Newsletters for Financial Advisors: Engage & Inform Your Clients
Email newsletters for financial advisors are a prime opportunity to engage with prospective and existing clients. According to the 2024 ZeroBounce Email Statistics Report, 88% of email users check their inbox at least daily. The untapped potential of newsletters for financial planners, CPAs, and CFAs is monumental.
In today’s highly digital era, newsletters sent via email are an excellent way to reach your target market, expand client relationships, and build awareness about your financial advisory services. This article aims to provide step-by-step guidance on crafting a financial advisor newsletter that stands out in the saturated market.
The Role of Newsletters in Financial Advisory
SquareUp reports that 60% of consumers prefer to receive emails from businesses over other forms of communication. Newsletters are crucial tools in the financial advisory industry for keeping in touch with clients, sharing updates, and promoting high retention rates.
Regular newsletters—weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly—are a powerful tool to educate, engage, and strengthen client relationships. Sending emails on a consistent schedule ensures your services and expertise remain top of mind.
Additionally, newsletters can help you reach potential clients who have expressed interest in your services by signing up for your email list. By sharing your in-depth wisdom and current events in finance, you can also establish yourself as a thought leader in the financial advisory space.
Crafting Your First Newsletter: Content is King
Feeling intimidated about writing your first newsletter? Don’t be! Leverage your expertise to create email newsletters that are informative, relevant, and timely. The importance of content quality is not to be ignored. Emails should feature attention-grabbing titles, essential updates, financial news, and personalization.
If you aren’t sure what to write about in your newsletters, here are several content ideas:
Updates and market trends
Investment strategies
Budgeting tips
Case studies
Risk management advice
Personalized messages
The latest news stories in finance and about Wall Street
Personalization should be used strategically to tailor your content to each audience segment. This extra step of personalization can significantly increase engagement and open rates. To segment your audiences, consider what services they already engage in or might be interested in learning more about.
For instance, you may segment your email subscribers into:
Professionals interested in retirement planning
High-Net-Worth individuals interested in wealth management
Families interested in general financial planning services
People interested in estate planning
Remember that these are just examples and may differ from the right segment groups for your services. However, tailor your newsletter content to each group by considering what topics and financial services are most relevant.
Designing Newsletters That Get Opened
Around 35% of emails remain unopened by the receivers. To ensure your newsletters don’t fall into this dreaded unopened category, try the following tips:
Design visually appealing newsletters. First impressions are everything, and that applies to newsletters. Use a visually appealing template for your newsletters to ensure content is organized for skimming and keeps readers engaged.
Focus on mobile-friendly formatting. Mobile-friendliness is more critical today than ever before. Given the predominance of mobile device usage, it's crucial to format your emails for optimal mobile readability.
Write compelling subject lines. Subject lines are what get email users to open an email. Keep subject lines between 30 and 50 characters at a maximum to ensure they don’t get cut off. Subject lines are your chance to entice users to click on your email newsletter, so be creative.
Add relevant preview text. Preview text is a brief description of the specific email displayed in the inbox of the most common email providers. It should be no more than 140 characters and help improve open rates.
Use tools and software. Email automation tools like MailChimp and ConstantContact are user-friendly options for designing and scheduling professional newsletters. Additionally, mentioning Asset-Map’s visual features can give readers a preview of what to expect when working with you.
Best Practices for Scheduling and Distribution
Now that you understand why newsletters for financial advisors are worth pursuing and how to design eye-catching emails, let’s discuss when and how often to send them.
When to Send Emails for Maximum Engagement
Insights from Moosend suggest that sending emails between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. yields the best open rates. This is a solid baseline; however, consider your clients' demographics and when they might be most active on email. Identifying the optimal audience engagement time can significantly enhance email interaction rates.
Email Newsletter Frequency
Research by Campaign Monitor advises sending newsletters at least monthly and not more than twice weekly to maintain effective communication. A daily newsletter is typically not recommended for financial advisors.
The frequency of finance newsletters depends on the amount of information you want to share, your audience’s preferences, and the time you want to commit.
How to Grow an Email List
To grow an email list, you can draw from several places, including:
Current Clients: Begin by incorporating the email addresses of all existing clients into your list—a straightforward first step in expanding your newsletter reach.
Your Website: Add an email newsletter sign-up widget to your website so that site visitors can request to be added to your list.
Inquiries: If prospective customers email you with inquiries about your services, add them to your email list to keep them informed.
Continue growing your email list to expand your reach and client base.
Email List Maintenance
Periodically purging your email list of unengaged subscribers and spam addresses is crucial to maintaining list health and engagement. This regular clean-up will help reduce bounce rates and give you a more accurate picture of your client engagement metrics. Additionally, be sure to add an unsubscribe option for people to use if they no longer want to receive the newsletter.
Measuring the Success of Your Newsletters
Measuring the outcomes of your newsletter and email marketing campaign is essential to improving and optimizing the performance of your emails. Monitoring several crucial metrics will guide your email campaign's success:
Open Rate: The percentage of recipients who open your newsletter, indicating initial engagement. A higher rate suggests that the subject lines you’ve written are compelling.
Click-to-Open Rate: The percentage of readers who click on a link after opening the email, reflecting deeper engagement. It is an effective way to measure engagement and interest in your emails. For example, include a link to a whitepaper on tax planning in your newsletter for further reading.
Conversion Rate: The percentage of recipients who complete a desired action, such as scheduling a consultation or making a purchase. Calculate this by dividing the number of completed actions by the total emails delivered, then multiply by 100.
Delivery Rate: The percentage of your emails successfully delivered to recipients' inboxes, a fundamental measure of your email health. Sometimes, emails may be stopped by ISP blocks or spam filters.
Most email automation platforms include analytics tracking to help you refine your newsletter strategy over time. By monitoring your campaign’s performance, you can optimize your efforts to see more significant results.
A/B testing is a popular option for email newsletters to determine what performs best with their audience. It involves distributing two variants of the same email to see which one yields better results, allowing you to optimize your email strategies. This optimization can skyrocket your email performance metrics.
Leveraging Asset-Map to Enhance Newsletters
Asset-Map can generate personalized, visually appealing content, such as financial charts and graphs, that can be included in newsletters for your audience. Asset-Map’s features and data help you tailor your communications to reflect individual client needs and interests, making each newsletter feel customized.
Use the Household Index to filter and sort current clients for use in A/B testing and to start your email list. Invite email recipients to complete the Discovery Interview to scale client data collection and create visual reports in minutes. Use the Stencil feature to overlay common demographics to help email recipients visualize their peers’ financial picture.
Transform Your Newsletters with Asset-Map
Well-executed newsletters for financial advisors are key to enhancing client communication and engagement. Sharing relevant updates, market analysis, personal finance advice, and industry news in a newsletter keeps your client base in the know and focused on meeting their financial goals.
Apply the strategies outlined here to develop top-tier financial newsletters that captivate and convert your audience. Explore Asset-Map’s visual tools to support your newsletter creation process and improve client interactions. Schedule a demo today.