Email Marketing for Financial Advisors: How to Invest in Your Client’s Inbox

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Did you know the top three most expensive keyword categories in Google Ads are finance-related?

These are (accompanied by their cost-per-click):

• Insurance: $54.91
• Loans: $44.28
• Mortgage: $47.12

Attracting new clients for your financial services through paid search might already be stretching your marketing budget.

So, what’s the solution? Consider email marketing for financial advisors.

It’s a more cost-effective solution, and over 72% of clients already prefer email as their primary communication channel anyway.

In this post, we’ll talk about the benefits of email marketing for your practice, offer campaign ideas, share best practices, and compare the top email marketing platforms for financial advisors like you.

Benefits of Email Marketing for Financial Advisors

Why should email marketing be a part of a financial advisor’s media mix? The role of the financial advisor involves a great deal of outreach and lead nurturing.

Smart Asset estimates that financial advisors spend four hours daily on prospecting and networking – two crucial activities email marketing can help with.

Here’s how email marketing benefits your practice:

• Consistent and Direct Communication: 79% of surveyed clients appreciate occasional to frequent communication. Email marketing gets you closer to hitting this expectation. By showing up regularly in their mailboxes, clients will feel remembered and reminded that you’re one reply button away.
• Personalization: 54% value tailored advice that meets their specific goals and needs. Email marketing allows advisors to craft and deliver content based on these objectives. In fact, personalization is one of the greatest advantages of this channel.
• Expert Positioning: You need a platform to showcase your knowledge, since about 60% of clients identified financial expertise as the most important attribute they look for in an advisor. Emails can help you share educational value like investment tips and time-sensitive topics like market trends and regulatory changes.
• Cost-Effectiveness and Scalability: The average client acquisition cost for a financial advisor is a staggering $3,119! Since email marketing automation allows you to send targeted messages to a broad audience, you can maximize your ROI.

To put it simply: Email marketing is a great investment for any financial advisor. But you need to know what these messages look like before jumping in.

Best Email Marketing Ideas for Financial Advisors

Diversifying your content is a great way to draw your target audience in, but it can be a tall order if you don’t plan ahead of time.

To help you come up with successful email marketing campaign ideas, consider the following:

Welcome Series

When new subscribers join your list, give them a warm introduction. Many subscribers expect to receive this type of email. Tapping into it can set the right tone for your prospective clients.

Your first email might explain what your emails cover, and how often they should expect to hear from you.

Don Connelly, a financial advisor coach, outlines this information once you sign up for his newsletter:

Succeeding emails can talk about your core services, like investment strategy consulting or retirement planning, and share resources like blog posts, tools, and guides.

Newsletters

Newsletters are a good way to provide educational value to your audience. In it, you can cover market and economy updates, as well as personal finance and tax advice.

For example, Chartered Financial Analyst Michael Batnick runs a blog and newsletter called The Irrelevant Investor, where he shares industry charts, informative tweets, and podcast clips.

He caps these jam-packed emails with something lighter, like his watch list recommendations:

When done right, newsletters can give a sneak peek into what it’s like to work with you: your range, your knowledge, and your personality.

Client Success Stories

While educating your audience can bring you closer to them, your ultimate goal is to turn them into leads and clients.

Sending client success stories through your email list can move them further along the funnel.

Here’s a snippet of Isaac Presley, CFA® of Cordant Welath Partners’ clever email to his subscribers, with the subject line “I Let Clients Write This Month's Newsletter”:

Another way to approach this is by sharing how you’ve helped previous clients through services like retirement planning, estate planning, or wealth management. You can also highlight the strategies and products you've put in place to assist them in securing their dream financial state.

Reminder: Be sure to ask your clients' permission before drafting your content. Some of them might not feel comfortable sharing their journey, and others may request to stay anonymous.

Referral Requests Campaign

What are some other ways financial advisors can generate leads through email marketing? By encouraging clients and subscribers to recommend you to friends and family members looking to improve their finances.

In return, you can offer incentives such as a free one-on-one financial planning session, a gift card, or exclusive resources.

Client Milestone Celebrations

This is where personalization can truly shine. Recognizing your client's achievements is a great way to make them feel like you know them, and by extension, their needs. It also strengthens your relationship with them.

Send them congratulatory messages when they hit financial goals, such as paying off debt, reaching a savings target, or purchasing their first home.

You can also acknowledge other thoughtful milestones like birthdays, anniversaries, and retirement.

A good example? On my birthday, my financial advisor sent me this greeting, which I greatly appreciated. It’s simple and short, but I found it sweet:

Important Reminders

Help clients stay on top of their financial responsibilities by reminding them of important deadlines, such as tax filings and annual reviews.

It’s also a good idea to use these reminders as a way to get them to schedule an appointment to review their investments, set new goals, or spot money-saving opportunities.

Financial planner George Kao emailed his subscribers the lowdown on how to lower their taxes months before Tax Day, and wrapped it up with these CTAs:

Personal Finance Challenges

Engage your audience with financial challenges like “Track your spending for a week” or “Save an extra $1000 this quarter”. These challenges also help you stay true to your core goal of helping subscribers get closer to financial freedom—even if they’re not yet your clients.

You can also gamify the challenge, as financial services company Sun Life did:

Webinar Invitations

Webinar attendance rates in the finance sector are pretty high, averaging 61% while the average across various sectors only stands at 46%.

Guess what? Email marketing drives the majority of registrations (57%). Social media only contributes about 15%.

So go ahead and circulate your webinar invites to your email list to get more attendees. Like your welcome series, you can also create an email sequence via automation, which can look like this:

Sending a webinar video link means anyone on your list can watch it in their free time, and hopefully take action!

Now that you know what email marketing messages you can send, you need an email marketing platform to send them out.

Best Email Marketing Platforms for Financial Advisors

Most email marketing platforms have automation and segmentation tools to streamline your outreach and client communications.

However, there are only a selected few that do these tasks well and provide additional features that financial advisors may find valuable.

We'll examine some of the top email marketing platforms for financial advisors and how they compare.

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign’s marketing automation is a cut above the rest. It extends beyond scheduling campaigns—you can also automate one-to-one emails, which is a godsend when sending important reminders and celebratory messages.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is the platform prohibits sending messages related to certain financial services, crypto, and other digital assets. It’s not always clear what falls into these buckets, so it might be best to clarify with their customer team before you invest too much time and money into the platform.

Pricing plans: The starter plan costs $19/month. But if you want to add CRM capabilities to improve client data management and portfolio tracking, be ready to shell out around $50/month. More pricing info here.

PROS

CONS

• Restrictions on financial service-related content
• Pricey CRM add-on
• Client preview tests come with an extra charge of $1/client

Want to give it a quick audit? Try ActiveCampaign for free for 14 days.

GetResponse

GetResponse is one of the most feature-rich email marketing platforms for financial advisors. Some paid extras that can benefit your practice include webinar hosting and built-in CRM for lead scoring.

The platform also comes with powerful list automation and segmentation, allowing you to send highly relevant emails to each audience subgroup.

Pricing plans: A free plan is available with reduced features. Plans start at $19/month, which could be enough for your practice. But to take advantage of email automations, you have to opt for pricier plans starting at $59/month. More pricing info here.

PROS

CONS

Want to give it a quick audit? Try GetResponse and get a 10% lifetime discount on any plan.

HubSpot

HubSpot is famous for its powerful CRM features, but it also has a Marketing Hub that supports email marketing.

When combined, you can create automated and segmented emails that nurture leads and strengthen client relationships. For instance, the minute a lead fills out your subscription form (hosted by HubSpot or third-party software), HubSpot can instantly capture the information and send a personalized email.

It also features an AI email writer, a lifesaver for financial advisors who are completely new to email marketing or need help delivering effective content.

Pricing plans: HubSpot Marketing Hub isn’t 100% free like HubSpot CRM. Paid plans start at $20/seat/month. More pricing info here.

PROS

CONS

Want to give it a quick audit? Try HubSpot for free.

Brevo

Brevo is an affordable email marketing service that allows you to send newsletters, transactional emails, and even SMS. It also comes with a free sales CRM that lets you set up meetings and sign-up forms.

Brevo’s advanced features include list segmentation, dynamic lists, and a workflow editor–all of which can help you create automated campaigns that feel tailored to each client.

Pricing plans: Brevo is an excellent email marketing platform for financial advisors on a budget, thanks to its feature-rich free plan and affordable packages. Paid plans start at $9/month, and are determined by the number of emails you send per month. More pricing info here.

PROS

CONS

Want to give it a quick audit? Try Brevo for free.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact has a wide range of email templates (200+) and integrations (5000+) to choose from, so you can quickly create professional and highly-customized emails, and use the tools already in your arsenal without a hitch.

It’s a suitable email marketing platform for financial advisors who frequently hold webinars or seminars because it includes features for managing event invitations and registrations.

However, its automation capabilities are more basic compared to other platforms. For example, you can only set up date-based triggers on the Lite plan. And even higher-tier plans don’t allow you to combine actions and conditions for further customization.

Pricing plans: Constant Contact has no zero-cost option. Instead, it has three paid plans: Lite (suitable for independent financial advisors), Standard (suitable for advisory networks and teams), and Premium (suitable for large RIAs and advisory firms). Constant Contact Lite plans start at $12/month for 500 subscribers and increase along with your subscriber count. More pricing info here.

PROS

CONS

Want to give it a quick audit? Try Constant Contact for free for 30 days.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a strong option for financial advisors because of its opt-in-based lead capture forms and landing page creation tools. It also offers a CRM for customer profile creation and management to hone your list and messaging better.

Plus, Mailchimp’s appointment booking feature enables potential and existing clients to schedule an appointment with ease. With it, you can create a service listing page displaying your availability.

Pricing plans: Mailchimp has monthly subscriptions and pay-as-you-go plans. Monthly plans are based on your contact (not subscriber) count and are capped off with a monthly email-sending allowance.

There’s a free monthly plan, while the cheapest paid plan is the Essentials plan ($13/month for 500 contacts and 500 email sends. Pay-as-you-go fees range from $0.02 to $0.03 per send, depending on the number of emails you purchase. More pricing info here.

PROS

CONS

Want to give it a quick audit? Try Mailchimp for free.

Best Practices

Email marketing has many benefits, but it comes with one big hurdle: standing out.

Cluttered inboxes are a given in today’s age, so you’ll need to create campaigns that resonate and grab attention.

Here are some tips that should help you do that:

1. Invest in a Quality List

Building a quality list means attracting the right audience. For financial advisors, this can mean curating a lead magnet that your target clients will appreciate enough to subscribe to.

When planning a lead magnet, I’ll leave you with these wise words from James Pollard, TheAdvisorCoach.com’s founder:

“There’s no cookie-cutter way to build an email list because it must center around you and your business. If you’re a financial advisor who works specifically with teachers, then your lead magnet (what you give in exchange for people subscribing) will be different from the advisor who works with corporate executives.”

2. Segment Your Audience

Personalized advice is greatly appreciated by clients, as previously mentioned. But reaching out to them one-on-one for marketing purposes is a costly and time-consuming endeavor.

So do the next best thing. Break down your list into different segments using pertinent criteria for your practice like goals, needs, and risk tolerances. This way, each segment will only get messages relevant to their interests.

2. Educate, Don’t Just Pitch

It’s tempting to talk about your financial instruments and products 24/7, but focusing on sales pitches can turn potential clients away.

Win them over by sharing useful insights and knowledge. Give them various content types to engage with, such as case studies, newsletters, and industry reports.

3. Stay Consistent

Consistency should show up in your style, branding, and email cadence.

Align your messages and email design with your brand image to stay top of mind.

Then, set a regular email-sending schedule. According to FMG Suite, a marketing platform for financial advisors, once a month to once a week is a good range for communication.

4. Be Compliant

Email marketing needs to comply with regulations, such as the US’ CAN-SPAM Act, Canada’s CASL, and EU’s GDPR.

In the field of personal finance and investment, there’s another set of laws and governing bodies to keep in mind, like FINRA and ESMA.

Depending on where you are, make sure your email messages follow all the necessary requirements.

Use disclaimers to clarify the content's advisory nature and be transparent when talking about your financial instruments. Share anticipated performance, but don’t promise guaranteed results.

5. Write An Effective Marketing Email

Subject lines, CTAs, formatting—these are just some of the most important things to keep in mind when learning how to write marketing emails. Know what works for your audience. You can A/B test these elements to understand what your audience responds best to.

6. Automate What You Can

There’s a reason email marketing campaigns are easy to scale. You can set it (but not forget it) with ease.

With automation, you can create drip campaigns like welcome series and educational guides, as well as triggered emails which can come in handy for things like webinar registrations.

7. Monitor and Analyze Performance

Don’t hedge your bets on gut instincts. Track engagement metrics to see how your campaigns are faring. They’ll clue you in on where you can improve, so you can refine your strategies going forward. Here’s a list of email marketing KPIs you can keep tabs on.

Time To Try Email Marketing for Financial Advisors

Email marketing offers a lot of benefits to professionals and organizations in the financial services industry. You can tap into its potential by keeping your email strategy personalized and consistent while providing educational content.

If you’re committed to adding this channel to your digital marketing mix, here’s our comprehensive checklist for email marketing beginners.

The authors

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Inka Wibowo

Senior Content Manager

Hi, I'm Inka! I spent the earlier part of my career in agency land, helping businesses of all sizes get their email marketing campaigns up and running. Now, at EmailTooltester, I'm using my experience to help businesses like yours find the best email marketing services for your needs. Although I've used dozens of different tools, I'm most familiar with Mailchimp and Kit (I use the latter for my personal newsletter!).

Jul Domingo

Hi! I’m Jul Domingo. I’m a content writer focused on companies (SaaS, PaaS, B2B) serving small and medium-sized businesses. Having been born into an entrepreneurial family, I am passionate about helping SMEs like you make smart business decisions. Working with EmailTooltester allows me to accomplish that, particularly in terms of helping your organization establish a strong digital presence.

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