Let’s say you’ve just put the finishing touches on your latest financial advisor marketing email, and you’re about to hit “send.” But before you can do that, you must decide if you want to send the email right away or schedule it for a future date and time.
While there’s no “wrong” time to send these emails, it can be difficult for financial advisors to determine the optimal times for getting the most engagements from their messages. Keep reading for a breakdown of the factors that affect when to send out financial advisor marketing emails, why it matters, and how to find the optimal sending times for your financial advisor marketing emails.
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Spoiler Alert: There is no magic time or “golden hour” for sending out financial advisor marketing emails. Why? When to send out these emails depends on many different factors, some of which are unique to each individual financial advisory firm’s drip lists and clientele.
Defining “When”
As a point of clarification, “when” can be a subjective term when it comes to thinking of timing for financial advisor marketing emails. There are several subcategories of “when” that should be considered:
Time of Year
As with retail business, financial service providers also experience a seasonality to certain products or services, as well as times of the year that are busier than others. Understanding, when people tend to be looking for information on specific topics (and when they’re not), can help financial advisors optimize when certain types of emails will perform better than others. One way to keep track of this is to create a seasonal content calendar.
Example: Send tax related emails prior to April 15th.
Day of the Week
For some businesses, Monday emails perform better. For others, weekends are more optimal. The important takeaway here is that the day of the week can matter just as much as the time of day and should be considered when scheduling financial advisor marketing emails.
Example: Fridays are used for wrapping up the week. Mondays are used for getting the week started. Tuesdays or Thursdays could be the best days.
Time of Day
Once you have determined which types of emails have a specific time of year that they will be more relevant, and if certain days of the week make a bigger impact, the next big question is what time of the day to send your financial advisor marketing emails.
Example: Early mornings may be best so you are at the top of their in baskets.
Strategies for Sending Financial Marketing Emails
Know Your Audience
Depending on the target audience of an email, it may take a review of the variables to determine the best time. This is where investor segmentation can have a huge impact on your email marketing results. This is because the more you know about segments of your audience, the better you can tailor both the content and send days/times to get better engagement.
Example: You are emailing Dr. Smith at his office. You are emailing Fred (a retiree) at his home.
Analyze Previous Email Results
If you have analytics from previous email results, you can use that information to see if there are certain times of the day/week/year when your financial advisor marketing emails produce better results.
Example: This data is key to producing email results that generate leads for you and your firm.
Test, Test, Test
Whether you do or don’t have data from previous email marketing campaigns, or perhaps you have always sent emails on the same day at the same time, it’s never too late to start gathering this critical data.
By testing different day and time combinations as well as content types, headings, and formats, you can learn how to best optimize your financial advisor marketing emails. This can also include A/B testing with different combinations of the above factors.
Example: When testing your financial advisor marketing emails, it’s recommended to only change one thing at a time to determine what had the greatest impact on your results.
Pay Attention to Your Own Inbox
Think about the emails you receive and more importantly, when you open them vs. when they’re sent. You’ll probably notice that there are certain windows of time when similar emails hit your inbox (i.e. retail emails vs. professional emails, etc.)
That’s not a coincidence. These marketers have determined that there is a “sweet spot” for when to send their marketing emails, and you can do the same! Better yet, sign up for marketing emails from the competition and see if you can learn from their send-time strategy.
Example: Tracking emails being sent to you is a painless way to learn more about the email marketing campaigns of other service providers. They may have spent a lot of money going through their learning curves.
Bonus Financial Advisor Email Marketing Tips:
Break Through the Clutter
Considering how many emails are in a person’s inbox at any given time, your financial advisor marketing emails could be one of many unread emails and remain that way. That’s why in addition to optimizing when to send your financial advisor marketing emails, you should also be optimizing for content and deliverability.
Optimize for Mobile
Long gone are the days when email was just for computers. Now more than ever, emails are read on mobile devices such as phones, tablets, and watches.
It is increasingly reasonable to assume that email marketing messages are more likely to be read on a mobile device than on a desktop computer. However, it’s vital that these emails are optimized for multiple environments.
Utilize Available Resources
Chances are, you’re using some type of email platform to distribute and manage your financial advisor marketing emails. If so, you may have some tools available that you haven’t utilized yet. One of these tools may be the option to let the platform make recommendations to help optimize email send times. The platform will use analytics from your previous financial advisor marketing emails as well as data from other sources to determine when it predicts your email will perform the best.
Be Consistent
When delivering regular content, such as weekly or monthly market updates or commentary, consistency can help boost your marketing email results. While it may take some time to determine the day/time combinations, the key here is to stick with it. You eventually get to a point where your audience is used to receiving your emails regularly at this time and is more likely to make a habit of opening and hopefully engaging with them as well.
Expect Strategic Change
Because they will change, and if you’re unable or unwilling to pivot, your financial advisor email marketing won’t be as effective as it once was or could be. What once was an optimal send date and time could change. Or the content that once performed well is falling flat. If you expect to change, your financial advisor marketing strategy will be more adaptable.
About Paladin
Paladin is a digital marketing agency that has worked exclusively with financial advisors since its founding in 2003. Paladin’s team of digital marketing professionals has more than 100 years of collective financial industry experience marketing our clients' services to individuals, families, and businesses. Plus, our team has decades of experience providing digital marketing services to financial advisors. Our clients range from start-ups to firms with billions of dollars of AUM. We are a full service agency that provides website, SEO, SEM, Video, and Fractional CMO services. Want more information about our digital marketing services for financial advisors? Email: Info@PaladinDigitalMarketing.com to schedule an introductory call. We protect your privacy.
