Email marketing has become increasingly difficult for financial services. Between overcrowded inboxes, more rigorous spam filters, streamlined unsubscribe processes, and the emergence of other digital channels that divide attention, email simply doesn’t produce the same results it did ten years ago.
But that’s not to say it isn’t still an essential part of your marketing strategy.
Successful email campaigns now require more strategy and thought than in the past. When done right, though, they are key to engaging with clients and prospective clients and supporting your business goals.
Email can and should be used for both prospects and existing clients. However, the way you approach email for each audience should be different since your goals and their needs differ. In this article, we’ll focus on prospect emails, though many of the approaches can be applied to ongoing client outreach.
Email Should Complement Your Other Channels
There was a time when firms could pick and choose which channels to use. They might focus exclusively on SEO and inbound, or lean primarily into email or social. Today, email needs to be part of a connected, coordinated omnichannel strategy that supports every other marketing effort.
Clients make decisions across multiple touchpoints (search and you’ll find stats pointing to 10, 20, and up to 50 touchpoints for financial services), which means you need to engage with prospects across every channel where they’re present. Rather than view email as an isolated, standalone channel, approach it as one of many pillars in your brand strategy. It should reinforce and build on what clients are experiencing across your other pillars, including social media, in-person events, your website, and sales and marketing collateral.
Consider Your Own Email Habits
One of the biggest mistakes firms make is pursuing tactics based on how they want clients to act rather than how they actually behave. Look to your own experience for valuable insight into how to approach email and what to expect from it.
Consider how you currently interact with your inbox. Do you read every message? Just because you don’t read a message, does that mean you don’t want to receive any? Are you simply reading the subject lines? How do you determine what to read and what to skip?
My own personal experience is that I generally look at every sender and subject line, but only open those that I’m intrigued by or are relevant to a current need.
How does that change the view of a successful email? Is the goal only to get opens and clicks? Or can it sometimes be to stay top-of-mind so that clients turn to you when they eventually reach an inflection point?
Reimagine the Role of Subject Lines
The last section ends with a rhetorical question, but here is my answer: I think there is a lot of value in emails that are seen but not read. Through the subject line, they become similar to ads or social posts in a feed. They are little billboards or direct mail pieces. You always hope for conversions, but not everyone is ready to become a client the moment they see your message.
That’s when awareness, especially ongoing awareness, becomes valuable. It increases the odds that if and when they are ready to make a buying decision, they’ll think of you.
That shift in thinking requires you to reimagine subject lines. Marketers have traditionally optimized them for opens, but maybe we should also approach them as if they’re the only thing most recipients will see. In that context, they can be reimagined as mini ads designed to be memorable and speak to personal challenges.
Email Consistently, Not Aggressively
Staying top of mind requires consistency. That doesn’t mean you should email every week, but every other week or monthly might be the right cadence. The key is to find a frequency that keeps your prospects’ interest without alienating them by spamming their already-full inboxes.
Often, the line between email and spam comes down to the content you’re providing.
Be Helpful
One of the biggest mistakes firms make is using email as a sales channel, making every message a pitch. You may pick up a few new clients just by virtue of timing – a small number within your audience will always be ready to buy. But the vast majority aren’t yet there, and a sales-first approach risks turning them off.
To successfully email prospects consistently, and without them unsubscribing, you need to offer value. Use email to address topics and trends. Help answer questions they have. Address common pains. Educate them on important financial matters. This can be done with content. If you don’t have standalone assets, you can put the content in the email body, keeping it brief and focused.
It’s okay – and advisable – to occasionally send a direct invitation to connect or include it as a soft ask at the end of content-focused emails so that someone ready to take the next step can do so easily. When thinking about helpful content versus direct selling, shoot for at least an 80/20 mix.
Segmentation, Automation, and Personalization
One of the things that can really make email powerful is segmentation. Instead of sending the same email to everyone, consider sending different emails to different segments. Your segments can be demographic (retirees vs. pre-retirees; men vs. women; business vs. individuals), by their stage in the buyer journey, or by their level of engagement. Segmenting email campaigns increases personalization and allows you to speak more directly to the audience.
If your contacts include a lot of incomplete data (e.g., an email but no age or location), there are enrichment tools that can help fill in the blanks for you so that you can accurately segment your list. Some platforms, such as HubSpot, now offer this natively.
You can also use automation to improve email personalization. You can create triggers so that when someone downloads or engages with specific content, they receive an email sequence tailored to that topic.
Email’s Impact Has Changed. Its Importance Hasn’t.
Email’s impact has changed over the last several years, but it still plays a significant role in marketing strategy. In an omnichannel world, it needs to be viewed as one cog in your larger marketing machine rather than the whole engine. As such, it needs to be connected to and coordinated with every other channel to create a seamless experience.
The days of blasting a cold list with the same message and seeing it turn into business are past us. For your email campaigns to be successful today, they need to be more strategic, intentional, and thoughtful.
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