Email marketing and Internet marketing are way underutiltized by financial advisors and insurance agents.  As a result, they miss out on finding a lot of business and that includes marketing to seniors who are using the internet in rapidly increasing numbers. After all, where do people of any age go to find fnancial information?  they do a web search! That means to grow your business, you must be Internt saavy and usilitze financil services email marketing. 

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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