E-newsletters: Great marketing tool for financial advisors and writers

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E-newsletters are a great way to market yourself, as I’ll discuss on the WordCount Last Wednesday (#wclw) Twitter live chat on August 25 from 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Eastern. You can get details on how to tune into my #wclw chat at http://bit.ly/92SQdH

Learning from personal experience

My Investment Writing e-newsletter has brought me many new clients. Sometimes I get calls or emails within 24 hours of sending out a newsletter. Other times, it’s the steady drip of emails that brings my name to mind when a prospective client has a need I can meet.

The funny thing is that I didn’t set out to write a newsletter. I simply started writing a mass email to stay in touch with the great people I’d met at my last corporate job. I wanted to give them some useful content in addition to my rhapsodies about gardening and bicycling, so I started reporting on Boston Security Analysts Society events. To my surprise, my former colleagues told me they looked forward to my emails. A newsletter was born.

Services that help you format and manage your e-newsletter

If you create an e-newsletter, don’t try to distribute it using your regular e-mail or you might get tagged as a spammer. Now that my subscription base has grown, I pay $30 a month (fees start at $15/month) to ConstantContact.com for access to their website to manage the email lists, format my monthly newsletter and help me avoid the spam filter.  It’s easy to learn and the customer service is great.

If I were starting a newsletter today, I might start with MailChimp. It’s free for up to 500 subscribers. My financial advisor friends tell me it’s also social media-friendly.

Other options, which I’ve only heard of from friends and colleagues, include:

Most of the pay services will let you experiment with a free account before you commit. By the way, if you want to use Constant Contact, you can give my name as a referral sources, so you get a $30 credit once you become a paid subscriber. I’ll also get a $30 credit. However, I think you’ll probably want to start with MailChimp.

My top three posts if you’re new to newsletters

Introverts, steal this idea for your next conference!

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Conferences can be shy financial advisors’ worst nightmares. You spend so much time among so many strangers. You feel intimidated if many attendees seem to know one another. As an introvert, I feel your pain. My shyness inspired an idea that may help outgoing as well as shy financial professionals.

Create a provocative badge.
“If I can’t strike up conversations about my professional services, can I make people ask me about them?”

This is the badge that helped me meet people despite my being an introvert.

That’s the question I asked myself before I attended the CFA Institute’s annual conference in Boston. So I created a homemade badge to spark conversation. My badge, printed on bright yellow paper and slipped inside a name tag holder, said “Ask me about top 10 tips for investment commentary.”

You can customize your badge to use any good conversation starter.

Offer an incentive.
Everybody likes to get something valuable for free, so offer a free report, consultation, or other benefit to the people who ask about your badge. At the CFA Institute conference, attendees who asked about my badge could give me their business card to receive a free special report via email. It was a win-win situation. They got tips honed by my investment commentary presentations to CFA societies across the U.S. and Canada. I got the chance to deepen my relationship with them.

Note: I tweaked this post on May 30, 2013.

Shy/Bold image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Financial ad in plain English: Another one from BNY Mellon

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Financial ads that speak plain English are unusual, so I was delighted to find another example from BNY Mellon in the July/August issue of the CFA Institute’s magazine. This ad does an even better job than the ad I discussed in “BNY Mellon: I liked your ‘truth ad’ until you used that word.”

Here’s the text that opens the ad for BNY Mellon Asset Servicing.

“Our tools measure performance, monitor exposure, and analyze risk. You get all the glory.”

The text is jargon-free. Plus it appeals to readers’ interest in promoting their careers. It’s a nice combination. The rest of the text is also free of jargon.

How do YOUR written materials measure up?

Three writing lessons from “One Trader’s Binge on Cocoa Wraps Up Chocolate Market”

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Some of us will read about hedge fund managers even if they’re written about in prose as dry as the Sahara. But many people won’t. This is why I’m discussing “One Trader’s Binge on Cocoa Wraps Up Chocolate Market” by Julia Werdigier and Julie Creswell in today’s New York Times (free registration may be required for access to the article). As I type this blog post, this article on the front page of The New York Times is its “most emailed.”

Photo by Profound Whatever

Here are three writing lessons from the article.

Lesson 1: Use colorful images. “To some, he is a real-life Willy Wonka. To others, he is a Bond-style villain bent on taking over the world’s supply of chocolate,” write the authors in the opening paragraph. This immediately draws in readers who may not care about hedge funds. Of course, the fact that hedge fund manager Anthony Ward is buying cocoa, an essential ingredient in chocolate, lends itself to tasty images.

Lesson 2: Explain numbers in everyday terms. “”By one estimate, he has bought enough to make more than five billion chocolate bars,” says the article. That’s a much more colorful image than “7 percent of annual cocoa production worldwide.”

Lesson 3: Get your main point across quickly. By the end of the first column, I learned that “.. hedge fund manager …named Anthony Ward has all but cornered the market in cocoa….and rival traders are crying foul, saying Mr. Ward is stockpiling cocoa in a bid to drive up already high prices so he can sell later at a big profit. His activities have helped drive cocoa prices on the London market to a 30-year high.”

Bonus suggestion: If you’re looking for writing tips, especially for short articles such as blog posts, analyze newspaper articles. The best newspaper articles offer great role models.

A great financial article isn’t enough

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A great financial article that you find online does NOT make a great blog post. At least not by itself. It simply gets you to the starting line of writing your blog post.

Photo by Diana the Math

It’s an excellent idea to link to a provocative or helpful article, as many financial advisors do. But your job is not complete when you post the website address to access a web page or an Adobe Acrobat file. You must also give your reader at least one reason to click on the link.

You can

  1. Explain why you feel the way you do about the link–You may agree or disagree with author’s point of view. It’s fine to link to articles with which you disagree.
  2. Briefly summarize the article’s relevant points–Many people will be too lazy to click through.

You may think it’s enough to share articles that you like because you’re giving readers a sense of who you are. But link-only communication works better on Twitter. It looks funny on a blog.

You needn’t invest lots of time to turn a link into a blog post. Imagine you’re talking with a client or friend about the article in your blog post. Write out your thoughts and you’ve got a blog post.

Before and after examples

I’ll illustrate what you can do by outlining a blog post based on “A Market Forecast That Says ‘Take Cover,’ ” a column by Jeff Sommer in The New York Times.

BEFORE

Here’s how the minimalist blogger presented Sommer’s article.

You probably don’t feel inspired to click on the link. You may even feel irritated that the blogger expects you to act on so little information.

Next, I’ll sketch an outline of how you blog the same article.

AFTER

In just three paragraphs the “after” example gives readers a sense of the blogger’s opinion. They may be intrigued enough to click through. Or, they may prefer to ponder the blogger’s point of view.

Make sure you express an opinion when you write a blog post that focuses on an article you admire.

Great lines from Raymond James

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“There is no one exactly like you. Raymond James financial advisors understand that.”

These lines from a Raymond James advertisement get right what so many financial ads and brochures get wrong. They focus on you, the client, instead of us, the firm. They also make the client feel unique. These are qualities I’d like to see more of in financial advisors’ marketing and communications.

How do YOUR marketing materials measure up?

First, pick your target market and niche

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Scattershot marketing of your investment or financial advisory services will sap your energy. Plus, it makes it harder for you to distinguish yourself from your gazillion competitors. This is why I’d like you to pick your target market —the group of people whom you target—and niche, meaning the services you provide, before you write any marketing materials, including your blog.

Don’t know how to choose your target market or niche? “Why People Buy What You’re Selling,” Chapter 2 of Michael Port’s Book Yourself Solid offers exercises that will help.

“What are your clients’ compelling desires?” asks Port in this chapter. Understanding the answer to this question is a key to your marketing—and blogging—success.

Knowing your target market, niche, and your clients’ “compelling desires” will tell you who to address in your blog and which benefits of your services you should stress.

Edited July 21, thanks to comment from Ben.

Disclosure: If you click on an Amazon link in this post and then buy something, I will receive a small commission. I provide links to books only when I believe they have value for my readers.

FINRA/SEC compliance guidance for bloggers

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Photo by Steffe

Registered representatives and registered investment advisors (RIAs) fall under two different regulators when they blog. Reps must grapple with FINRA’s regulations, while RIAs enjoy more freedom under the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), as I learned from Bill Winterberg’s guest post in December 2008. Do things right because “You can be sure that FINRA is going to start including social media reviews in their next round of examinations,” as attorney Mark Astarita said in “Advisors Allowed To Get Social.” That goes for the SEC, too.

However, if you treat your blog posts as sales literature or advertising, you’re unlikely to run into problems with your compliance department. This is true whether you’re a rep or an RIA. This has implications for your content, administrative processes, and recordkeeping.

You’ll find some guidelines below. Don’t rely solely on this blog post for guidance because I only skim the surface. Always check first with your compliance officer. If you’re the compliance officer, it’s important to monitor compliance developments for more details–and because standards may change quickly. You’ll find compliance resources at the bottom of this blog post.

Content: No recommendations

“The bottom line here is do not make specific recommendations in any of your communications.  You should keep your comments, posts, and interactions general in nature if you are referring to anything that is financially related,” says Stephanie Sammons, CEO of Wired Advisor, in “The Good News/Bad News of FINRA’s Social Media Guidelines Release.”

If you’re regulated by the SEC, you should observe the following policies when writing content, as summed up by Triplestop LLC’s Joe Polidoro in “Social Networking for RIA’s.”

  • Disclose all material facts
  • Don’t publish testimonials–When you wander off your blog, this includes LinkedIn recommendations, Twitter favorites, and the Facebook “like”
  • Don’t use “RIA” improperly

Polidoro also stresses that, aside from crafting your content carefully, you monitor your sites frequently so you can remove testimonials and other noncompliant content, keep records (see more details below), and develop and post your social media policy.

Some SEC compliance tips I picked up include during my dealings with compliance professionals include

  • Never make guarantees
  • Use “we believe” to make statements more palatable to your compliance officer
  • Avoid mentioning specific products, especially specific mutual funds, whenever possible, or you subject yourself to onerous disclosure requirements

 

Process: Preapproval preferred

Reps must get their blog content approved by a registered principal before they post to the web, according to Polidoro’s How FINRA Regulations Play Out in Social Media, At a Glance. RIAs have more leeway, especially if they’re at a small firm. I believe that larger RIA firms are likely to demand preapproval.

Recordkeeping: Archive your posts so they’re easily retrieved

FINRA wants you to keep your records for at least three years; the SEC, for at least five years. There are plenty of vendors that would like to provide you with an automated solution for tracking your social media. You’ll find some of them in the list of “Twitter and other resources.”

Reports, articles, and regulations on social media compliance

Here are resources that complement the blog posts I’ve mentioned above. If you’re aware of more, please let me know.

 

Twitter and other resources on social media compliance

Most of the people named below don’t focus on social media compliance. But they have put out useful information in the past. I expect they’ll do so again. Thanks to Bill Winterberg for adding some names to this list. Check Bill’s compliance list on Twitter in case new resources emerge.

This list gives Twitter names first. You can recognize Twitter names because they start with the @ sign. They’re followed by blog or website links. If the resource lacks a Twitter name, I give their real life name.

Do you recommend other resources on social media compliance for financial advisors? Please add them in the comments. I’m especially interested in resources for investment managers, wealth managers, and financial planners who blog.

April 2016 update: For a more recent post, read “Top 3 Compliance Concerns When Writing Your Blog.” In April 2016 correspondence, Cindi Hill confirmed that her advice is still current.

 

Guest post: “Adding Video into the Communications Mix”

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Video makes a great complement to your written financial communications. This is the message I took away from the guest video post below by Samantha Allen of Investius.

Until I watched Samantha’s video, it hadn’t occurred to me that video’s short format can attract readers, so they’re willing to read publications that go into greater depth on the same topic. I’d been thinking of video as a competing format that appeals to people who prefer visual learning.

Thanks, Samantha!

Stop! Get a better title, or forget winning readers

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Would YOU eagerly read an article with the following title?

Gulf Oil Spill

Impact on State and Local Government


Analysis of original title: Not another oil spill story!

Thousands of articles about BP’s oil spill are fighting for your attention. “Not another oil spill story!” is probably the reaction of many readers who scan this title. The big problem: The title doesn’t say why you should read it.

Let’s look at the first paragraph to find a reason that you can highlight in a new title.

The Gulf Oil Spill will certainly have long-term repercussions for the fishing and tourism industries as well as the overall environment in the impact areas of the Gulf region. It is early in the disaster to fully evaluate the long-term effect on the states most at risk of contamination: Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida and Alabama. We do not anticipate immediate negative credit implications at the state level for those in question, but feel concerns are more likely to materialize at the local level at this time. We are continuously monitoring developments in the Gulf and considering our credit exposure in these areas.

Aha! Now I get it. Look at the phrases above that I bolded. Readers of this wealth management firm’s newsletter should realize that the firm is looking out for the safety of their municipal bond portfolios. Too bad the title didn’t tell them that.

The introductory paragraph doesn’t help either. It starts with generic information that doesn’t relate directly to investments. Even worse, it buries the most important information in the paragraph’s second half.

Also, if readers aren’t fixed income geeks, they may not realize that “negative credit implications” translates into “possible bond downgrades that could trim the value of your municipal bond portfolio.”

Please stop here. Before you read any more, jot down a new title and first sentence for this article.

Looking for a better title

Here are some alternative titles.

  1. Will Your Municipal Bond Portfolio Spill Like BP’s Well?
  2. No Need to Worry Yet About the Oil Spill’s Impact on Your Bond Portfolio
  3. Assessing the Oil Spill’s Impact on Muni Bonds: The Three Most Important Factors

Which do you like best? Feel free to share your title ideas.

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