5 Keys of Effective Digital Communication for Financial Advisors
An advisor’s ability to do their job effectively and maintain clients hinges on communication. You might argue that performance outweighs communication, but an advisor who communicates well can overcome a myriad of performance issues with honest, proactive interactions.
In a Financial Advisor Magazine survey a few years back, 72% of advisors cited “lack of communication” as the most common reason clients fired them, compared with 34% who cited poor performance.
But it’s not just communication, it’s quality communication.
The highest quality, most important communication you will ever do with your clients is in-person, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. The times when you are sitting in the same room with your clients do more to solidify your long-term relationship than any Zoom call or email or podcast or Facebook post or blog could ever do. I don’t care how many times someone on LinkedIn tells me I’m wrong, it’s just how humans operate.
But I’m not here to talk about in-person communication—that’s your specialty, not mine.
While in-person is the most important way you can talk to your clients, your chances to sit down with them are limited to once or twice a year, more if you’re lucky.
If in-person interactions are the building blocks of your relationships with clients, digital touches are the mortar that helps cement them in place. They are essential filler between the times when you’re able to speak with your clients.
In this article, I don’t want to talk about strategy or measuring. Instead, I want to talk about the act of writing. These tips are for when you sit down to write an email, article or social post to your audience.
1. Write Like You’re Communicating with a Friend
While formal writing is a great (and dying) skill, you can save it for academic papers and letters to the Queen.
When you write in a familiar tone, you communicate on the level of a trusted friend and you increase your chance of pushing past any pretenses that might limit their ability to bond with you.
One note: Even though you’re writing like a friend, try to limit yourself to one exclamation point per email, two tops. If you use more than that, you risk sounding like you’re inviting them to a sorority party.
2. Get to the Point
Often when advisors sit down to write an email or an article, they think they have to add a long introduction to set the stage for what they have to say. A good introduction is key to getting your readers to engage with your content, but if you go on too long, you’ll lose them.
3. Come Up with at Least 3 Subjects/Headlines for Everything You Write, then Go with the Best One
The internet is an attention battlefield, and no one is on the same side. Every soldier in the battle is fighting for their own 15 seconds of attention. Every time you send an email or publish a new blog post, you either win or lose
While some clients will open your email just because it’s from you, most won’t. A good subject line can increase your open rate by as much as 29%. Along those same lines, a good headline can exponentially improve the clickthrough rate on your blog posts.
Before you send or publish anything, come up with three subjects/headlines and then pick the best one. For a little help, check out Omnisend’s free “Email Subject Line Tester.” I find it to be helpful, although it has a bias toward e-commerce-type emails, which most advisors don’t send.
4. Use Examples and Illustrations Wherever Possible
You probably use examples during client meetings, but when it comes time to write, it’s easy to fall into the theory behind financial planning and leave out the application. While that is a great way to show your expertise, it’s also a great way to lose your readers.
Weave examples into everything you write—whether it happened to you or someone you know, or you helped a client navigate it. Of course, you need to change some details to protect privacy (and get the client’s permission if you’re talking about them), but the more real your examples are, the more engrossing they will be.
If you don’t have any real-life examples, then create a hypothetical scenario. The key here is to write it like a story with character names and everything.
Rather than saying, “Imagine you wanted to retire with $1,000,000,” say, “John was a 35-year-old man, married with four kids, and he wanted to save $1,000,000 by the time he retired.”
It may sound like a small change – and it is, really – but it makes a world of difference in keeping your readers engaged with a hypothetical example.
5. Become a Student of Your Audience
Your clients love hearing from you, but only if what you’re saying is relevant to them. You may assume you know what they care about, but if you don’t ask them, how could you?
Send your clients/readers a short (short!) survey asking for input on what they care about. I’ve found the most effective questions center around their concerns. For example, ask: What is your #1 financial concern right now?
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