I hope you get value out of this blog post.
With how much you already do as a financial advisor, being told that you should add one more thing to your plate might make you roll your eyes and think “Right like I even have time for that.” Newsletters can feel like one of those things. Maybe there are a few perks to writing one but actually doing it sounds like it would just take too much of your time away from the more important tasks on your schedule.
This article is here to tell you that a) sending out a regular newsletter can bring in more than just a “few perks” and b) it doesn’t have to take up all (or any) of your time if you do it right. Keep reading to learn why and how to write effective newsletters without taking up more of that free time you already don’t have.
There are three main advantages that putting out a regular newsletter can give you as a financial advisor.
This newsletter is your chance to offer educational information and insights to your audience on a regular basis. For existing clients, it’s a soft reminder of how much value your expertise creates for them and the education they get from each email can help them better understand the services you’re providing.
For prospects, it creates an image of you as a thought leader and knowledgeable source in the world of finance. While all advisors advertise their financial expertise as a reason to hire them, you will have been actively demonstrating it. When it comes time to choose an advisor, they’re more likely to have confidence in your expertise because they’ve already seen a sample of it.
With financial newsletters, you have an opportunity to start the trust-building process even before a person becomes your client. With a good marketing strategy and a great newsletter, you can build up an audience of people who are interested in learning about finance—even if they’re not quite ready at this moment to work with an advisor.
When those members of your audience are ready to hire a financial advisor, those regular newsletters ensure that you are someone they already know and have already established some baseline trust in your expertise.
For existing clients, a great newsletter reinforces their impression of you as someone who cares and truly has their best interests in mind. For prospects, it lays the groundwork of trust and confidence in your expertise and commitment to people’s financial wellbeing.
Regular newsletters are also a regular reminder to clients that you’re there to help them. Maybe a recent market downturn has them feeling a little anxious about their portfolio but they keep putting off a phone call to you.
Filling your next newsletter with insights about that market downturn and ending it with an invitation to call or email with any specific questions or concerns could be just the nudge they needed to reach out. And that reassurance that you’re open and willing to be there during uncertain times will go a long way toward reinforcing the trust in that client relationship.
To maximize each of those benefits, you need to make sure you’re putting out a quality, effective newsletter. Here are some tips.
The goal of this newsletter is to establish yourself as the go-to resource for timely and useful insights into the world of finance. Think about recent market news or the kinds of questions your clients or prospects are likely to care about. Let that guide your decision on what topics to cover.
Keep the newsletter fun and relatable by adding a dash of your personality to it. Maybe you’re famous among friends and family for always having a cheesy joke to share. You could include a “joke of the week” in your newsletter.
If you’re a Star Wars fan, include a piece of Jedi wisdom or a movie quote—bonus points if you can relate it to the financial topics you’re discussing.
Use headers, bullet points, and other formatting to make the newsletter as easy to skim as possible. That way, readers can quickly find the information they’re most interested in and still feel like they got value out of your email, even when they don’t have time to thoroughly read the whole thing.
In addition to explaining financial concepts or offering insights on recent market events, be sure to include actionable advice. During a market downturn, you could offer tips for making a more bear-proof portfolio. When talking about retirement planning, you could offer tips on how to accurately estimate how much someone needs for their dream retirement.
By giving readers advice they can use, you’re establishing yourself not just as a financial expert but as a resource people turn to when they’re trying to manage their financial lives.
Figure out the right frequency for your newsletter. Some opt to send one out weekly to keep their name as fresh in prospects’ minds as possible. For others, weekly newsletters might be too much and could risk alienating clients who don’t want their inboxes flooded with emails. Instead, monthly or quarterly newsletters could be more effective.
Think about your client demographics and the audience you’re trying to reach when deciding how frequent your newsletters should be.
There are lots of ways you can reap the rewards of a regular financial planning newsletter without adding more work to your already full plate. Here’s how:
You can either send over a list of topics you want to be included and let them do the actual writing or give them full freedom to write it themselves and just review the draft when it’s done. The best option depends on how much of a finance background the staff member in question has.
Even if you want to write the newsletter yourself, a lot of the other work of sending out newsletters can still be delegated to staff to save you time, like:
The more you delegate to staff, the more you can focus on the work that only you can do — without sacrificing the little things that tend to be neglected if you’re trying to do everything yourself.
Write out a template that includes the basic pieces you’ll include in every newsletter like the ending call to action that invites clients or prospects to reach out with questions and the opening greeting. You can use Pulse360 to create and store this newsletter template.
To make it even easier, you can keep track of topics you come up with as you go by writing them down in your notes and using Pulse360’s tags to tag them as “newsletter.” That way, when it comes time to write, you can easily pull in a list of the topics you came up with throughout the week or month and simply write out a few sentences on each one (or have your staff do it!).
