The financial sector is in the midst of a digital transformation that has unlocked incredible new opportunities for wealth managers to stand out in the crowded marketplace and build customer loyalty. With the power of marketing automation, wealth managers can nurture client relationships like never before.
Through lead nurturing, wealth managers can take new leads from the awareness stage all the way through the sales cycle and engage them with relevant, personalized content over time. This capability is key to success in modern wealth management, as close client relationships matter now more than ever.
Marketers use many different types of nurture programs across a variety of industries. There’s no limit to how many types of nurture programs wealth managers can use, but there are five in particular that every wealth manager should know about.
1. Welcome Nurture
It’s always important to welcome new prospects with helpful information. In wealth management, audience education is a huge opportunity to both communicate value to your prospective customers and establish your brand as a go-to resource. Forty-nine percent of Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers say they‘re either not very knowledgeable or not knowledgeable at all about investments like bonds or mutual funds.
If someone new enters your database, put them on a targeted nurturing path based on the content they registered to access. This way, you can help them understand your financial products and wealth management business, and then lead them to engage further through CTAs that may be relevant to their interests.
2. Journeys Based on Form Completion
Prospects enter company databases because they’re interested in a specific piece of content — so why not nurture a relationship with them based on that content? If a new prospect seems interested in your branded content or one of your financial products, create an automated nurture path tailored to that content, product, or any related services you offer.
For example, let’s say you’re sending an email about an e-book on mutual funds. If your audience clicks on the CTA to read the e-book, consider sending automated emails with more resources on mutual funds. This gives them even more information and opens up more pathways for them to engage with you on the topic if they want to.
3. Thought Leadership
Thought leadership content is a great way for wealth managers to stay engaged with prospects and deliver information they’re likely to be interested in. If you have thoughts on wealth management or advice about investments, this is your opportunity to write blog posts and share your opinions with your audience. But if you don’t have the time or resources for that, you can also use third-party thought leadership articles and blog posts from other financial services organizations you admire.
Wealth managers can use thought leadership content to instill confidence in clients and build their reputations as trusted strategic advisors during times of market volatility. Clients often get stressed out by financial news, but wealth managers can calm their nerves at scale with thought leadership nurture campaigns.
4. Event Promotion and Follow-Up
Wealth management organizations can unlock many nurturing opportunities by holding an event, meeting, or webinar. Imagine holding an informative webinar called “All About Bonds.” You can gauge your audience’s interest in the event based on clicks in an early promotional email, and then continue to promote the event with content relevant to topics that will be covered at the event. After the event, you can follow up with more relevant content and gauge interest in future events on related topics.
5. Client Onboarding and Ongoing Education
One of the great things about modern lead nurturing is that you can change the name of the sender of any given program. If you’re nurturing a prospect for a specific wealth management product or service you offer, you can make any advisor the ‘sender’ of that automated nurture program. This way, your marketing programs can build relationships for your advisors while they spend their time actively reaching out to customers.
There are many different ways that wealth managers can use nurture programs, and we’ve just barely scratched the surface. When wealth management companies use marketing automation to deliver personalized experiences at scale, they’ll build lasting customer relationships and stand out from the financial services competition.
To learn more about lead nurturing and other marketing automation programs for wealth management, check out Pardot for Financial Services.
