Financial advisor tips: Creating CRM newsletters

As the season's change and holidays come and go, it's very important that you keep in touch with your clients in different ways.

Newsletters can be an effective tool for doing so – allowing you to deepen relationships with your existing client base and connect with new prospects. By using your CRM (Client Relationship Management) system effectively, you can deliver newsletters in an organized and thoughtful way.

One challenge of delivering quality newsletters is dealing with scattered information. Most financial advisory firms store data all over the place - within portfolio management systems, custodian portals, windows files folders, email systems. Wouldn’t it be great to collect this data all in one spot? Imagine if all of your client information could be found in one place - it sure would make sending any and all communications easier.

Based on my experience serving financial advisors, below is my perspective on how to harness your CRM to deliver a great newsletter.

What can a newsletter do for me? 

1. Newsletters build confidence across your client base - demonstrating that you are “on point” and working on their behalf every day.
2. Sending newsletters to your clients at regular intervals - along with updated articles, important market changes or trending information can help you establish a relationship built on trust and confidence. It shows your firm's skill and commitment.
3. Newsletters extend your reach. When you send newsletters at regular intervals, your brand and messaging reach new people. If you’re able to share specific information and knowledge that is curated for your ideal client type, you will build a following among prospects who matter to your practice.
4. Lastly, newsletters help your firm’s website stay relevant in your search results and rankings:  Website traffic brings leads – and ultimately new revenue.
   

How a wealth management CRM can help

The tools in Junxure® enables you to create personalized newsletters to send a target audience based on specific client information; accounts owned, age, classification or common interests as examples.

Using Junxure Cloud, there are various tools and methods you can use to create a newsletter:

• Personalized Information - easily input and access personalized information (for example – a client’s favorite football team, hobbies or companies of interest)
• Advanced Searches - allows for very specific and granular search using a range of criteria and rules, such as searching for clients who own a particular stock symbol or asset.
• Grid Filters- using records workspace grids you are able to make simple filters to your grid to narrow your list of recipients.
• Birthday Tool - allows you to send birthday newsletters to clients whose birthdays are in a particular month.

But first - in order for you to use these tools - you need to make sure that your client data is accurately entered into Junxure correctly in order to achieve that perfect newsletter.

Why is it important to have good data in my records profiles?

1. If your record’s address or the contact information is not up-to-date then your recipient may not get your communication.
2. Your record searches may be skewed based on wrong data 
3. Your record reports may not be accurate if your record data is accurately entered.
4. It protects your firm from making bad decisions based on information not being entered or accurately inputted. 

Without a doubt, when a CRM like Junxure, has to become a source of truth for your clients. As some of our Junxure clients like to say, “if it's not Junxure, it did not happen." Data quality drastically can impact your firm’s productivity and success.

How do I see my client data? 

With Junxure Cloud you can easily customize your Grid Fields to see your Records information at a glance. Expressed in our help center here >> Customizing Grid Columns.

It's also very important to use this technique to monitor the consistency of your Records Data as they can cause formatting problems when you start adding merge fields to your Newsletters.

In this Grid: Address City Record was added and we are able to see at a glance the data existing in such field. This method can be applied to any available field to choose from in the column chooser tool.

Tips for getting started

Here are a few ideas to get you started on great newsletter content:

• Ongoing issues in the markets – share perspective with your clients about important macroeconomic issues or trends that are emerging in the stock market
• Case studies - tell your clients a recent experience of your ideal customer that they can relate to
• Industry updates - provide information for your client interests and target market sector
• Personalize your newsletter - base your newsletter to be personalized to your Clients - Junxure Cloud has the tools for you to add merge fields to your data to make it personalized to your client >> [Insert and Delete Merge Fields] >> Online Document Editor
• Choose whether to send an email or a letter - you can either choose to create a physical letter (with a label or envelope) or a direct email to your clients in just a few clicks
• Test before you send - create a few samples newsletters before sending them out to ensure accuracy

Common newsletter scenarios – and steps to take in your CRM:

1. Say one day you learned that a particular technology company was going to be releasing a new product and you want to send a mass newsletter to all your clients who already own that particular stock symbol. (Hint: a lot of clients like to follow Apple.) You can easily conduct an Advanced Search to query the clients who own such stock and choose to send the newsletter to these select few to announce the release.
2. The holiday season is in full swing and your firm would like to wish a Happy New Year to all your prospects and clients - you can easily use the correspondence assistant to create individual letters and envelopes to print. Or if you choose to go paperless, you can also send an eblast.
3. You learned that there is a boat show in your local area - you can create a list of your clients who have boats and target them as a recipient of a newsletter announcing the local boat show.

Bonus: New constant contact integration

In case you haven’t heard - Junxure now features a Constant Contact integration that you can also utilize to create great newsletters. This feature allows your clients to opt-in or opt-out. With this integration, you are able to pick and utilize email templates from a gallery to use in your newsletters.

Next steps

Newsletters are just the beginning. I’d love to help you harness your data, forge deeper client relationships and scale using the power of smart automation - start a 30-day trial today.  Junxure CRM can help you streamline your workflows, simplify your technology and provide clients with best-in-class service.

As another resource, I recommend that you also read how Sheaff Brock, an independent investment firm, has enhanced and increased efficiency utilizing Junxure’s capabilities.