Financial advisor marketing has several components, including email marketing. However, email marketing for financial advisors is one area that many advisors could use the most help with.
Why? For one, it takes time. Building an email database the correct way takes time and is often the result of a successful financial advisor content marketing campaign. However, growing this email database is critical for financial advisors looking to create, nurture, and grow relationships with potential and existing clients.
“Email Capture” is the phrase used when collecting the email address of someone with the intent of adding them to your financial advisor email database in order to send them future communications. This can be done in a multitude of ways, but the most important aspect of email capture is that the email address was obtained willingly and with full disclosure that the contact is agreeing to be added to your distribution list.
But how can financial advisors capture these email addresses in the first place? In short, the answer is content. Read on to learn techniques that financial advisors can implement to capture email addresses for lead generation.
Proven Techniques for Capturing Emails for Your Financial Advisor Database
1) Show the Value of Subscribing
When creating and distributing your financial advisor content, consider the value this content will hold for those visiting your website. When visitors find useful content on your website, they are more willing to receive regular communications from your financial advisory firm if they’re promised even more useful content.
The key is to deliver on that promise. Otherwise, you risk losing subscribers, and potential future clients. It’s important to note that this doesn’t mean you must create new content for every email communication.
However, by segmenting your audience, you can send content that’s most relevant to those subscribers. This level of personalization can set your financial advisory firm apart from the competition.
2) Create Quality Gated Content
Also known as lead magnets, these pieces of content are typically more in-depth than blog posts and regular website content. By serving this content only after the user fills out a contact form and consents to be added to a contact list (also known as “gating”), you’re capturing that email address in exchange for that user receiving access to premium content, beyond what is available to anyone. Examples of these lead magnets for financial advisors include:
- Whitepapers: longer and more detailed than a blog post, but no more than 6-8 page
- eBooks: longer format, typically up to 20 pages
- Webinars or Seminars: Can be live and interactive, or presented as recordings to watch on demand
- Infographics: Graphics created to visually explain or represent information that can be difficult to explain with text alone
- Checklists: these lists can be especially helpful for those seeking step-by-step information on a specific situation, such as preparing for retirement, building an estate plan, or starting a college fund for children or grandchildren as examples.
- Videos: For topics that require more explanation, videos are an effective way to distribute this information in a brief, easy-to-access channel such as YouTube.
Pro Tip: Keep a good balance of both gated and ungated content. If too much content requires an email sign-up to access it, this will not only hurt SEO but can lose site visitors who may have opted into emails at some point, but now won’t even return.
3) Use CTAs Sparingly
CTAs, call-to-action, can be successful when used in the correct context, but can easily become a nuisance if they’re intrusive, such as incessant pop-up ads or on every page, ads that can’t easily be clicked off. A more subtle way of using pop-up ads is to display them upon a user exiting the site vs. entering.
This way, you’ve already shown them the quality and type of content you can provide. And if they’re leaving anyway then there’s not much to lose when offering a chance to sign up. Another best practice for financial advisors is to offer a more passive CTA, like a sidebar or an in-text sign-up.
4) Ensure Email Sign-Up Forms Are Mobile-Friendly
Given the prevalence of business being conducted on mobile devices, your financial advisor email capture forms need to be mobile-friendly at the very least. In fact, many successful financial advisor digital marketing strategies feature a mobile-first design for not only forms and specific pages but for the entire site.
In addition to the overall design of the form to be mobile-friendly, the form content matters as well. This is where striking the right balance between quality vs. quantity comes into play. On the one hand, the more information you collect will tell you a great deal about that contact and help improve your audience segmentation and targeting. On the other hand, including too many fields on a contact form can create unnecessary friction and increase abandonment.
5) Find the Right Tools and Partners
Growing and maintaining an email database — from capturing leads and beyond — is no small endeavor. And while it may be tempting to go it alone at the beginning of this journey, it pays for financial advisors to have the foresight to consider both current and future needs. There is no shortage of tools and partners for financial advisors to look to for support, but finding the right fit is essential.
When it comes to email marketing platforms, the key is to consider not only what your financial advisor firm needs now, but also hedge future needs based on expected growth and the capabilities needed that will come along with it. From there, the question becomes one of personnel. Who will manage this platform?
Do they have the time and skills needed? If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Many financial advisors are excited about the prospect of capturing email addresses to build their contact list, only to be overwhelmed by the process of managing it.
That’s where leveraging partnerships with digital marketing professionals can make a difference. Digital marketing agencies have teams that specialize in specific disciplines of digital marketing, from social media to SEO and yes, email capture and marketing techniques.
