It’s true, email marketing for financial advisors is a different digital animal than email in other industries. Still, certified financial planners should take advantage of this marketing channel.
This post is easy to scan and will help ensure you’re currently using email marketing best practices. If you’re interested in launching email campaigns for your financial services firm, this article will give you a heads-up on what you need to know going in.
Either way, you’ll want to use my #1 tip that can set your business apart from the competition. It works due to the nature of the long-term view in your industry.
Top Priorities with Email Marketing?
You’ll have to answer the main question of what your goals are with email campaigns. Want to update your clients on trends? Send weekly tips? Comment on financial headlines? Lots of options available and the good news is you don’t have to confine yourself to one type of email.
Now for my top 5 email marketing priorities for financial advisors:
- Stay compliant, of course. More restrictions on your industry than most
- Build a clean email list slowly (no buying lists)
- Set up and maintain all technical authentications (SPF, DKIM & DMARC – hire an IT freelancer)
- Set expectations with an informative and personal Welcome Email
- Segment your email list so each message resonates with the recipient
Handle those basics and your emails are more likely to avoid spam folders where clients and potential clients will never see them.
Let’s see what else CFP® can do to leverage email marketing.
Email Signals are Money in the Bank
When your emails get opened and clicked consistently, this helps your deliverability going forward. Every touchpoint of email across the web receives signals. You want positive signals so your subscribers can be consistently reached. Or else face this scenario…
Ever wonder why an email newsletter you used to enjoy reading stopped landing in your inbox?
Likely it’s because you stopped opening it as often then your spam filter decided those emails were not valuable to you. So it filtered out those emails.
Another possibility is the email sender (mailer) may have damaged their sender reputation by spamming other people. This reputation damage can prevent even interested subscribers from receiving these emails!
A third possibility is ISP (internet service providers) got bad signals from the mailer’s domain (www.example.com). Even without the mailer doing anything wrong. Hackers can sometimes infiltrate domains and use them for nefarious emails.
5 Tactics to Keep Email Deliverability High for Financial Advisors
- Make it easy for unengaged readers to unsubscribe
- Email your most consistent openers / readers more often
- Write easy-to-digest & easy-to-understand emails
- Subject lines must create an urgency to read (emails not opened within an hour are not likely to be opened at all)
- Your sender name (from address) must be clearly recognizable to subscribers or they will not open your emails!
⭐Number five is especially true with email marketing for financial advisors. No one wants to make a mistake and open a scammer’s financial email.
Watch out for this though.
Bad Financial Email Marketing Advice
Half of email marketing is common sense after a while. But some common advice is not correct.
3 examples.
❌ Keep emails short. Not true in all cases. Depends on what your audience wants and your goals for each email. If you’re explaining a complex tax avoidance technique then you can’t do that in 176 words, correct?
❌ Use Facebook Ads to collect email addresses. This is ok advice but only if you use double opt-in after the Facebook sign-up. Aka, confirm the person really wants to be on your email list. Otherwise, Facebook users are flippant about what they sign-up for and won’t be engaged when you start emailing them. This sends bad signals and your deliverability suffers.
❌ Send emails on certain days and times for better open rates. Trust me, I’ve read over 100 articles pushing advice about the best time to send a marketing email. It’s mostly guesswork. Why? Every email list is different. Your audience will be different from a nonprofit list, as an example.
✅The only real way to send perfectly-timed financial services marketing emails is with triggered emails. Because these emails are triggered by your subscribers’ actions. Inbox Mailers uses these actions to trigger your emails when your subscribers are actively opening other emails!
This patent-pending technology was tested using our mega-mailer network in over a BILLION email sends.
Learn more with a free Inbox Mailers Demo.
I haven’t forgotten…
That #1 Email Marketing Tip Most CFP® Don’t Utilize
Remember how I advised building your email list slowly? Sorta like you might advise clients on investing? Well, you can take that to the next level by having a waiting list for your valuable emails.
Why in the world would you do this?
It will make people eager to join your list. Simple psychology, we humans want what we can’t have. Read up on it if you like.
This is perfect for financial advisors thinking of using email marketing. Since you’re not quite ready yet, a waitlist isn’t costing you anything.
But advisors already using email marketing can use a waitlist too. Get creative with a VIP-type list that promises unique information inside an add-on newsletter.
Summary: Email Marketing for Financial Advisors
Email marketing and financial advisors are a natural fit. You’re dealing with clients on a super-personal level. Money, their future, and how their wealth will be protected and distributed when they’re gone.
Email reaches people on a personal level as well. Think about where you have the least distractions while reading online? Most people say their email inbox.
See, email readers give companies permission to send them messages. That’s a personal invitation. Plus, you can see solid real-time analytics that tell you what your email readers like about the editorial and marketing messages you send them.
I see no better marketing investment for a CFP® than email. As long as you use the meat and potatoes best practices I outlined above, you’re bound to see an impressive ROI on email marketing.
*Multiple studies cite email ROI in the range of $40 to each $1 spent
