As a financial adviser, you probably find the science behind finance super interesting—and we agree with you. But we also have to acknowledge that most people find financial matters confusing, mind-numbing, and even scary at times. Sending your clients weekly emails on investment tips or retirement planning is useful, but it also gets repetitive—kind of like someone who won’t stop showing you pictures of their kids.
Educational emails are great for establishing expertise and providing value, but all of that value is dead in the water if your clients never open your emails—which you risk if you flood them with too much nothing-but-finance content.
Break the monotony and increase engagement by adding a financial spin to topics your clients already care about. It’s also an opportunity to add some personality and fun to your brand and your relationships. Talk about celebrities. Talk about travel. Talk about financial scandals or how personal finances might work in your favorite sci-fi universe. We love putting this into practice— one of our favorite (and top-performing) campaigns was about celebrity money mistakes.
Let’s break down why this works so well.
In our 2020 and 2021 State of Digital Reports, we gathered data from 52,906 campaigns and 16,214,916 emails that our members sent to their clients and found that more than half of the top-performing engagement campaigns contained financial-adjacent content.
Clients opened emails that they could relate to or were interested in. For example, we found that many clients see themselves as “News Readers,” meaning they are interested in current events. It only follows that one of our top-performing campaigns in 2020 was “25 of the Most Interesting Things That Happened in 2019.”
Additionally, in 2020, our top five email subject lines (based on open rates) didn’t even mention money or finances. In fact, one of our best-performing subject lines was “Practical advice (and Frodo’s lesson).”
According to Vanguard’s Adviser Investment Insight data, 53% of clients define the foundation of trust as emotional, 30% define it as ethical, and only 17% define it as functional. Financial-adjacent content builds trust and improves client relationships because it shows your clients that you care enough to know what they’re interested in.
For example, one of our top campaigns in 2020 was about the elections. We created it because we knew that clients were interested in current events and were worried about how politics could affect their economy and their finances.
The campaign performed so well because it showed clients that their advisers were looking out for them. When you send clients emails about financial-related events that could cause worry, you show them that you genuinely care about their well-being and that you’re a shoulder to lean on during tough times. You also show them that you understand their emotions, worries, and stressors.
As you continue to show care, you establish trust. When you establish a high level of trust with your clients by showing them that you care about their success, you gain more business. On the other hand, 22% of high net worth clients and 25% of ultra-high net worth clients switch advisers because their advisers neglected building relationships.
Creating engaging content is an art—which is why we’re here to help you out by showing you exactly how we do it and how you can do it, too:
To craft engaging email content, you need to first find out what your clients are interested in. Some actions we suggest that you take are:
If you still don’t know where to start, we’ve compiled a list of the top 10 affinities and interests of clients, using the information we got from Snappy Kraken members:
Remember, your perspective as a financial expert is part of the value of financial-adjacent content. Take the GameStop incident from early 2021, wherein Reddit users nearly upended the stock market with a flood of investments. It’s something your clients may have heard of, but your ability to break down what actually happened and explain the financial implications is a huge value-add to your clients.
Here are some examples of our other top campaigns to give you some content ideas:
With finance-adjacent content, your goal is to start a conversation or tell your clients that they don’t need to worry because they can trust in and rely on you. Keep those goals in mind; the overarching goal isn’t to upsell—it’s to build a relationship.
Liven up your content and make it more relatable by:
Talk to your clients like friends, and they’ll treat you the same way.
Figure out what your clients are interested in and build content around those interests. If you want to learn more about crafting engaging emails, check out our HELP! Framework.
Don’t get us wrong—still send educational content that establishes you as an expert by straight-up teaching your clients about important financial matters. That’s a big part of your value proposition as a financial adviser. Just find the balance.
You don’t like it when your friends show you their baby pictures all day, every day, so don’t do the same thing to your clients. Send a healthy mix of educational content and financial-adjacent content. That way, you’re educating your clients and adding value while also sending them interesting and engaging content.
If you don’t think you have time to create that content, check out Snappy Kraken. We build the campaigns and content for you so that all you need to do is hit “launch” and see your marketing do wonders for your business.