Some of this underutiltization of email marketing by financial advisors is likely due to compliance considerations (tip: if you want to do something legal and your firm does not allow it, change firms or go out on your own).  But much is due to lack of know-how.

Financial services email marketing is effective and best of all, it costs almost nothing.  Once you have your list (we teach you how in this post), sending emails costs nothing (or very little if you use an outside delivery service like Conctant Contact or icontact).

In this post, we deal specifically with financial services email marketing to the mature or senior investor or insurance buyer. Why this group?  Because:

1. these mature people, age 60+ have nore money than other groups
2. they are undermarketed to via the Internet because there is a misconception about seniors on the Internet

If you market to seniors as many insurance agents and financial advisors do, you have likley rented mailing lists of seniors.  You can also rent senior emails lists as explained below.  Read and laern about electronic marketing for financial planners who work in the senior market.

How to Build a Senior Email List

Use the resources and ideas below and in a year’s time you can easily have a thousand
senior email addresses in your area. Then, just use our inexpensive newsletter email
service (www.advisor-newsletter.com ) to email them each month and turn them into
clients for you. You can stay in front of them for peanuts and have a continuous drip
campaign. These contacts will not only lead to new clients but also:

• Invitations to speak at their clubs
• Invitations to write articles for their newsletter
• Referrals to seniors not even on your list

1) Get Email Lists from Your Mature Clients
In addition to asking your clients for their email address, ask your senior clients for list of
email addresses they may have. They may be willing to share them with you or make a
solicitation for you. For example, say you have a client that belongs to the local senior
garden club with 250 members. Your client may be happy to give you a copy of that list
or solicit the members on your behalf with something like the following email:

Dear Folks,

Bob Smith has been my financial advisor for the last three years. He has an excellent
newsletter for us seniors called “SeniorFinances” and you can get a free subscription.
Each issue contains articles on where to invest for more income, items on insurance like
long-term care, tips on reducing your income taxes and estate planning, etc. To get a
free email subscription, just click here.

Stu Svenson
President

2) Rent a Senior Email List of Well-Healed people in Your Local Area

Just like you can rent mailing lists for sending mail, you can rent 2 million+ email
addresses of people age 60+. Of course, you may only want those in your area and you can select those you desire by zip code.

At your library, you can find a copy of the “SRDS” Direct Marketing List Source (your
library may have this service on-line from a PC at the library).

If they have the physical books, find the section with the email lists and look down the
lists for lists that contain seniors or people with money, such as
• People who take cruises
• People with grandchildren
• People who own luxury cars
Most of these lists area available by zip code and by age of person.

If the library has the service on line, search on keyword “senior” and request only email
lists. When we last checked, there were over 25 email lists of seniors. In the details of
the list, you want the lists that offer a zip code selection so you can email to only those
seniors in your area.

Please note that unlike regular mailing lists, email list vendors usually will not give you
the list. They will want to do the email for you. So you are not going to be emailing
them the newsletter. Rather you are going to be emailing them a solicitation to subscribe
to your newsletter. It is those people who respond that you will add to your email
newsletter list. Once they respond you then “own” that email address.

We have prepared the email text to send to a rented list below.

Alternative #1

Don’t get ripped off by Wall Street or let some fly-by-night financial advisor take
advantage of you! Get your FREE subscription to SeniorFinances Newsletter,
designed especially for people age 60+. Don’t be in the dark about your money!
Easy to read articles on:

• Ways to reduce your taxes that you won’t hear from your accountant
• How to steer clear of “sucker” mutual funds
• Safe income investments that pay you 6% and MORE
• How to slash taxes on your IRA withdrawals by 50%
• Understand long term care insurance before you buy
• How different types of annuities work and which can help you
• How to get cash for your old life insurance policy (more than your insurance company will pay)
• The big difference between bonds and bond funds that many retirees don’t realize
• How to identify hidden fees in your mutual funds
  And much more on taxes, IRAs, annuities, long term care, investing for income,
  insurance and every phase of finances that affects people of retirement age.Receive SeniorFinances FREE every month:
  Just hit reply to this email and then in your reply provide your information below to
  get your subscription:
  Your Name:
  Your zip code:Alternative #2
   
  FREE newsletter on Senior Financial issues to keep you from making bad financial
  decisions. Receive your copy each month via email and get solid advice on how to
  increase income, how to pay less tax, how to reduce taxes on IRA distributions, the
  best ways to help grandkids with their education and much more on financial issues
  that affect people age 60+.

Here’s how to subscribe.

Hit your reply button and in your reply to this email, provide your name and your
zip code. That’s it! You’ll receive your free copy every month.

3) Inexpensive Ads on Local Senior Web Sites

There are dozens of senior web sites focused only on seniors in your area. Just for fun,
we did a search on “Columbus Ohio Senior.” Here’s what we got without looking any
further:

http://www.ohiosenior.com—a web site for Ohio retirees—$49 a month for a banner ad
http://www.columbuswired.net/SeniorLiving/default.htm—the senior page of Ohio’s web
magazine—$20 a month
http://www.ag.ohio-state.edu/~seniors/—the Aging in Ohio web site
http://www.subasekb.navy.mil/retkbnews.htm—the site for local Navy retirees
http://www.oshpra.org/mends.htm—the Retiree Association of the Ohio State Patrol

The ads are very inexpensive ($20 -$50 per month) and thousands of seniors can see your
ad to subscribe to your free senior newsletter. We have designed the web ads for you (in
various sizes to fit most senior web sites). Click here to see the sample ads. Follow the
directions on the ad page to make sure you get the leads from the people who click on the
banner.

By the way, you will find these local senior web sites faster if you use a search engine
that is really many search engines in one. Use the tool at www.dogpile.com or better,
download free software from www.copernic.com

4) Subscribe to ProspectMatch and get leads from mature consumers daily

5) Subscribe to Our National Email Service

We advertise on national senior web sites asking seniors if they want to
subscribe to the SeniorFinances email newsletter. We will also be emailing to national
lists of seniors and getting their request for the newsletter. If you subscribe for that
service, we provide you the leads for your area.

6) Have a Sign-Up Form on Your Own Website

If you have your own website (get one if you don’t and if your firm does not allow this, work somehere else), be sure to promote the newsletter on the site and have lots of places where they can sign up for it.

There you have six ways to build a senior email list that you can drip on contunously for no cost and bring your financial services email marketing into the 21st century.

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It is amazing how we always find the blame elsewhere and rarely in our own shortcomings.  In fact, we are all lazy to learn and look for the answers.  You can be a great seminar marketer if you use the Internet to search for solutions and be willing to try and fail.  It’s through repeated failures in seminar marketing that you learn what is highly profitable.  But we can save you time and rails with our download.

Financial seminars DO work and there are thousands of financial advisors and insurance agents gaining new clients at a rapid pace making boatloads of money.  The reason that your financial seminar did not work is that there is a winning formula which you did not possess.

Here are the six things you must now to have success with financial seminars.

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Do you, like many advisors, think that increasing your business, gaining clients, is centered on marketing and sales.  It’s not.

What saps your time is your business structure. The products you handle, the prospects you serve, how you deliver services–is usually so uncoordinated and lacking congruency, that much of the time that should be committed to marketing and sales is lost.

So the first place to look to increase your revenues is your business structure and your business methods.  Consider that your doctor spends about 12 minutes with each patient and you even get billed for the things his nurse and receptionist do.  Now THAT’S financial efficiency.

Stop running yourself ragged. Turn your time into money when you use your time correctly. The Practice Management download will help you uncover the incongruousness in your business and show how you can restructure so that you can rapidly grow your business.

To outsource prospecting, visit ProspectMatch

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Sure, it’s nice to have an assistant to do all of the administrative and clerical work.  In fact, it’s essential as in most parts of the country, you can hire such a person for $30,000 to $50,000 annually and the time they will free up for you can easily earn you an additional $150,000.  Why?  because they will do the work values at $15 to $25 an hour while you are generating more business where you earn $100 to $1000 an hour.

The latest trend however is not to take on additional employees but to outsource this work to a virtual assistant.  These are trained professionals who are already familiar with your industry (e.g. securities or insurance) and may already work for other professionals just like you.  So they don’t need to be taught form scratch.  They work from their location using their PC, their phone and you contract for as much time as you need form them–either on a regular basis (e.g. 50 hours per month) or by the project.

Download the free report

How to Have More Time Each Day:  How to Find, Screen and Hire Assistants and Virtual Assistants

For additional prospect appointments, ProspectMatch

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One of the more popular ways to market yourself on the Internet is using Google Adwords.  But the cost is outrageous.  For example, let’s say you want to be found when a prospect does a Google search for “Chicago Financial Advisor.” Because of intense competition, it could cost you $5 per click for that key phrase (you’ll be competing against Charles Schwab and others with deep pockets).  This means you pay Goggle $5 every time someone clicks on your link even if they never call you, they leave your web site in 3 seconds or fail to take any action.  In other words, you become a cash machine for Google and if you don’t have a BIG financial services marketing budget, this may be beyond your means.

But there’s a way to harness this marketing power for much less and this video download explains.  Turn your speakers on.

Comments from users:

Annuity Leads

Annuity Sales

Closed Sales

Email Leads

Exclusive Annuity Leads

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Please read my earlier post about the importance of using an insurance newsletter to convert prospects to clients.

If you just send a newsletter with some interesting information but the article does not call the reader to action  (e.g., “send back the coupon for more information”), your insurance newsletter will be a waste of your money.  You must get the reader to RESPOND!

“I have received seven phone calls and set appointments with five qualified, ready-to act prospects. In all, I will probably close about $500k of new annuity/investment business (not to mention a few LTC policies). This is all business that I probably would have never seen if not for sending out the newsletter.”  C. Meeks, MD

Many professionals have no idea how to use their insurance newsletter to make them money. These
professionals think that somehow they will profit by sending a nice four-page newsletter with their
picture and articles unrelated to their clients’ and prospects’ concerns that quickly gets tossed in the
trash. Want to know the secret to making a newsletter profitable?

Three Secrets of a Profitable Newsletter

1. The articles must make a recommendation. You can’t simply educate people. If you do, you
will never earn more than a school teacher.

2. Each article must leave the reader hungry: “Where can I find out more about this?” Each article
in the SeniorFinances Insurance Newsletter leaves ‘em wanting more, and each article ends offering a free
report, a free analysis, a free something to get them to respond (we tell you where to get every
one of the items offered for free from the Internet, or from an insurance company or a B/D, etc).

3. A reply coupon must accompany your insurance newsletter. The coupon urges your prospect to mail back
for information that was mentioned in your newsletter. Each month, you will get from 2% to 3%
of these coupons back from readers (e.g. send 500 newsletters and you will get 10-15
responses—won’t it be nice to have them contact you for a change?). This response opens the
door to an appointment and then a sale. You can directly trace sales that you would have
otherwise missed to your SeniorFinances newsletter. It’s like having a sales assistant calling on
your prospects and clients, setting you up for appointments.

When you order the SeniorFinances Insurance Newsletter, we give you the articles or reports that you can send in response to their inquiries or tell you where to get them at no cost. So you have a turnkey system to get their attention, respond, and then follow up for an appointment. You will easily do business with 30% of the people who respond. It’s an easy extra few sales a month because you really don’t do any selling; you just give them what they asked for.

“My first call came from Mollie … The newsletter prompted her to call me about the $150,000 she had. The money was moved into her assets that I managed.”
G. Campbell, Ashford, CT

Stop Losing Sales

Use the SeniorFinances Insurance newsletter. It is designed specifically for the mature market (affluent investors age 50+). We do not mention individual products by brand, but we do talk about insurance products and services and not just vague concepts. The readers want to know more and will respond because the articles entice the reader to request additional details. Each article is a tasty morsel, whetting the reader’s appetite for more.

Your time is worth over $200 an hour, so it wouldn’t be worth even 12 minutes of your time writing your own insurance newsletter. This is the easy way to get it done and get calls and responses every month from people wanting to invest with you! You download it each month and can make as many copies as you want on your office laser printer (or use the email version). It really looks like it comes from your office—not some slick 4-color newsletter that everyone knows
you did not write.

Customize it!

We realize that no two financial professionals have the same business. So you have flexibility to customize the newsletter. I know that of the three to four articles in each newsletter, not every article will fit your business. So we give you a choice of articles to use. You get access to our database of over 200 prior articles on our company’s website. FINRA review
letters are supplied to you each month.

Need to change some wording or insert a paragraph about your upcoming seminar? Since you receive the insurance newsletter electronically, just bring it up on your PC screen and add any text you like. Have a truly customized newsletter by spending just a few minutes on each issue. And we show you how to easily insert your picture right from your computer screen into the newsletter.

Make as Many Copies As You Want

Get the insurance newsletter for the equivalent of $49 per month and make as many copies as you desire. It’s not like one of those letters that you pay for by the copy. Once you subscribe for the low annual price, you can make as many copies as you want—to mail to clients and prospects, to hand out at seminars, to leave in the reception room at your doctor’s office!

A monthly insurance newsletter is essential to get the most out of your seminars or other prospecting. You’ve spent the time and effort meeting them and heating them up; don’t let the prospects get
cold!!!

To meet prospects

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You want to be able to show your 67 year old client that at age 67, he has a 10% chance of living to age 95.  So in case he’s the one out of ten persons that do, does he want to be financially prepared?  If so, then your plan for this client is very different than if you use age 82 as his life expectancy.

Get your FREE copy of the ”LIFE EXPECTANCY PROBABILITY TABLE” so that your planning for clients is accurate (and you have a tool to show prospects why their current advisor may not be ”on the ball”)

LIFE EXPECTANCY PROBABILITY TABLE download
Feel free to use this approach in your financial marketing and seminars announcing that most financial advisors use “wrong” life expectancy when doing financial planning

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If you want to gain prospects that other financial advisors lose, do business with real estate owners, free up frozen assets, then explore these 4 ways to avoid or defer capital gains taxes on stocks, real estate and other capital assets. Have prospects liquidate these assets they  believed were frozen with embedded capital gains. Liquidate assets that you can help reinvest or use for insurance or estate planning purposes. Profit from 1031 exchanges, the capital gains elimination trust, non-recourse loans, and other strategies that most in financial services don’t know.

If you can show prospects four ways to eliminate capital gains tax, many will sell these assets and redeploy those assets to more appropriate opportunities.  These are strategies their CPA never mentioned–I promise you.  If you want to gain a lot of new prospects this tax season and help your existing clients, get this video and learn Four Ways to Eliminate Capital Gains Taxes.

Use this new knowledge as part of your prospecting system.

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You must separate the meeting of prospects (i.e. marketing) from selling.  If you don;t meet6 people, you won’t make any sales.  The way you meet people, is to offer what they want.  Then, once you are face to face, you have the opportunity for fact finding and to sell your product or service, if appropriate.

If you don’t believe me, then read this article of how these financial professionals attracted more new clients in  a couple years by offering CDs, than you are likely to attract in your entire career.

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