Want clients and prospects to open your emails? Read this first.

Have you ever heard of the concept of Inbox Zero? 

It’s the desire to have an email inbox with zero unread messages. 

It’s a cultural phenomenon, and it’s all because of how unlikely it has become for a majority of working professionals to have no unread email messages. 

The email inbox, for many, has become a symbol of workplace conversations that never end and newsletters that a person has forgotten they signed up for in the first place. 

So in light of that, why should financial advisors care about email marketing at all? 

In spite of all the jokes and the cultural negativity, email is still the best place to communicate. In this blog, we’ll show you why and help you start your email marketing with the right tools at your side.

Why Email Marketing Still Makes Sense for Financial Advisors

When marketing surveys are taken across all industries, they routinely rank email as the number one channel used to get results for their businesses. 

Email is still even ranked ahead of social media, content marketing, and SEO. 

We operate in a world that’s driven by numbers and the numbers look good for email marketing. One study found that for every $1 spent on email marketing, the average company gets nearly $40 in return on their investment. 

That’s a pretty decent margin.

And while social media is the darling of many marketing consultants, the fact is that email conversion rates are three times higher than comparable rates through social media.

Outside of statistics, email is a preferred marketing channel because it is a permission-based communication channel. You can reach anyone on social media or through your website, but once you have their email you have special permission to get in touch with them and can begin to tailor your message more uniquely to what they need.

The Two Types of Emails You Can Send

You can send one-off emails that don’t connect with other broadcasts you send, or you can put contacts into an email nurture series. 

Let’s look at what each means.    

One-off Email

Any kind of email that doesn't connect to a larger multi-step campaign could be considered a one-off email. 

These emails include the newsletters you might send out once a month or the thank you email you might send after someone downloads an email.

They’re good and necessary communications, but they don’t always do much work in moving the prospective clients you’re emailing further into your marketing funnel.

Nurture Campaigns

The nurture (or drip) email is a series of emails that seeks to engage with a reader and get them to take actions that will move them further into your funnel until you’re sure they’re ready to talk with you—either because they’ve taken enough actions for you to be reasonably sure they’re interested, or because they reach out to you directly. 

They’re designed, in other words, to nurture a relationship without you having to actively do so.

The biggest advantage of nurture emails is that they allow you to get hyper-specific with your message. Instead of sending a general broadcast email like a newsletter, you can send only content relevant to a person’s interests.

For instance, if someone downloads an ebook about tax planning, you can follow that up with more emails about taxes and account types best for those looking to minimize them. 

Some research has shown that specific, more highly relevant emails drive revenue 18 times higher than general broadcast emails do. 

Best Practices for Writing Compelling Emails 

How do you do that? Let’s look at a few best practices to make sure your emails get opened instead of tossed aside.

How to write a winning subject line

A winning subject line that gets more opens follows a few basic rules:

• Keep it short. You don't want your subject lines to get cut off for being too long. Keep them under seven words or 40 characters.
• Invite interest. Ask questions, use emojis, and try to mix things up from the old standards.
• Be specific. If you’re sending a video, put “Watch Now” or “New Video” in the subject line. Whenever possible, be specific over spammy.

So a prospect has decided to click on your email. Great! Now how do you keep the attention you’ve captured? Here are a few ways:

• Include multiple calls to action. A call to action is a link or opportunity to interact further with you or your content. One email marketing company found that using multiple calls to action in their emails, instead of just one, raised engagement by at least 20 percent.
• Treat your email like a blog. Keep your paragraphs short and snappy. Walls of text are bad in a blog and they’re even worse in an email, especially now that most email is read on the smaller screens of mobile devices.
• Add preview text. Ever notice how sometimes you can see a little preview of the email before you click into it? That’s not by mistake; it’s an extra way for you to catch attention. Though it’s not technically part of your email body, you should think of it as the first opportunity to introduce the meat of your email content. Depending on the email service your reader is using, you’ve got anywhere between 40 to 130 characters to grab their attention.

Email Marketing Platforms for Financial Advisors 

If you want to automate your emails and use nurture campaigns to help drive interested prospects to a meeting with you, you have to invest in an email marketing platform. 

Orion’s platform, Market*r, is built exclusively for financial advisors and offers a full suite of marketing automation tools, including the ability to select pre-designed customizable emails to help advisors engage with prospective clients and execute on their marketing vision. Market*r also connects seamlessly to Orion Planning, so prospects can begin building plans right from your email’s CTA.

Interested in learning more about Orion Market*r? Click here to set up a demo and see our powerful marketing automation engine in action! 

0561-OAT-2/17/2021