Marketing emails get results. And those results can be pretty big wins. Michael H. Baker of Vertex Capital Advisors uses our plug-and-play content to build relationships with his email list.
“Snappy Kraken’s consistent drip of awesome content makes me look top notch with my followers,” he said. “Recently, their Retirement Success campaign led me to a $1.5 MILLION client!”
And that was after he sent his first email campaign. His experience isn’t an isolated one. An email list is your bridge into your prospects’ and clients’ personal inboxes, bringing you closer to them. And having access to your target audience’s inboxes is important because email generates more clients than most other platforms—social media, banner ads, etc.—by up to 92%.
Well-crafted emails can help you nurture prospects and turn them into loyal clients—and those loyal clients become referral machines. But before you can send those emails, you need a list filled with qualified prospects.
Emails Bring You Closer to Your Prospects and Clients
Your email list gives you a way to reach and nurture your prospects and clients in a more personal, less cluttered space—their email inbox. And lead nurturing is important because it produces 50% more leads who are ready to book a call with you—and for 33% cheaper.
Imagine trying to talk to someone 10 yards away in a park full of people who are doing other things. That’s what social media is like—screaming into the ether, hoping someone might hear you. But more often than not, your prospects walk away without even noticing you. Emails, on the other hand, land right in your prospects’ inboxes, bringing you closer to your target audience. Instead of being 10 yards away in a crowded park, you’ll be on the same park bench in a less crowded area.
And the data proves it. In the financial services industry, emails see an average open rate of 24.94% and a click-through rate (CTR) of 3.22% (almost three times higher than social media’s CTR of 1.2%). It’s time to expand your contact list.
Build Your List in 3 Easy Steps
A lot of financial advisers think that getting an email list started is a daunting task. But in reality, you probably already have an email list, no matter how small that may be (even if it’s just one person). And better yet, you can grow your email list with ease by taking advantage of Snappy Kraken’s ready-made content and our Cold to Gold Framework.
1. Look Through Your Existing Contacts
Your clients need to be on your email list; otherwise, you can’t nurture them with relevant content. In a similar vein, when you meet new people, and they give you their contact information, they expect YOU to reach out to THEM, not the other way around.
Start building your list with information from your clients, event attendees, and other instances where you received contact information. If you still don’t know where to start, try these places:
- Client information sheets. Look at your client information sheets and make sure that all your client email addresses are on your list.
- Event logbooks. Next, look at your logbooks from past events. Add attendee email addresses to your email list.
- Business card collections. Every time you meet someone who gives you their business card in order to connect about your services, ask them if you can add them to your list.
- Client referrals. If your clients are happy with your services, they’ll send their friends and family your way. Add their referrals to your list, as well.
After you’ve found all your long-lost email list entries, add them to a spreadsheet or upload them to your email marketing tool.
A word of caution: According to several global laws, including the CAN-SPAM Act and the GDPR, you need an explicit opt-in from non-clients before you can send them marketing emails.
Before you send marketing emails, reach out to non-clients with personalized messages detailing where you met, what you talked about, and how you think you can help. If they respond that they’d love to chat with you, then invite them to your email list and nurturing sequences.
2. Generate More Email List Entries With the Cold to Gold Framework
After you start building your list, it’s time to generate more leads with our Cold to Gold Framework. We analyzed over 32 million data points to bring you a marketing framework built specifically for financial advisers, designed to generate qualified leads and foster client loyalty.
First, get noticed. Use unique, attention-grabbing graphics—not boring, overused stock photos—that will make viewers feel something and want to click on your social media posts and ads. For example, we used the cover image of our “Retiring in Uncertain Times” campaign to reflect what pre-retirees are feeling—worried, scared, even terrified.
Next, earn contacts with a free lead magnet for your target audience. A lead magnet is a downloadable guide or other free resource created with your target audience’s interests in mind. Going back to our previous example, if you are targeting pre-retirees who are scared of not having enough during their retirement, you might choose to run our “Retiring in Uncertain Times” campaign.
The lead magnet for that campaign is called “The ‘Dos’ and ‘Don’ts’ to Help Safeguard Your Future.” It includes a short explanation of why pre-retirees are worried about retirement and a list of three “dos” and two “don’ts” that all point back to working with a professional.
Lastly, house your lead magnet on a landing page with a tripwire. Your landing page should contain a thought-provoking headline, a short description, and a “Download now” button or other call to action (CTA) that makes a lead form appear.
Put your lead generation machine on autopilot by designing the content and then automating all three steps.
3. Segment Your Email List
By now, you should have a list of at least 10 people. If you have more, great. If you have less, be patient. The last step to building an email list that converts is to segment your contacts into relevant categories.
Your prospects and clients have different interests, financial needs, and purchasing intents. You need to create groups within your list so that you only send your prospects the most relevant messages. After all, you don’t want to send your pre-retiree contacts an email about tuition planning.
We recommend segmenting your clients and prospects into at least seven categories.
- Their likelihood to become clients
- Their likelihood to refer new clients
- Their professional and recreational interests and hobbies
- Their financial needs and goals
- Their occupation
- Their age
- Their motivations and behaviors
This stage is also where you can qualify your contacts. If you notice that you’ve emailed a contact multiple times and have received no response from them, they probably aren’t interested in becoming your clients. If they do respond to you and need a service you don’t offer, then they’re not a good fit for your business. You can either remove those contacts from your list or add them to a dormant segment that you send emails to occasionally.
Build Your Email List With Ready-Made Lead Generation Campaigns
You should now be on your way to a segmented list of email addresses. Don’t just let your list sit and collect dust. Continue growing your list and nurturing it regularly to really build that relationship with your prospects and clients.
But we know that nurturing takes a lot of work. More than half—56%—of brands take one to three weeks to produce one effective marketing email. We’ve got your back—we spend hours creating ready-made campaigns for financial advisers so that you don’t have to.
Book a demo now to see our lead generation machine—the Cold to Gold Framework—in action.
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