How can email marketing help financial services companies? What do you need to do email marketing effectively? Create personalized, automated email sequences.
By Erik Garcia, Screenfire Media
Financial services companies live in a conflicting world: federal agencies enforce a multitude of compliance rules regarding marketing, and at the same time customers expect the personalized experiences they get from every other consumer-facing business.
A potential customer researching investment accounts today thinks someone is going to send them custom recommendations before they close their web session. In this situation, email marketing software can be the integral driver of how you increase growth for your financial services firm.
A industry report published by eMercury stated that email marketing delivers financial service companies like wealth management companies an average ROI of $44 per $1 spent.
Why does your financial services website need automated email marketing?
Your website/platform needs to have the ability to communicate with web visitors on every touch point where engagement with leads is possible. This can be while using your app, browsing your website, logging into their account, or making a transaction. In any of those engagements, there are various email campaigns your company could be sending to build trust, offer support, and drive new revenue.
Each engagement with your company’s digital properties is a free opportunity to reintroduce yourself, offer valuable insights, and schedule customer calls to discuss new products or financial decisions.
A large Illinois-based wealth management campaign automated their email marketing tactics and the results were real. They set up a cadence that shared a new customer success story every month when clients logged into their account. After one year, more than 20% of clients had bought a new product or increased investment into current ones. Consistent reminders of trust worked.
1. A Real New Customer Onboarding Sequence
Most financial services companies send automated emails when they earn a new customer that either confirm a new account or the deposit of money from their personal accounts into a personal one. Here’s your first opportunity to confirm that your customer made the right decision to help them manage their money.
You can share a pre-published educational blog about the S&P 500 or share an anonymized testimonial from a current client you have delivered significant value for. Heck, you could include a prerecorded video showing them how to access and use their account online. Take it as a moment to validate their decision to hire you.
2. Organic Upsell Opportunities
Normally a wealth management firm invests heavily in marketing to secure new customers. That’s how you build a business. However, it is downright shocking how few of these same firms invest in email marketing to bring new investment and financial products to them as opportunities arise.
Importantly, you should never just randomly send general campaigns to your entire customer email list. Investing in email marketing means using the analytics built into your digital properties that then activate automated email sequences to send campaigns relevant to their real-time activity.
That’s how you immediately optimize lifetime value for each customer you serve while also demonstrating to them that you have their best interests at heart. As long as your clients have opted in to receive your communications and the terms you offered, you are both creating an optimal customer relationship while still being compliant to all regulators.
3. Relevant Product Alerts
Investment products are unique in that they are constantly affected by current market conditions and rates. That said, use changes in terms or rates as the chance to communicate with your customer about how this affects their IRA account. Do you offer credit card services? Make sure your holders know when there is a bank promotion made available.
You were hired to do this work for them already.
4. Campaign Segments Based on Recent Activity
It’s highly likely that today’s financial service firms that utilize email marketing treat segmentation in a very straight-line manner. You have a list of customers, leads, and past customers. You create relevant campaigns and then send them to those segmented lists. Today’s modern consumer is different though. They are used to seeing their inbox filled with activity-driven email campaigns based on their recent engagement with the company that sent the email to them.
You can utilize multiple email software providers (ESPs) and a CRM to create segmented lists that are updated in real-time due to how your customers interact with your company. If you see clients that have decreased logins, they should receive an email sequence saying hello and showing them how your company has been delivering value. These are customer-driven retention campaigns that you should already have in place. If you see activity showing the opposite side of the spectrum such as a recent large deposit, use this as a signal that perhaps a genuine life milestone like buying a home is possible and activate campaigns that show products relevant to the sums deposited.
Final Thoughts
Earning customers as a financial services company is hard. Keeping them should be easier, especially if you invest in the technology and marketing best practices to make such a reality. Email marketing can be the channel that unlocks the revenue your firm has been looking for.
Reach out to Screenfire if you want to see how email marketing can benefit your financial services firm. Contact us at the form to the right or email info@screenfiremedia.com.
