People want to feel noticed.
When you deal in a service or advice industry where you typically have a growing number of clients you will reach a point where you can’t personally see or speak to every client on a daily, or even a weekly basis (I’d say more than 25 clients tips you past this point).
Your challenge then becomes: how do I maintain these relationships?
In the financial advisor space, we’ve found that 80% of business growth stems directly from referrals from clients. It follows then that a good strategy is to stay in touch with your clients regularly… AND make it as personal as possible.
Our strategy looks at the following key areas:
- Website (cornerstone of your brand)
- Blogs (weekly, keeps your brand fresh and creates content for emails and social)
- Email (monthly bulk campaigns – THIS IS THE HIGHEST VALUE)
- Social (LinkedIn for professional services, Facebook for B2C products)
- WhatsApp (this is growing fast)
FIRST NAME BASIS – MERGE TAGS
With email being the highest-value communication tool, the goal is to create campaigns that speak as directly to each client as you can. The first strategy in this approach is to personalise the subject line, header and salutation to include your client’s first name (or nickname if that’s how you normally address them) with merge tags.
If I get an email with a subject line saying – “Tim, have you double checked your statement?” – for an email about the value of GAP cover and ensuring that my monthly premiums are being deducted correctly, I will most likely open it. When I open it and it starts with – “Dear Tim, we know you have lots to check in your day, but this one is important.” – I’m going to keep reading.
However, if it says – “Dear client – please check your statement” – I will have a much higher chance of deleting it without even reading it. My perception is that the sender doesn’t even know my first name… so why should this be important? It looks like click bait.
GETTING EVEN MORE PERSONAL – LIST SEGMENTATION
The second strategy, and one that very few people are working with, is list segmentation. This means that I can send targeted messages to specific demographics (slightly different to tags).
Let’s take the above scenario again; the same campaign but in a segmented list environment. I receive an email with the subject line – “Hey Tim, being a dad isn’t always easy. This could help.” – wow… it’s to me, and is talking about my kids.
I then open it and it reads – “Dear Tim, I believe you guys are expecting rain this weekend – super! Worrying about water is only one concern though – and as a dad you want to look after your kids in the best way possible, right? One tiny area, that can have a major impact if things go wrong, is ensuring that your GAP cover is correctly in place…” – it’s a no brainer. I’m hooked into reading AND taking action.
To achieve this the database would have my contact linked to the following segmentation groups:
- Father
- GAP client
- Cape Town
When you’re segmenting your database, try to strike a balance between what’s workable (ie. actionable campaigns that you could create) and what will make your client feel noticed, appreciated and valuable to you.
I hope that helps!
