It shouldn’t be a surprise that in today’s current environment, video can play a huge role in how financial advisors communicate with clients and prospects. More people than ever are expecting to see the faces of those they are engaging with and this is especially true for financial advisors.
Whether it’s a one-on-one video conference or a webinar with hundreds of attendees, engaging with video shows the audience that you’re a real person they can put a face to and videos can be a lot more effective than mere printed words or an audio recording. But where should you start?
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The good news is that it’s a lot easier to incorporate videos into your marketing efforts than it used to be. Modern technology has made it so nearly everyone is walking around with a high-quality video camera in their pocket. And while there are many ways to incorporate video into your financial advisor marketing strategies, in this article we’re going to focus on using video in your financial advisor emails.
It’s More Engaging
Let’s face it – your audience is getting a lot of emails. Including a video link or an embedded video directly into your email can help you get more engagement from your audience rather than just text and a pleasant graphic. To extend the reach of your videos even further, make sure your email is easily shareable, whether through a “forward this email” link or using shortened links (such as a bit.ly) to host the video itself.
Also, saying the same message in the body of an email vs. in a video can look like a lot of text and the email recipient might feel overwhelmed by all of the text and skip past your email altogether. However, a video with a captivating title and cover image could be enough to get the entire message across. Just be sure the video title is shown and the word “video” in the headline as well to increase your open rate.
Video Can Produce More Conversions
As a financial advisor, you are expected to provide insights and commentary to your clients on a regular basis, and even more frequently during times of excess market volatility. Some financial advisors choose to do this via regular text emails, blog posts, or even podcasts. And while those are all channels with value, when something is really important and has your clients concerned about the future of their financial security, a video feels more like a face-to-face meeting than any of the other options.
While there’s no replacing a real in-person or video meeting, it’s essential that you’re reaching out to your clients and overall audience as a whole with regular commentary as major events happen that could affect the achievement of their goals. These videos don’t have to be extremely long, but simply showing your face and that you’re constantly producing content to keep them informed can go a long way toward retaining clients and acquiring new ones.
It Provides Value to the User
Believe it or not, a high percentage of your clients can tell the difference between a generic email that was thrown together in a few minutes and something with more substance like a video message. As a financial advisor, you’re already used to fielding questions about the market and your investment philosophy on a regular basis. Why not include this in a video message to share with new clients as they onboard, to remind them why they trusted your firm in the first place.
Additionally, this can be a valuable tool for recruiting new clients and could be sent to prospects. For example, clients expect to hear from their financial advisor regularly. And that’s especially true during uncertain and stressful economic times. If they aren’t hearing from their current financial advisor, but they’re hearing from you in a video format – that can be a game-changer.
Video is Mobile-Friendly
People are using their smartphones for nearly everything, from online shopping to paying bills and even working remotely. If you’re sending emails, the more you optimize for mobile, the better. That’s why video is such a good medium for email. When someone is on the go and scrolling through their inbox, they can easily watch your video versus reading all of the text which will display smaller on mobile devices.
Pro Tip: It really helps to include captions in your videos for two main reasons: 1) This makes your videos accessible to the hearing impaired 2) People who aren’t able to play sound can still view the video.
It Can Make Existing Content Go Further
If you have put the time into creating content such as blog posts, whitepapers, or even webinars, consider “recycling” that content and turning it into a video or series of videos. Be sure to have a mix of both timely and evergreen content so that you can send the timely emails right away and save the evergreen content for when things are a bit calmer.
Remember, while content may be evergreen, with the rapid advancement of technology, videos themselves can start to look dated after a brief bit of time. Being aware of this and re-recording videos as needed to send out in your evergreen emails is a great way to keep it fresh and get more conversions started.
What You Need to Get Started
While it may seem complicated, anyone with a smartphone and/or a computer and a video camera can create and upload videos. It helps if you’re using a newer model phone and have some video editing knowledge. Of course, the sky’s the limit when it comes to video equipment you could buy to enhance the quality of your videos.
If this sounds like something you don’t have the skills, time, or desire to do yourself, you can always call on a digital marketing professional. In addition to having the necessary skills to make the videos look polished, they can also provide insight on other ways the video can be shared online to gain even more traction, such as SEO for videos and posting on video sharing platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo
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