At Midstream Marketing, we believe that email marketing for financial advisors is one of the fundamental cornerstones of your financial firm’s digital marketing strategy. Not only is it an efficient and cost-effective way to bring in new prospects, but it is also great for nurturing relationships with your current clients.
There are three types of email campaigns that we focus on. These are drip campaigns, behavioral based campaigns, and broadcast campaigns.
What is a drip campaign?
A drip campaign, otherwise known as an automated email, is a series of four to five emails that will be sent over a period of a couple weeks. The goal of a drip campaign is to encourage the email recipient to perform a certain action, such as signing up for access to a retirement calculator or scheduling a free, 15-minute financial consultation. The aim is to get a personal, human interaction with them. This will turn them from simply a website visitor or generic email recipient into a hot prospect.
How does a drip campaign work?
So, as mentioned above, a drip campaign is a sequence of different emails that try to convert a visitor into a solid prospect and that prospect into a paying client. The sequence of emails might look something like this:
Email 1: We send out an email talking about the importance of saving for retirement.
Email 2: We send out an email with a link to an ebook on the 10 most overlooked expenses in retirement.
Email 3: We send out an email describing how most retirees need one to two cars after they retire, and we ask them if they have enough saved for that kind of expense, including the cost of inflation.
Email 4: Lastly, after all of this build up about saving for retirement, we send them an email with a link to a retirement calculator on your website.
As you can see, instead of simply trying to send out one email with a link to the retirement calculator right away, drip campaigns, through several emails, have an effective way of building up a sense of urgency for the email recipient. It makes them start thinking about retirement and the potential expenses they may have, and they will start to wonder or fear that they may not have enough saved. By the time the last email is sent with the link to the retirement calculator, many more of them will be willing to fill it out than had we only sent one direct, general email about it.
Drip campaign emails are short and concise; they are typically only about 200-250 words. They are effective because each email is strategically written and thought-out. They gradually stir up interest, turning your prospects into clients.
What is a behavioral-based campaign?
Behavioral-based campaigns, or nurturing campaigns, are different than drip campaigns because they focus on the behavior or action of the prospect. Instead of sending a series of emails at a strategically scheduled time, behavioral emails are only sent after the visitor or prospect has completed some action. A behavioral-based campaign might look something like this:
Email 1: The new prospect visits your website through a Facebook ad, and they sign up for your free ebook. An email will be sent to them with a link to download the free ebook.
Email 2: The prospect then checks out one of your blog posts. An email is sent to follow-up, offering some other suggestions of blog posts that you think might be helpful to them.
Email 3: This same prospect comes back to your website, and they click on the page to schedule a free call. However, they don’t actually fill out the form. An email will be sent to them, reminding them to sign up for a commitment-free, 15-minute consultation.
All of these example emails are based off some action that was performed on the side of the prospect. They are a direct and personalized response to the prospect. Behavior-based campaigns are successful because the prospect doesn’t just end when they don’t fill out the form the first time. These emails actively pursue the client, trying to develop a personal relationship with them. This is what will turn them into a profitable client.
What is a broadcast campaign?
A broadcast campaign is an email that is sent out to your whole list, including your current clients. It could be anything from your monthly newsletter, market updates, news in your company, or your latest blog post. It is important to keep in touch with your current clients, not only because you want to nurture that relationship, but also because it can make your financial firm more profitable. Your current clients could read one of your blog posts and discover a new service they may need. Or they could know a friend or family member who needs the exact service that your blog post is talking about, and they could refer them to you, generating a brand-new prospect for your firm.
All three of these email marketing campaigns work together to ensure that prospects are engaging with your firm on many different levels and are not being lost along the way. Sure, you can choose to do just one of these and it may work fine for your firm. But, by increasing the number of interactions and touchpoints with your prospects, you are significantly increasing the chances that they will become a profitable, long-term client for your financial firm.
What Email Service Provider do we use?
Here at Midstream Marketing, we use Active Campaign as our email service provider (ESP). We choose to use Active Campaign because it can do everything that any other ESP can do and so much more. Active Campaign’s tagging abilities give you extremely precise and accurate segmentation down to the molecular level. You simply cannot achieve this level of segmentation and automation with MailChimp or any other ESP. With unlimited, flexible segmentation, Active Campaign allows you to create segments based on demographics, location, behavior, custom fields, tags, and more, so you can pinpoint the exact contacts you want to reach with extremely granular focus.
Active Campaign has the ability to connect to all of your different channels to collect information from your prospects. It takes your leads from your referrals, website, Facebook ads, Google ads, Financial Advisor directories, your CRM, and much, much more, and organizes it all in one place. It will help focus your attention and resources on your best opportunities. You’ll have a ranked, continuously updated list of your best leads so you can be sure your firm is always focused on the hottest prospect at the perfect time.
We offer free Active Campaign accounts to our clients that are engaged in any of our digital marketing packages that have under 1000 contacts. We will set up your account and lead channels, and we will import all of your existing prospects and clients free of charge. If you would like to start using Active Campaign in your digital marketing strategy, sign up for your free account today.
