Updated on: June 13, 2024

Though it has been around for several decades, email remains a relevant marketing channel across industries because it provides a direct line of communication to people who have opted into hearing from you.

Email marketing for financial professionals is inherently more personal than some other forms of marketing because it’s a one-on-one communication. This makes it an ideal tool for lead generation for financial advisors, but also for relationship-building.

Email Is a Powerful Marketing Tool for Financial Professionals

For financial professionals focused on client acquisition, email marketing can help cultivate meaningful relationships over time by consistently offering prospects helpful information that underlines your expertise—all while providing opportunities for conversion.

For those concerned about client retention, email marketing keeps the lines of communication open between meetings and keeps clients engaged in the planning process. Offering educational content through email can also help justify your fees and provide more value overall.

Research shows that email continues to be a powerful marketing tool for financial professionals:

• Consumers name personalized emails as their third most-preferred communication method from financial professionals—ranking closely after in-person and digital meetings.¹
• Sixty-seven percent of financial professionals utilize email campaigns, with 60 percent reporting it as one of their top three most effective marketing tactics.²
• Email campaigns generated approximately 1.7x more leads than social media campaigns on average. ³
• Email campaign materials had approximately 4 percent higher click-through rates on average than social media campaign materials.³

By prioritizing email marketing, financial professionals can continue to cultivate their relationships with prospects and clients alike.

How to Create Emails That Build Relationships

Though emails are an important part of any modern financial professional’s marketing mix, not all emails are effective. See our tips and tricks for creating compelling marketing emails that help build and strengthen relationships.

Follow Email Best Practices

The average U.S. worker has around 200 unopened emails in their inbox.⁴ You don’t want your email to be one of them.

When a client or prospect opts to hear from you, they expect you to deliver high-quality communications that add value to their lives. Breaking this expectation can contribute to breaking the greater relationship.

To avoid consistently ending up in the dreaded “unopened” category, research email best practices. Following best practices—such as writing an appealing subject line and including an actionable CTA—puts your best foot forward and ensures that you’re meeting audience expectations.

Personalize, Personalize, Personalize

If you’re sitting across the table from a friend, do you have a better experience if they’re talking with you or talking at you? Most people would prefer to have a conversation than listen to a monologue.

The same principle applies to email—and that’s why personalization is one of the most important predictors of email marketing success.

Tailor your communications to make them relevant to your audience, rather than simply sending one self-promotional email after another. This makes the recipients feel seen and heard, while also providing value.

This isn’t optional in today’s competitive marketplace—it’s a must. According to one study, 70 percent of consumers say that how well a company understands their individual needs impacts their loyalty.⁵

You can see a few examples of personalization in action here.

Know Your Audience

Whether you’re sending emails to current clients or prospects, effective personalization hinges on understanding your audience. Typically, you can do this by creating client or buyer personas.

From there, you can segment your email lists based on persona, their stage in the buyer’s journey, or other demographic information. Segmenting your email list sets the foundation for personalizing your messaging to suit each audience—and getting greater engagement from them.

In fact, one experiment that ran two identical email campaigns to segmented and non-segmented audiences found a significant difference in performance.⁶ The segmented campaign earned a 52 percent higher open rate and a 33 percent higher click-through rate.⁶

Timing Is Everything

Keep an eye on the calendar and plan to send emails out during special or relevant events.

Is your client’s birthday coming up? Send them an email. Is Tax Day on the horizon? Send your prospects a helpful article about filing taxes.

Having timely emails not only raises the likelihood that the recipients will engage with your email, but also ensures that your emails are delivering content that adds value to your relationship.

Be Consistent

While sending ad-hoc emails to clients and prospects is better than no emails at all, you’ll see greater ROI if you send communications consistently. Providing your audiences with high-value emails regularly sets expectations, builds trust, and ensures that you’re always top-of-mind.

You may need to experiment to find the right email cadence for your audience, but once you strike the right balance, you’ll reap the rewards. If you struggle with consistency, following a digital marketing plan helps ensure that you’re thoughtfully communicating with your audience on a consistent basis.

Automation Can Help Lighten the Load

The right marketing automation tool can make building relationships through email significantly easier and less time-consuming.

Marketing automation leads to email success in a number of ways:

• Applying best practices: Providing premade email templates or content that takes marketing best practices into account and sets up “guardrails” that make following best practices easier.
• Personalization: Certain marketing automation capabilities enable you to personalize your emails at scale.
• Timing: Marketing automation tools give you the ability to schedule your emails in advance, instead of sending them when you remember or have the extra time.
• Consistency: In addition to email scheduling capabilities, many marketing automation tools offer robust analytics that can show you what cadence is and isn’t working for your audiences.

Understanding the MarTech landscape and what features can advance your business goals will help you select a marketing automation tool that’s right for you.

To learn more about how marketing can help you build relationships with clients and prospects, see our eBook Elevating Your Financial Planning Business: Improving Client Engagement and Experience Through Better Marketing.

Sources:

1. 2020 eMoney Consumer Marketing Survey, September 2020, n=2,000

2. The Case for Digital Marketing, Fidelity, October 2020.

3. 2021 eMoney ROI of Digital Marketing Survey, May 2021, n=188.

4. “The State of Enterprise Work 2017.” WorkFront, 2018.

5. “State of the Connected Customer.” Salesforce, October 2020.

6. MacDonald, Steven. “Email Marketing Strategy: A Data-Driven Guide (With Original Case Studies).” SuperOffice, 2021. May 10. https://www.superoffice.com/blog/email-marketing-strategy/.

DISCLAIMER: The eMoney Advisor Blog is meant as an educational and informative resource for financial professionals and individuals alike. It is not meant to be, and should not be taken as financial, legal, tax or other professional advice. Those seeking professional advice may do so by consulting with a professional advisor. eMoney Advisor will not be liable for any actions you may take based on the content of this blog.

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