Journal of Financial Planning: October 2023
Kalli Fedusenko is a digital marketing director, speaker, coach, and author. Founder and director of Kalli Collective (https://kallicollective.com), Kalli combines her expertise in financial planning and digital marketing to help financial industry professionals give their brands a powerful voice. She enjoys gardening and adventuring with her husband, Mic, and pup, Clementine.
Email campaigns are a powerful tool in any company’s marketing strategy. If you want to convert leads while building relationships to improve the sustainability of your business growth, frequent communication is your best bet. But with client communication continuing to shift to virtual interactions, focusing on the right type of email campaign is more important than ever for advisers looking to hit their goals and keep momentum.
How to Water the Right Leads
The ideal email campaign hits four goals: it engages with as many people as possible, addresses pain points, presents a solution, and sticks the landing with a call to action. The difficulty lies in the fact that these campaigns are often a shot in the dark, not to mention the only data you receive is your open and click-through rate from a wide pool. Enter the drip campaign, the Ferrari of email campaigns. Think of it as a timed drip-hose irrigation system as opposed to a long-range sprinkler head. Traditional campaigns cover a lot of ground indiscriminately. With a drip campaign, you control exactly which leads you’re focused on growing, along with the flow and frequency of communication, so you can get the right information in front of the right prospects at the right time.
The beauty of a drip campaign is that you get all of the benefits of an automated email series that is hyper-personalized to your prospects. You can provide white-glove treatment while hardly lifting a finger—a major win when your hands are full of a million other aspects of your firm. You customize the timing of each send, and from there, content is automated based on audience actions. It’s like the ultimate choose-your-own wealth advisory adventure! Your prospects receive information about topics or services they’re interested in (helping your emails stay out of the junk folder) while you get detailed data on audience preferences, including hot topics and best-performing formats, and can hone your strategy from there.
And if That Wasn’t Enough . . .
Pairing an automated email campaign with adjustments based on consumer feedback means hitting a marketing sweet spot: prospects inadvertently tell you what they want by virtue of what they respond to while you provide automated, tailored content. You don’t have to worry about a lead signing up for your emails and receiving correspondence from the middle of a campaign. As soon as they hit that “subscribe” button, your drip campaign starts, and they get your best “get to know us” emails to kick things off. Meanwhile, your long-time subscribers don’t get stuck with repeat content.
Drip campaigns are also incredible data collection tools. Checking the click-through rates of a one-off email only tells you whether or not the lead opened it. With a drip campaign, you get an in-depth look at what type of content resonates, which you can use to create ultra-specific subgroups with better open rates. The likelihood of conversion just got a lot higher, and the process just got a lot easier.
Set It and Forget It
Much like your favorite one-pot dinner, the results will be much better if you choose the right setting for your end goal, and you’ve got options to choose from. If the variety feels overwhelming, remember those subgroups we just mentioned? Based on their interactions within that initial drip campaign, you can funnel all of your leads into different subgroups or segments with correspondingly tailored campaigns. Talk about hands-off! Here are the different types of drip campaigns you can set up:
1. Welcome campaign. This campaign gets kicked off from the moment a lead hits “subscribe to our mailing list.” This is your first date, so pull out all the stops and make a good impression without being pushy. Tell leads about yourself and make it personal. What’s different about your advisory services? How do you make a difference for your clients? Make sure to bring authenticity to the table—nobody likes being catfished.
2. Retargeting campaign. Much like the toddlers in your life, these run on cookies. Browser cookies, in this case. As data is collected from a lead’s browsing activity on your website, these campaigns adjust the focus to drill down on their precise interests. With a retargeting campaign, you don’t have to waste time sending “How to open a 529” to a retiree without kids.
3. Re-engagement campaign. This is your proactive response to leads that might be on their way out the door. You’ve seen it in your inbox as a “Hey, it’s been a while. We miss you!” message (or as the notoriously persistent Duolingo owl). Offer a polite nudge and keep yourself from hitting the back burner. It’s also a great chance to evaluate your strategy, see if or where you may have missed the mark, and reshoot your shot.
4. Educational campaign. A great way to show your value is by offering free resources or education. Provide answers to common questions, how-to tutorial videos, or some of your most popular blogs. You’ll show your value and set the precedent that you’re all about solving problems, not selling goods. A sales pitch is forgettable. A trusted ally? Not so much.
5. Unsubscribe campaign. Yep, there’s a campaign for this too! If a lead has one foot out the door, provide options to stay in touch, like fewer emails or staying connected through social media. You can also include a survey to help you collect data and switch up your strategy in the future. The main goal here is to be polite, respectful, and put the ball in their court. If you avoid being pushy, they just might stick around.
Power Up Your Drip Campaign
So you’re fully convinced that a drip campaign is one of the best things you can do for your marketing, but it’s only as good as the sum of its parts. How do you make sure your emails get opened in the first place? You’ve got stiff competition in the realm of inboxes, with the average person receiving an estimated 100–120 non-spam emails per day. So, how do you stand out?
Know Your Purpose
Why did you send that email in the first place? Spoiler alert: you need to get more specific than gaining clients. You want to be more than a sales pitch; your emails should reflect that. Think about how you want to educate or inspire leads. Anticipate their needs, fears, or concerns. If you show your value by cultivating a relationship with prospects, they’re more likely to convert and even provide referrals. Much like Ted Lasso’s biscuits, think about how you want to be irreplaceable and communicate with that goal in mind.
Don’t Monologue in a Foreign Language
Keep it short and sweet, and speak in a language your audience understands. If you don’t know how formal your communication should be or what topics are relevant, back up and figure out who your target audience is. Who is your ideal client? What season of life are they in, what region do they live in, and what keeps them up at night? Once you know what tone to take and what content is likely to resonate, don’t bury the lede, or you risk getting buried in an inbox. Choose a catchy subject line and opener, and don’t beat around the bush.
Optimize for Mobile
As of 2020, 81 percent of emails are read on a mobile device. If your images and text don’t fit onto a smartphone screen, your emails are much more likely to get left unopened. Use a single-column layout for text, and don’t stuff every nook and cranny of your email full of text and images.
Sound like Yourself
Successful marketing is all about connection, so don’t lead with impersonal text or canned phrases. Let leads get to know you! Share your quirks, pictures of your team, and lean into your unique voice. You wouldn’t recommend a robo-adviser, so make sure your emails don’t sound like they were written by one. The more willing you are to share authentically, the more likely a lead is to feel connected and invested in opening your emails.
Savvy Campaigning
You’ve got the wealth management skills. All you need is the right type of email campaign to help your marketing and conversion rates reach their full potential! With a drip campaign, you can grow purposeful client relationships without playing matchmaker between leads and content (who has time for that anyway?). Set up your campaigns or hire a marketing firm to get them in motion, set it to “self-water,” and sit back; you’ve got this one on lock.