As a financial advisor, you know the importance of staying in touch with your clientele, and regularly providing them with useful information. Doing this keeps you fresh on their minds, and they will be more likely to come to you when they need assistance.
Utilizing an email marketing campaign is one of the best ways to accomplish this goal, but like anything else there is a right and a wrong way to do it. Keep these ten tips in mind, and your email marketing strategy will be much more productive.
- Personalize your emails. Using the recipient’s name leads to higher “open rates” – meaning your email is more likely to be opened and read. Doing this also leads to client loyalty, because your relationship feels personal to them.
- Keep your emails short and relevant. People use email because it’s fast and convenient. Your email contacts will quickly lose interest in – and discard – any burdensome emails that take up too much of their time.
- Provide links to relevant material on your website. The point of email marketing is to increase your interaction with clients and potential clients, so directing them to your website is one way to keep you fresh in their minds. You’ll also be providing useful information that they need, and building trust while doing so. Just make sure the web pages you link in your emails are relevant to the subject at hand, so you don’t look like you’re transparently self-promoting.
- Monitor your open and click-through rates. In the beginning of any marketing campaign, there is always a bit of trial and error to see what works for a particular demographic. Monitoring open and click-through rates will teach you what does and does not work, and teaches you how to tweak your strategy to get the best results.
- Do not send out spam! Email only people you know, people with whom you already do business, or people who have opted into your list. Otherwise you’re just annoying people and turning them off with blatant self-promotion.
- Offer your contacts the ability to opt out of emails. Speaking of annoying people, you can imagine how obnoxious it is to have your inbox constantly filled with unwanted messages! Allow your contacts the option to stop receiving your emails. In the future when they do need your services, they may still remember you, but they’ll have a positive memory rather than a negative one.
- Be regular and consistent. Set up a schedule for your email updates, and follow it. No marketing campaign is successful when efforts are sporadic and irregular. Decide upon weekly or bi-weekly emails – anything more will annoy your contacts, and anything less simply won’t be enough.
- Remember that content is important. Do you read books or news stories because people tell you to, or because they interest you? Likewise, your contacts won’t read your emails if they don’t contain information they find interesting and useful. Obvious self-promotion will annoy your readers, so remember to provide them with material they want to read. Remember the 90/10 rule: If you provide useful, relevant information 90 percent of the time, you earn the right to promote yourself 10 percent of the time.
- Encourage sharing. Include social media share buttons in your emails, but keep in mind that most people will not click these buttons simply because they are there. Getting your audience to share information requires careful research and attention to the type of content that gets them excited.
- Utilize an email marketing program like GetResponse or MailChimp. The process will be more efficient, and you can better manage your contact list, if you use a program specifically designed for email marketing.
Email marketing can be one of your most effective and cost-effective marketing strategies. But in order to see results, you’ll need to follow some simple guidelines!
For more information on how to develop credibility, gain exposures and increase web traffic with a social media package tailored to meet your needs, ask your CreativeOne sales team about our Social Media Elite program. Call us today at 800.992.2642.