If you’ve ever wondered what to include in your newsletter, you’re in the right place. Newsletters, for financial planners, are a great marketing move. But if your company wants to get the most value out of them, it’s important to do them right.
In producing content marketing for financial advisers, the Clients+ team has written many financial newsletters and pieces of newsletter content. Calling on this experience, we’ve created a four-question audit checklist. Before you deliver that latest newsletter to your client base, ensure you’re able to answer these crucial questions:
Have You Set (and Met) Intentions and Expectations?
As a finance expert sharing your insights, you’re never going to be short of things to say in your newsletter. But that can be both a blessing and a curse.
The last thing you want, if you’re looking to keep on engaging your reader base each month, is to provide them with a newsletter that meanders and lacks directions. That’s why you need to determine:
- Have I set personal intentions for my newsletter, and have I met these intentions with specific, to-the-point content?
- Have I set reader expectations for my newsletter, and does my content meet these expectations?
You’ll be able to develop a strong and loyal readership – a readership that’s more likely to generate client referrals and repeat custom – if you’re setting accurate expectations and meeting them consistently.
To this end, Wentworth Financial Communications recommends creating an editorial mission statement for your newsletter that keeps your content on course and answers the following questions:
- “Why does your publication exist?”
- “Who will get the most value out of reading your publication?”
- “How will your publication deliver on that promise?”
Are You Keeping It Simple and Succinct?
Though you might think your newsletter will provide you with an unlimited amount of time and an endless word count, this isn’t the case.
Yes, it can be longer form than many other kinds of digital marketing, but that doesn’t mean you can write an epic novel in place of a short, sharp financial digest and still maintain engagement.
Keep it simple in terms of the amount of content you include, in terms of the design elements you utilise, and in terms of the structure in which everything is presented.
Sometimes, less is more, and prioritising quality over quantity is the name of the game if you’d like to keep your loyal readers happy and interested.
If you’re not sure where to start, Clients+ is always on hand to fill those content gaps, and our client portal is updated with new content monthly.
Are You Promoting AND Informing?
Some companies use their financial planning newsletters as a chance to share a large volume of promotional content. As a result, they falter in their provision of informational content (AKA the stuff that’s of true value to the people reading).
Here are some of the biggest benefits of a newsletter as a form of content marketing for financial advisers:
- It strengthens client relationships
- It allows you to build your brand
- It gives you more room to inform and add value to the lives of your customers
- It offers you a chance to speak more directly to your core customer base
Notice how only one of those benefits was directly relevant to branding and marketing?
Company news has its place in a newsletter from your firm. As do promotional offers. But when they become the dominant features over informative articles that are more relevant to your target audience, you’ll see your readership shrinking month on month.
Think a little bit less “our” and a little more “your” when you’re creating your newsletters, and they can become a valuable, hard-working and lead generating part of your wider content marketing strategy.
Have You Called Your Readers to Action?
Though we’ve already explained that promotional content isn’t the only name of the game with a financial planning newsletter, it’s still very important to remember that this document is, at its core, a piece of marketing.
That means a clear call-to-action (CTA) is essential.
More subtle CTAs can then be weaved throughout the newsletter, but none so clear and central as the big one.
Examples of CTAs that might be appropriate for your company’s financial newsletter include:
- An invitation to follow the company on social media
- An invitation to leave the company a review
- A link to download another piece of content (an eBook or a white paper, for instance) from the company’s website
- A link to a contact form/enquiry form on the company’s website
When you’ve answered each question above and you’re satisfied that everything’s as it should be, make sure you also have a distribution strategy in place. Get that quality financial advice to the audience it deserves.
For support with your financial planning newsletters, you can always turn to Clients+. Newsletter content is available to select by topic, but ready-made and branded newsletters are also available on request.
