Engaging advisors with technology

by Dan Sondhelm

You’ve got a fund with a good track record and a solid strategy. You’ve even put selling agreements in place with some of the major players -- but asset growth is slow. One strategy that will help you make a mark is to engage advisors through technology.

Communicate with more advisors

As a smaller fund, your budget may not support a host of wholesalers, or even one dedicated wholesaler, to tell your story on the street. Yet, getting known by advisors could be the key to attracting assets. So, how do you ensure advisors know your name, understand your story and recommend your products?

Consider a structured, well-executed outreach program that leverages technology such as email marketing and webinars. With limited staff resources, it’s essential to reach as many of the right advisors as you can each time you execute. To be successful, you need to have a plan in place that outlines who will be contacted and on what schedule. Equally important, you must engage those advisors who show interest with swift, meaningful follow-up communications. These tools will help you reach thousands of financial professionals who will self-identify that they are interested in your product. Some may be ready to begin a relationship with you. In cases where you don’t yet have a selling agreement in place, garnering advisor support could help you get one by generating demand from inside the firm.

Email marketing campaigns
For email marketing, you can look first to the advisor database provider you’ve selected to send out your message on your behalf. Or, you can contract with an outside specialty email service to execute your campaigns. Both options should ensure compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act, a law that sets the rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them, and spells out penalties for violations.

Most of these services also provide comprehensive reporting to tell you precisely who's opened your email and who has clicked through to your website or any specific links, such as your commentary or performance pages.

Some firms elect to use their internal email system, but you’ll need to be cautious about complying with compliance requirements. In addition, your internal system may not provide the follow-up reports you need to make the campaign pack more punch.

Email marketing campaigns can be as elaborate or as simple as you wish. Sure, everyone’s busy and inundated with emails today. But in our experience, email marketing is a great tool to get the word out. We’ve seen open rates of 50% or more when reaching out to existing clients, and a typical range of 8-30% for larger lists.

Who opens your message has a lot to do with an intriguing subject line and the extent to which advisors know your brand. Who clicks through to your website or offer once opened depends on many variables: Is your message clear and compelling? Do you have a strong call to action? Do you make it easy to find more information with links to specific pages on your website?

As always, your emails should look and feel like your website and other materials to enhance and support your brand.

Always include a clear call to action - click here for our white paper or to register for our Webinar, call our 800 number for more information or to download a prospectus. Pepper your email with links, but remember, attention spans are limited. One clear message is far more effective than multiple messages that may simply confuse.

Determine how frequently you are comfortable reaching out; we recommend monthly or bimonthly to start. Including webinars on a quarterly basis puts a face and personality to your firm. Remember emails introduce advisors to your firm. By integrating webinars and ensuring you link to current content on your website, you are providing a full story about who you are and what you have to offer.

Webinars
Weaving webinars into your communication program is the next step in a successful distribution program. Hosting webinars puts you in the advisors’ offices, without leaving your own. Webinars are more personal than an email and more educational than a phone call. They allow you to introduce the portfolio manager and his or her personality and tell your story, with pictures and graphs. Remember, though, keep them simple. Just like a live presentation, you don’t want to overwhelm the viewer with words – whether displayed or spoken. Keep in mind the key flow to any successful presentation: tell them what you’re going to tell them; tell them; tell them what you told them. The result is a story they understand and can incorporate into their own practice. Give concrete examples of how your strategy works in specific markets or of the great decisions you’ve made to buy or sell specific securities or sectors.

Plan your webinar from the participants’ point of view. There are multiple learning styles: hearing, seeing, and doing. With the audio/visual approach of a webinar, you touch on two of the three. While your visual should reinforce what you are saying, showing a slide packed with text or three or four charts at a time is sensory overload. Think instead of a short phrase or simplified chart that epitomizes the point you are discussing. This will also help keep the attention of multi-taskers. Glancing up from other paperwork as they hear you say, “great returns for two decades,” the message is immediately reinforced by seeing “Returns above benchmark 19 of last 20 years.” This same slide is more likely to grab attention when caught out of the corner of an advisors eye than a screen packed with words.

While the ultimate purpose is to create interest and provide knowledge about your product, a 100% self-serving approach is likely to be ho-hum. Advisors long for your expert views on an asset class, current market trends or economic outlook. They are looking to you for thought leadership and for ideas and sound bites they can use with their clients. Again, with limited attention spans and plenty of other responsibilities, 15-20 minutes should be enough time for you to get your point across.

At the end of a webinar, a Q&A period is typical. By “planting” some questions of your own, you can immediately begin this section of the webinar. Use these questions to make a point that wasn’t covered or reinforce a message that was.

Participation will vary based on your reputation or topic. We’ve seen eight advisors participate for start-up funds in the beginning, and recently as many as 200. But the number of advisors and potential investors you reach with that one effort can grow significantly if you post a recording of the webinar on your website to be viewed at the advisors’ convenience. To make this painless, consider using a script that’s been preapproved by your compliance department if you plan to post it to your public site, because there it becomes subject to the advertising rules of FINRA. Alternatively, if you don’t discuss your fund, but only your strategy, asset class or market views, you may consider posting it to the fund advisor’s site.

To host your webinars, there are a handful of third-party technology partners available at reasonable costs. This software allows you to show your own computer screen to all the participants, so you can choose to just show photos of the speakers to help put a face on the firm while you talk, or you can show PowerPoint slides to illustrate your points as discussed above. These technologies handle the registration process, provide reports of sign-ups, can send automated reminders to registrants a day and/or hour before the webinar and ultimately provide statistics and specific information about the participants and even their degree of attention.

Targeted advisor list
As you know, investment professionals come in many shapes and sizes. Is there one group that is more likely to sell your fund than another? Start by asking yourself where your selling strength has been. Has it been RIA’s with a certain AUM size? Or, do you have a unique asset class or approach that everyone should know about? Do you already have selling agreements in place with most of the major platforms, or is your strategy to drive demand, encouraging registered reps to request that their platform add you?

Lists can be home-grown, purchased or rented. Segregating your lists on the front-end will make later personalization possible – for example, “Met at XYZ Conference,” “Web Contacts,” “Client-Advisors,” and so on. There are a handful of great databases of advisors that are available to use with an annual license or on an as needed basis. Most can be sliced and diced to select only those advisors who meet the criteria as your best prospects. Certain industry publications and platforms also offer access to their constituents. In the end, lists can vary from 2,000 to 200,000 names.

Sellable messages
Advisors are anxious for ideas and relevant market messages to share with their clients and prospects, while investors want to know their money is in good hands. Prospective advisors need to understand better what you are all about.

They are looking for insights from thought leaders, education about alternatives to a traditional portfolio, expert opinions and economic outlooks.

Expectations
By structuring a program that reaches out to advisors on a regular schedule, you have the opportunity to harvest warm leads. Several of our clients send campaigns to about 35,000 advisors with an 8% average open rate and a 0.5% click through to their websites, yielding 175 warm leads, a manageable number with whom you can follow-up.

You’ve also just introduced your name….and reinforced your name with thousands of advisors, whether they opened the email or not. For those who did open it, again potentially thousands (2,800 based on the average above), you’ve planted your message and a seed of recognition for when you appear in the press, attend a conference or email them again. And for the 175 who clicked into your website, you’ve had the opportunity to put your best foot forward, showcasing your strategy, team and performance. It’s up to you to turn that into a valuable personal relationship.