Financial professionals: Increase ROI with email marketing

If you’re a financial professional and aren’t regularly emailing your prospects and current clients, you’re missing out on an enormous opportunity to grow your business.

Email marketing can help you reach potential clients, but it also allows you to stay connected with your current clients. Whether you’re a financial advisor, financial coach, or another type of financial professional, email marketing offers you a more robust connection to your ideal clients and current clients than other platforms.

Why financial advisors and financial coaches need email marketing

Some people view email as an out-of-date marketing tactic, but they’re wrong. Very wrong. Email usage for American adults aged 15 to 44 is at 95%, with other age groups not far behind.

And being a financial professional, ROI certainly interests you, so consider this statistic: Email marketing delivers an average return of $44 for every $1 spent.

Here are a few more facts from OptinMonster:

• 99% of email users check their email every day.
• Some users check their email up to 20 times a day.
• 58% say they check their email first thing in the morning.

And, perhaps most importantly:

• You own your email list – no one can take it away from you (unlike social media, which can disappear in a heartbeat depending on the whims of the social media gods).

In addition, email marketing helps you build relationships with prospective clients and helps cement the trusting relationship you already have with your current clients. Trust is vital when asking people to let you guide them on their financial future or invest their money, right?

So, now that you get why you need email marketing, let’s dig into how you get started.

How to build your email list

The first step is to build an email list organically. Warning: This can take a while, but it is worth it.

You may ask if you could simply buy an email list and be good to go. The answer is:

Don’t. Do. It!

Buying an email list can hurt your reputation, and the leads you get will often be poor. Also, email service providers require you to confirm that the addresses on your list are for people who have opted into your list, meaning they want to hear from you. So, you don’t want to purchase an email list unless you want to break your provider's rules, damage your reputation, and end up with worthless email addresses.

So how do you go about building an email list? You can obtain email addresses by:

• Adding multiple opt-ins on your website. At the minimum, add an opt-in to your homepage, about page, and contact page.
• Offering downloadable lead magnets on your website. Think about what your clients ask you most often and create a lead magnet around that subject. Examples include an e-book with tips on creating a budget for a wedding, a how-to on purchasing a home, or a guide on which retirement savings vehicles to choose.

Create your welcome email series

When someone gives you their email address, they are providing you with something of value, and you must treat it that way. First, you should say thank you and welcome your new subscriber by implementing an automated welcome email series.

Creating a welcome email series is not only polite (wouldn’t you feel slighted if you gave someone something valuable and they ignored you?) but also good business. Consider these facts from Klaviyo:

• Welcome emails have a 46% average open rate.
• When subscribers sign up for your list, their interest in your business is at its peak. You need to capitalize on their interest.
• Welcome emails have a four times higher click-through rate than regular marketing emails, and the conversion rate is 23 times higher.

Your welcome email series can be anywhere from two to seven emails, but I generally recommend five. Exactly what should be in a welcome email series is enough for its own blog, but is a brief outline:

Email 1: Welcome and thank the new subscriber, invite them to download your lead magnet, and tell them how often they can expect to hear from you.

Email 2: Tell them a bit about your business and invite them to connect with you on social media.

Email 3: Refer to why they joined your email list to start with by talking about your lead magnet.

Email 4: Link to a blog that would be of particular interest.

Email 5: The “can you help” email asks for their thoughts on something and strengthens their connection to your business.

Crafting compelling financial content

The subject line is one of the most important aspects of a financial advisor and financial coach’s email. Subject lines have one job: Get the receiver to open the email.

Using catchy subject lines is crucial in grabbing your prospect's attention in their mailbox. Consider:

• Asking open-ended questions that will peak the reader’s attention
• Instilling urgency by including a deadline
• Teasing about what’s in the email

Once your email is opened, your reader expects to find relevant copy inside. Consider what your current clients ask you and create copy around that because if your current clients are interested, your ideal clients will be, too.

Be sure that your emails are offering value to your readers. No one signs up for an email list for you to sell to them. Your copy should be about them, not you, and should help them solve a challenge they may be having.

And, finally, your emails should read like you’re talking to a friend. To do this:

• Be conversational, which often means breaking grammar rules because you don’t want to be too formal (as proper grammar often is).
• Use words that are easy to understand, which means avoiding industry jargon at all costs.
• Write in short sentences and one-sentence paragraphs because they are easier to read.

Segment your email list

Rarely will you want to send the same email to everyone on your list. Your list should be broken up into groups so you can communicate with the recipients about topics relevant to them.

Financial advisors and financial coaches who segment their lists will see better returns on their email marketing investment. According to Hubspot, segmented email lists bring 24% more leads.

You can segment your list in various ways, including by life stage or the type of business they’ve done with you, but, at the very least, segment your list into current clients and prospects.

Converting prospects into clients

Email marketing aims to turn prospects into clients and increase the amount of business current clients do with you. So, each email should include a compelling call to action. ?

Your CTAs should vary according to the content of your email and spur your reader to take a specific action that will move them further down your sales funnel. Possible calls to action include:

• Downloading some information
• Scheduling a consultation
• Attending an event
• Providing feedback to you

Compelling CTAs should include action words such as “discover more,” “book a consult,” or “join us.” Avoid static or worn-out calls to action like “click here” because they are boring, don’t incite action and don’t tell the reader why they should click.

And finally, make sure your email CTAs are prominent. You want your readers to know precisely what you want them to do without searching for it. It’s ok to include more than one CTA (as long as it’s the same one), especially if your email is longer.