The Most Important Communication Tool Advisors Have Available to Them
Your most important communication tool is your email list.
I know, it’s nothing new or exciting. No new tech or secrets here. Just some data that could be kept in a spreadsheet.
To be clear, I’m not talking about the marketing program you use to email your subscribers (e.g., Hubspot or Constant Contact) or even the content of your emails. I mean the list itself—your subscribers’ email addresses specifically.
Your list may be all clients, all prospects, or—if you’re like most advisors—a mix of the two. It may be 50 people, it may be 500.
No matter the size and makeup, I propose that there is no better place to invest your digital time and efforts as an advisor than growing and engaging with your list. (Of course, in-person interactions win every time. In this article, I’m talking about digital communications only.)
Here are 10 reasons your email list is your #1 communication tool:
1. It’s yours – you own it. Facebook (or any social site) can never randomly decide to delete it.
You may be thinking, “Why would Facebook (or Twitter or LinkedIn or Instagram) ever delete my page? I’m not breaking any rules.”
Believe me, it happens. A friend of mine runs an auto-detailing shop here in Omaha and one day his Facebook page was just gone. He had not violated any policies or done anything against the law. Still, his page was gone. And when he appealed the decision and tried to get his page reinstated, Facebook’s response was to just shrug and go, “Our bad!” Overnight, his #1 marketing tool was gone and he had no choice but to start over from scratch (this time not on Facebook – he learned his lesson).
Who knows why his page was deleted. On social media, anyone can report your page for any reason, whether they’re offended by something you said or just irritated with you for some reason. If enough people decide to report it, then admins will inevitably get involved. You see countless horror stories about it.
(Side note: If any marketing person guarantees they can get your social media page reinstated after it’s been deleted, they’re lying. There’s no surefire path to recover a page, and there’s probably a better chance they can’t get it back than they can.)
2. It’s an audience of clients and non-clients alike who expressed interest in hearing more from you at some point in time.
Marketing experts place a lot of value on “retargeting” (a.k.a., remarketing), which is the practice of serving ads to people who have visited your website before.
The philosophy behind this approach is sound enough: If they went to your website once, they must have been interested in your services. Now, if you just pester them with ads that follow them around the internet, you’ll win them over eventually.
And it works pretty well. Depending on who you ask, retargeting ads can increase conversion rates by as much as 150%.
Your email list is better than retargeting ads. These are people who didn’t just visit your website, they voluntarily signed up to hear from you on an ongoing basis. Your subscribers are like digital groupies. In an era where the internet is bursting with dum-dums screaming their opinions all day in the hopes that someone—anyone—will listen, your subscribers actually like hearing from you. They want you to write to them.
3. You have direct access to them whenever you want it.
No algorithms to contend with, no feed to blame. It’s just you and your audience. If you can convince them to open your email (through the power of your subject line) and to read your email (by crafting an awesome intro), then you’re golden.
Now it’s up to you.
4. It’s the best place to test out what works and what doesn’t.
Need feedback on something? Your email list is the purest digital place to get it. From new offerings to new ideas to new messaging, you can trust your subscribers to tell you what they think. You can either ask them directly, or you can track metrics to see whether engagement increases or decreases.
If unsubscribes go up, maybe reconsider your new direction. If engagement increases, you just might be onto something.
5. You can use it to promote anything – from client events to new hires to podcasts to blogs
The algorithms of social media have weird rules. For instance, putting a link to a non-LinkedIn URL in your LinkedIn posts will severely limit your reach. Or Twitter can limit reach if you use a service Elon dislikes.
But when it comes to your email, you can send whatever you want. Share your latest Youtube video, send an invite for an upcoming client event, share a link to your latest podcast on Spotify—you can drop it all on your email list.
6. It’s the easiest way to reach your people – you don’t have to record a video or edit audio or anything else. You don’t even have to bother with design if you want. Just type a line and hit send.
Email is the oldest form of digital communication for a reason—it’s just like writing a letter, which we’ve been doing for centuries.
7. There’s no better way to target people – you have total control.
It’s become increasingly apparent that targeting via social media ads is sloppy at best. Imagine an artist who wants to splatter paint on a canvas. They load up their brush, stand back, and fling the paint. A good deal of it lands on the canvas—and a good deal lands on the walls and floor. It’s kind of like that, but you have to pay for every drop of paint, no matter where it lands.
Your email list is peak targeting. It doesn’t get any better in the digital realm.
8. You can come back to your list time and time again
On a recent episode of “Growth Leaders of Wealth Management,” Matt Neuman, Chief Strategy Officer of Advisors Excel, mentioned that they have cut way back on their ad spend, opting instead to market to their existing lists. Basically, they had spent a bunch of money reaching new people and eventually realized that they could go back to the people on their lists who had not converted yet rather than continually hunting for new prospects.
Your email list is brimming with people who you can remarket to at any time, and it’s worth it.
9. You can take your list with you, even if you change systems.
You can’t migrate your followers out of Instagram or Twitter or LinkedIn and contact them another way. You can’t reach out individually to everyone who visits your website. You can’t move your podcast audience to another platform without losing a significant portion of them.
But you can take your list with you, no matter where you go.
10. It’s a great “CYA” option when it comes to appeasing the SEC
Email is easy to track, easy to compile in the event of an audit, and easy to reach everyone. For instance, if you're going to ask your clients for a Google Review, you have to be able to prove that you asked all of your clients to leave a review. You can't just ask your favorite clients or clients you know will leave a great review. Easy enough: Send an email to all your clients asking for a review that includes a link to your Google profile.
