Email Marketing Tips for Financial Advisors – 12 Strategies

Email marketing is an essential way for brands to build relationships with current and potential customers. Email has the power to reach an incredible amount of people. According to Statista, 306 billion emails were sent and received every day around the world in 2020. That number is expected to grow to 376 billion emails in 2025. 

The most powerful thing about email marketing is the direct access it gives brands to subscribers. If you post something on social media, it may not show up in your audience’s feed due to the platforms’ algorithms.

Even if it does show up, your audience can simply scroll by it. With email, however, your message gets right into their inbox. That’s prime real estate and a great chance for you to make connections with people. 

There’s a balance you must maintain with email marketing, though, as you don’t want to abuse the permission your subscribers have given you to contact them.

That’s why it’s important to have a set email marketing strategy, whether you’re implementing an email nurture campaign or a longer sales campaign for your financial advising services. 

Here are some of the top tips for a successful financial advisor email marketing strategy: 

1. Check how often you’re emailing 
2. Write personal emails 
3. Keep your emails short 
4. Segment your emails 
5. Grow your email list with free resources 
6. Send people what they opted in for 
7. Always include an unsubscribe link 
8. Test your subject lines 
9. Have a valid “reply-to” email address
10. Look at your email data 
11. Subscribe to competitors’ email lists 
12. Be willing to shift your strategy 

Now, let’s go through each of these tips and explain how they can help you build trust with subscribers and land more clients. 

1. Check How Often You’re Emailing 

One of the most important tips for a financial advisor email marketing strategy is to check how often you’re emailing. How often you keep in contact with your email list can determine a number of things, including your email engagement rate and your email subscriber retention rate.

It’s important to find a healthy balance—if you email your list too often, you could bug your email subscribers and cause them to unsubscribe. However, if you don’t email them enough, you risk your subscribers losing interest in your services. 

So, how do you find the right sending frequency? For starters, take a look at data within the financial advisor industry. Is there any data around how many people like to receive monthly vs. weekly vs. daily emails? If so, utilize that data. 

Another way to figure out the right sending frequency is to observe your unsubscribe rate. If people are frequently unsubscribing or requesting to be taken off your email list, it could be because you’re emailing them too often. If that’s the case, try emailing less frequently and see if your unsubscribe rate improves. 

One of the most effective ways to determine how often to send emails to your list is to simply ask your subscribers how often they want to hear from you.

Email them with a couple of options, such as hearing from you monthly, weekly, or daily. If you use an ESP (email service provider), you may be able to have a checklist embedded right in the email that tags a user’s preference as soon as they select it.

This tactic allows your subscribers to choose how often they get emailed, which can boost your open and click rates as those emails hit their inboxes. 

2. Write Personal Emails 

One of the key things to keep in mind with financial advisor email marketing is to write personal emails. It can be tempting to send a generic email to everyone on your list, but if you do this, you lose a chance to personally connect with a subscriber.

Since financial advising is a profession that relies on relationship building, it’s essential you form a personal connection with subscribers whenever possible—including via email. 

Writing personalized emails can also boost your overall email strategy. Here are some statistics to reflect on: 

• Personalized emails deliver 6x higher transactional rates
• 74% of marketers said that targeted messages and personalization of emails improves customer engagement rates
• Segmented personalized automated email messages average 46% higher open rates than normal marketing messages

As a financial adviser, it’s your job to gain your subscribers’ trust and show them you’re the best person to help manage their finances. You can’t do that without forming a personal connection. 

If you’re using an ESP, you should have multiple ways to personalize an email, including populating things like the subscriber’s name, age, and location. Use that information to make the email seem personal and targeted to their needs. 

3. Keep Your Emails Short 

Your email subscribers are busy and, generally, receive a lot of other marketing emails. How can you stand out from the clutter and not waste their time? By keeping your emails short and on-brand.

Keep your email copy around 125 words and make sure it conveys your message clearly. The last thing you want to do is send your subscribers long emails that don’t have a clear point to them. 

4. Segment Your Emails 

Segmentation is incredibly important when it comes to email marketing. Not everyone on your email list is in the same situation. You may have younger subscribers just starting their financial journey, as well as older professionals looking to optimize their portfolio for an upcoming retirement. These subscribers need different messages, and segmenting your email list allows you to send the right messages to the right people. 

You can segment your email list multiple ways. You can segment based on: 

• If someone is a new subscriber
• Engagement (how often they open/click your emails) 
• Age (if your subscribers provide this information) 
• Financial situation (if your subscribers provide this information) 

The key here is to get as much information about your subscribers as possible so you can target your messages. You can get this information by having them provide it in an opt-in form, if they feel comfortable doing so. The more you know about them, the better you can help them with their financial needs. 

5. Grow Your Email List With Free Resources 

One of the best ways to optimize your financial advisor email marketing strategy is to grow your list by providing free resources for subscribers.

Creating free resources can help you build trust with subscribers, establish authority within the financial advising industry, and build your email list by having people opt-in for access to the resources. 

Some free resources to consider include: 

• A study you did on how the world of finance will change within the next decade 
• A PDF that gives a general overview of how to start planning your finances early 
• A webinar on how to maximize your financial portfolio 

Think of it as an exchange of information: subscribers get helpful information, and you get permission to email them. It’s a win-win situation. 

6. Send People What They Opted In For 

One of the most important things to remember when it comes to financial advisor email marketing is to send people what they opted in for. It looks bad if you say you’re going to email subscribers one thing, but end up sending them a bunch of other unrelated content via email. Be transparent about what you’ll email them and how often you’ll email them. 

7. Always Include an Unsubscribe Link 

If you’re sending marketing emails, always make sure there’s an unsubscribe link in each email you send. This will help you stay in compliance with email communication laws, such as the CAN-SPAM Act.

Plus, having an unsubscribe link can help reduce your spam complaint rate, as people may simply unsubscribe from emails instead of marking them as spam. 

It’s also common courtesy to give subscribers the option to not hear from you anymore. It actually helps you, too, as it weeds out who’s not interested in your services and allows you to focus more on who is interested. 

8. Test Your Subject Lines 

One of the best things to do for your financial advisor email marketing strategy is test the subject lines you’re going to send. Subject lines are extremely important in email marketing

. You could craft the most perfect email, but if the subject line doesn’t grab your subscribers’ attention and encourages them to open it, you’re essentially wasting your efforts. Plus, statistics show that 33% of email recipients open emails because of subject lines that catch their eye. 

If you use an ESP, you should have an option to A/B split test your subject lines. This means you send two different subject lines to a small group of your subscribers and the subject line that gets the most opens gets sent to the rest of your recipients. This can help you boost your open rates and get more eyeballs on your emails. 

9. Have a Valid “Reply-To” Email Address 

Having a valid “reply-to” email address on your emails can help domains like Gmail and Yahoo determine if your email is spam or not.

If you have a generic “[email protected]” email address, it could hurt your email deliverability. If you have one that looks more authentic, such as “[email protected]”, it can help tell Gmail and Yahoo that you’re an actual person who subscribers can reach.

Make sure this email address is monitored so you don’t miss any important emails from subscribers. 

10. Look at Your Email Data 

One of the most crucial things to do in regards to your financial advisor email marketing plan is to look at your data. Track things like your: 

• Open rate
• Click rate 
• Conversion rate
• Unsubscribe rate 
• Spam complaint rate 

Tracking your data is essential for email marketing. It tells you what’s working, what isn’t, and what you need to do to achieve success with your email campaigns.

Set key performance indicators (KPIs) for your campaigns and see if your metrics meet their goals each week. If not, you know to adjust. 

For instance, if you aren’t meeting your open rate goal, you know to work on your subject lines. If your click rate is falling below its goal each month, you know to work on your messaging and call-to-action (CTA).

If your unsubscribe rate is high, look at who you’re emailing and how often you’re emailing them. Data doesn’t lie, so use it to perfect your email marketing strategy. 

11. Subscribe to Competitors’ Email Lists 

Have a couple of financial advisors you tend to compete with? If so, subscribe to their email lists and see what they’re doing in terms of email marketing. That way, you can keep up with what your competitors are doing and see how they’re engaging their email lists. 

12. Be Willing To Shift Your Strategy 

The most beneficial thing you can do for your financial advisor email marketing strategy is be willing to shift it. Just because something works now doesn’t mean it’ll work a year from now, especially given how fast technology changes.

Plus, we’re living in a world where data privacy laws are evolving, meaning you need to keep up with the changes to stay compliant. 

If you see something isn’t working with your email strategy, don’t be afraid to change it. Take a look at the hard data and see what you can do differently. Also, don’t be afraid to try new things, as you never know what you’ll find success with until you try it. 

The sky’s the limit when it comes to email marketing for financial advisors. The key things to remember include: 

• Finding what works for your email list 
• Keeping your emails personal, relevant, and engaging 
• Segmenting your audience so the right people get the right messages 
• Being authentic and transparent when emailing your subscribers 

When done right, email marketing can be an incredibly successful channel for financial advisors to increase their brand awareness and convert subscribers into clients. Closely monitor data to see where you can optimize your efforts and watch the new clients start coming in. 

Conclusion

Email marketing is a crucial tool for financial advisors to connect with their audience. It provides direct access to subscribers’ inboxes, allowing for personalized engagement. By implementing a well-planned strategy, including frequency monitoring, personalized content, segmentation, and data analysis, financial advisors can build trust and deliver targeted messages. Growing the email list through free resources and delivering relevant content is key. Testing subject lines and adapting to changes in the industry are important for success.

For expert assistance in optimizing your email marketing strategy, contact Mediaboom.