way to keep clients updated on your firm and the industry while nurturing prospects with engaging content.
When you send out a regular email newsletter, you keep yourself top-of-mind and remind your audience they’re part of your circle of connections. You might have a prospect who quietly reads your newsletter for months, then finally pulls the trigger and gives you a call because of a particularly interesting article or update you sent. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t see immediate results from your newsletter – be patient. This exact scenario happened with an advisor we work with, and you can learn more about his experience here .
So you know a newsletter is important, but how do you write it? Just follow our step-by-step guide:
1. Select Topics
When creating your financial advisor newsletter, we recommend including a mix of topics. This could include:
While the exact mix is up to you, depending on the advisory’s tone, you should absolutely include both firm-related news, as well as industry updates. This ensures that every reader will find something that interests them.
Some might be excited to open your newsletter just for updates about the community event you went to, or a feature on an existing client. Others might only want to read the latest industry news and articles about the market. Both are okay! But if you only include one type of update in your newsletter, you risk alienating part of your audience.
2. Curate Your Sources
Your newsletter shouldn’t just be a mix of topics, it should be from a mix of sources as well.
Curating valuable content is less time-consuming than creating your own articles, but still is a great service to provide your readership. Remember to always credit the work and provide a small commentary on what they will read. Even though you aren’t driving traffic to your website, you are providing value, and that’s what counts.
3. Drive Traffic to Your Website
In most cases, you should not include full articles in a newsletter. It is better to tease the article so that the user decides to follow the link back to the original source. Each item in a newsletter should include a short blurb, at around 2-3 sentences and a link to the full piece and ideally a picture.
This is the ultimate goal of your newsletter: take people to your site where you have a better chance of converting them to a client. By driving readers to your site, you’re able to increase traffic, increase the chance they’ll read your other content, and can eventually drive SEO and increase page rank.
4. Find the Right Tone
As you write the newsletter, ask yourself, ”would I take the time to read this?” You want it to be informative, interesting, and to-the-point. Your clients are busy, just like you, and might get turned off from a newsletter that’s boring or too long. Your newsletter should tell your clients, “you’re part of our family” while still providing them with valuable information.
Varying the source of your content can also add breadth to your voice . Some aspects of your newsletter can certainly be pre-created, such as the market insights you can find in your FMG Suite campaigns. For other parts, it should absolutely be written by you or another member of your team. This ensures your message feels personal and specific to your brand – not like it could have come from any other financial advisor in the world.
5. Use Simple Design ToolsYou may think it requires a graphic designer to create a newsletter. Luckily, building the newsletter in your FMG Suite dashboard is simple, no matter your design skill level, and only takes a few minutes.
If you’re a current FMG Suite subscriber, check out this guide to building custom emails. It’s as easy as dragging and dropping the sections you want, uploading some images, and adding your text! Make sure your newsletter includes branding elements like your logo, plus a few images to keep it visually interesting.
Now that you have your email, who do you send it to? Start with the email addresses of your clients and staff. Then, look through your notes for all your prospect contacts. Look through business cards you’ve collected, the connections you’ve made on LinkedIn, and referrals from current clients. Include their first and last name when you upload their information to your email provider, so you can auto-fill their name when you send it out.
You might want to consider organizing your list is by syncing it with a CRM system like RedTail. CRM allows you to segment your audience and track your relationship with clients and prospects. It syncs seamlessly with your FMG Suite and provides you with everything you need to leverage your newsletter for growth.
Related: How to Use LinkedIn to get New Appointments for Your Practice
7. Commit to a Delivery ScheduleIt’s important to stay consistent in how often you send it, so your readers know what to expect. Sending it during the first week of each month is a great place to start. If you notice strong open and click-through rates, you might want to consider sending updates bi-weekly. Just don’t get in over your head, as you may frustrate readers if you are too inconsistent.
Be cognizant of how many emails you are sending out. If you have a message you need to get to clients, try not to send it on the same day a newsletter is scheduled. Over saturation of email messages results in unsubscribes and a shrinking email list.
8. Grow Your Contact ListAnd don’t forget to keep adding to your email list! If you collect some business cards at a community event, add them to your contacts. If you get an email from a potential prospect with questions about your business, make sure they get your next newsletter. Keep growing your list to turn more prospects into full-fledged clients.
If you want to take your newsletter growth to the next level, be sure to have a form installed on your site that invites users to add themselves to your newsletter list. This is a great way to keep your marketing machine going 24/7, growing your email list and expanding your audience.
Sending out a regular newsletter to your clients and prospects keeps you top-of-mind every month. You never know when your newsletter will land in an inbox that gets you an exciting new client! Interested in an automated solution that goes out to clients prospects monthly without you having to lift a finger? Check out our email campaigns !