If you’re reading this, you’ve probably had lackluster results with your email campaigns in the past, or you’re just looking for some help getting organized. If you need content for your investment firm and are here trying to decide if Beez is a credible source, keep reading. I think you’re going to find that we know our stuff.
Email is a powerful marketing medium. In fact, even though some forecasters have predicted otherwise in the past, it remains the most effective way to drive conversions and turn leads into clients. The fact that email matters and you should be using is obvious. What might not be so obvious is how to approach your audience in a way that stimulates click-throughs to other, more pivotal content.
The following five strategies can be used together or on their own and address different aspects of email marketing. How many of these have you already tried? Which ones have you not? As you read, think about your own goals with email marketing and apply the appropriate details to the information provided. Try to start visualizing a stronger, more profitable strategy. It all starts with these five things:
1. Develop a Solid Onboarding Message or Sequence
Hint: An email sequence is always a better plan than a single message. Start by properly segmenting your list, and send personalized onboarding emails to new subs. At the end, tease upcoming content and tell people to check their inboxes for it.
The onboarding message should be brief, succinct, and to the point. It should have a distinct call to action to click to one of your landing pages or to do something else. Always give the reader something to do. It makes them feel involved, and you absolutely want people feeling involved with your company, especially when people are trusting you with their hard-earned cash.
Follow-up sequences should also be personalized, but you will find it necessary to test some of your content on your entire list or multiple segments. The goal is to pinpoint the readers that respond best and start focusing future campaigns on the more responsive list segments.
2. Make Your Messaging Engaging
There are a number of ways to keep your content engaging. The general framework of an email to a prospective investor looks like this:
Lead with the Benefits, not the Pain Points: This is somewhat of an opposite to most standard marketing strategies but when you’re dealing with people’s money, you don’t send the wolf to their door …
Build Messaging Around Those Benefits: Answer the question of why people should trust your firm with their money. Use general persuasion sparsely. Link to verifiable data, and keep it relevant to the subject of the email.
Hint the Pain Points Are a Consequence of Inaction: Don’t use scare tactics; just inform. This is a good device to use in building scarcity.
So, how does all this come together? Simple: Tell a story. You read it right. Use a narrative approach that mirrors the thoughts and concern of your ideal avatar. Using open-ended storytelling, you can explain complex concepts in a more understandable way. It also loosens up the reader and makes it easier to elicit a response to your call to action.
3. Don’t Necessarily Avoid Controversy
Touchy subjects are of particular concern to readers with a financial stake in how various situations pan out. Do be vocal about things that can have major impacts on trading, but follow up with advice to avoid whatever pitfall(s) you’ve led with in your subject line.
4. Build Excitement Over New Products
In consumer terms, the features and benefits angle is practically dead, but it’s alive and well in finance marketing. Fine details are what people want when making these kinds of decisions. That said, if you provide too much technical detail in an email, people will stop reading. The ones who are serious might also just skim, but they will be looking for a link. Provide it at least twice, with a CTA to click each time.
Get excited about new products, but don’t go gonzo with your emails. You’re giving investment advice, not selling used cars. Ditch the hype and posture your brand as intelligent and professional at all times. That means no ALL-CAPS SUBJECT LINES, hackneyed clichés, or gratuitous buzzwords. Keep it simple.
5. Demonstrate Preparedness, Awareness, and Competency, Always
You do this by keeping the quality of your content high and delivering it at intervals that keep you and the name of your firm in the forefront of people’s minds when they think, “investment advice.” Quality communicates intelligence and commitment to detail. Consistency elevates name recognition and communicates a sense of organization.
The quality end can be preserved by working with finance copywriting professionals who understand or can be quickly taught how specific products work and why they’re good ideas for the reader. Always vet your writers or the custom writing firm you hire to ensure that they have people with the appropriate expertise to handle being your voice to your email list.
Doing that will also make your publishing schedule more consistent. This makes you look organized, motivated, and — most importantly — competent. People are trusting you with what often amounts to years of hard work. Give them a good reason to with your emails.
