Email marketing is an effective way to promote your business and connect with potential customers. By sending emails, you can reach a large number of people with a single click.
Email marketing typically has a great return on investment, with $44 returned for every $1 spent. How can you ensure that your audience will stay engaged by providing them with content that they actually want to read?
Types of Emails To Grow Your Business
It is important to provide content that speaks to your audience and resonates with them. If you want to grow your audience and subscriber list, you need to provide the type of content that not only entertains them but also helps them in their financial journey.
The things you send your subscribers should provide them with value, whether it’s a new product update or a blog post you think they’ll find interesting.
1. Welcome Emails
Welcome emails are a great way to engage with your new subscribers. They are almost always opened and read, because the subscriber is interested in hearing from you.
have a great subject line, a brief message, and a Call to Action. So, in order to create a strong welcome email, you should make sure it has an interesting and attention-grabbing subject line, a brief but engaging message, and a call-to-action that prompts the reader to take some sort of next step.
- Familiarize the reader with your brand
- Set expectations
- Get them excited to receive your content
Welcome emails can be up to 320% more effective in terms of generating revenue compared to other promotional email types. Therefore, you should take advantage of the high open rate from your first email to make a targeted sale.
How you design your welcome email will depend on what you want to accomplish with it and who your target audience is.
2. Newsletters
Newsletters are a great way to keep your readers informed and share information with them about your firm, about a new product or simply to provide them with videos and blog content that they might find relevant and useful.
At Twenty Over Ten, we send email newsletters with 3-5 articles and videos at the start of each month to our current clients and warm leads. We also send a “Bi-Weekly Blog Blast” in the middle of the month with 3-5 articles and videos that we have recently created.
: If you’re starting a newsletter or looking to improve your current one, here are some ideas for content to include:
- Blog Posts or Roundups
- Videos
- New Services or Products
- Upcoming Webinars/Webinar Replays
- Case Studies or Testimonials
- Industry News
- Sharing and answering Frequently Asked Questions
It’s beneficial for both customers and potential customers to be kept “In the Know,” and since they have given you their name and email address, it is your responsibility to provide them with the type of content they want to see.
3. Surveys
You can use surveys to improve your business by finding out what you are doing right and what needs some tweaking. Surveys help you provide your clients and prospects with the best service possible.
Thank you for taking the time to fill out our survey. Your feedback will help us serve you better.
You should offer a small incentive for people to take your survey, especially since it will help improve your business. Make sure to give an estimate of how long the survey will take so people know what to expect.
4. Exclusive Content
If you want to build stronger relationships with your subscribers, try sending them exclusive content emails. These emails can include insider tips and resources that your subscribers will find helpful.
Offering your audience valuable, targeted content demonstrates that you’re invest in their success and want to arm them with the most impactful information to help them make smarter financial decisions, or ones they can use to improve their own businesses.
5. Webinar Replays
After hosting or participating in a webinar, you can post the whole thing to YouTube and simply embed it into your email, or you could create highlights to share in your weekly newsletter.
When you share a webinar replay with those who attended the webinar, it’s a great way to follow up and encourage further engagement.
The Finity Group has included their webinar replays on their website to provide easy access for readers. By sending a quick email with this information, they are able to connect with their audience and provide valuable information to those who were unable to attend the live event.
6. Stock Market Summaries
Many financial advisors share a regular stock market summary as part of or separate from their newsletter.
If you run an advisory firm and send out stock market updates, using this option is a great idea. You probably don’t have a lot of free time to produce video content, but using this option can help you save time.
If you want to make your quarterly stock market summary more engaging, you can supplement it with a brief video breaking down the main points.
If you want to create more video content, you can record a weekly summary of what you’ve been doing and send it instead of writing it out.
You can either include a graph and information about the stock market in your video, or you can simply provide your viewers with that information. For example, in the video above, Keith Nichol from AIME group provides viewers with a graph and information about the stock market.
Best Email Marketing Tips
1. Make Sure Your List is Permission-Based
Instead of buying a list or sending your newsletter to people without permission, it’s better to try and get people to sign up for your email list on your website. This way you can be sure that people are actually interested in receiving your newsletters.
2. Have a Lead Capture Form on Your Website
The best way to get people to sign up for your mailing list is to offer them something in exchange for their contact information. This can be a video, a newsletter, a free seminar, or a white paper. I offer a free e-book, which works well.
3. Segment Your List
What other ways can you send your clients content that is personal and relevant to them?
I don’t segment my email list into different groups. I let people sign up for my emails if they’re interested in my niche.
If you work with a specific group of people, like doctors, you should offer them a lead magnet. Only people who are doctors will join your email list, so there’s no need to segment the list itself.
4. Include a Way For People to Unsubscribe
It’s unfortunate when someone unsubscribes from your email list, but it’s a necessary part of email marketing. Some people will always try to get your lead magnet without subscribing, so it’s important to include an unsubscribe option in all of your email campaigns.
5. See What Other People Are Doing
If you want to stay ahead of your competition, sign up for their newsletters. This way you can get ideas from them and make your own newsletters even better.
More often than not, you will receive emails from other financial advisors that serve as examples of what not to do.
Many financial advisors send out emails about the stock market, but this is not something that interests most people. Most people want to hire a financial advisor so that they do not have to think about this topic.
If someone wanted to learn about the stock market, they could go to a stock market website or watch one of the many videos about the subject.
6. Pay Attention To Emails You Receive
What makes you open some emails and delete others without reading? If you figure this out about your competition, you can use that knowledge to your advantage.
It’s been found that emails with shorter subject lines tend to have a higher open rate than those with longer subject lines. For example, one of the best emails I’ve ever sent had the one word subject line “Trust.”
7. Keep Your Emails Short
My philosophy for email is that the more frequently you send them, the shorter they should be. I send emails every day, so they are shorter than most people’s. I usually tell a quick story and then get to the point where I want the reader to take action.
8. Make Sure The Emails Come From You
A tip for success: it is most effective to email one person at a time and develop a relationship with them over time.
Don’t make the mistake of using your company’s name in the “from” line of your emails. After all, which email would you rather open, one from XYZ Investments or one from Joe Smith?
9. Keep Your Messages Personal And Casual
People like to see humanity, not robotic corporate-speak.
One of the many “secrets” I reveal in this webinar about email marketing is that casual emails work way better than formal ones. People crave entertainment now more than ever, which means they don’t want a lecture; they want to hear a story.
10. Don’t Use Deceptive Subject Lines
It’s important that your email subject line reflects the content of your email, or you will have fewer people opening your emails in the future. Your subscribers won’t trust you if you don’t have accurate subject lines.
One of the most annoying things you can do is using the “re:” in the subject line, which makes it seem like you’re replying to something they’ve sent before. Don’t be a jerk and do this.
11. Include Bullet Points And White Space
Sending plain text emails can be difficult to read, especially on mobile phones. Using a large, bold font can help make your texts more readable.
12. Pay Attention To Your Metrics
If the percentage of people who unsubscribe from your emails is higher than 1%, you’re probably doing something wrong. On the other hand, if the percentage of people who open your emails is 30% or higher, you’re doing great!
I suggest that financial advisors should not focus too much on open rates, but should be aware that the only way a potential customer can make an appointment via email is by opening the email.
Although emails with lower open rates may not be as visually appealing, they often result in more appointments being set than emails with higher open rates. Therefore, be cautious of anyone who claims to be an expert on the subject and has high open rates.
13. Point Out some Common Mistakes
People want to avoid making mistakes, so they enjoy reading articles that discuss common mistakes and how to avoid them.
An email I had a lot of success with had the subject line “7 Critical Mistakes New Financial Advisors Make.” I suggest that other advisors use a similar subject line customized for their own target audience. For example, if you’re targeting nurses, you could send an email with the subject line “7 Critical Mistakes Nurses Make.”
14. Don’t Get Too Bogged Down In The Statistics
Although it can be helpful to know the optimal length for a subject line, don’t worry too much about it. Instead, focus on building a genuine relationship with your clients and staying top-of-mind.
15. Don’t Forget Your Out-of-Office Reply
One time, I accidentally added an email to one of my autoresponder campaigns that started off with “Happy New Year!” It wasn’t until later that I started to get responses telling me New Year’s had been over for a month. Whoops!
16. Ask Questions
I create engagement by asking readers to respond at the bottom of my welcome email. I enjoy hearing from people, plus they’re most likely to engage right after they’ve received that initial email.
17. If You Insert Links, Include a Few
If all the links on a page go to the same destination, it increases the likelihood that people will click on one of the links.
Key Takeaways
Instead, it’s a tried-and-true direct marketing channel Email marketing is a dependable way to reach your customers directly, unlike social media where algorithms can determine who sees your content.
By sending content to your readers that they have signed up to receive, you are providing them with valuable information they consider worth their time.
We hope that these best practices and email types have given you the knowledge to continue sending emails that will help them on their financial journey.
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