Newsletters are an effective tool to help you build your profile with clients, says Richard Heft, executive director of Ext. Marketing Inc. in Toronto.
While many advisors meet with clients only for annual portfolio reviews, a client newsletter can keep you on your clients’ radar between important yearly meetings.
Sharing news and ideas on a regular basis has the added benefit of showing that you’re a trusted resource. That can encourage clients to contact you during significant life changes, such as selling a business, gaining an inheritance or a new addition to the family.
Here are three tips for planning your client newsletter:
1. Create an editorial calendar
The first thing Heft recommends to all of his clients is to build an editorial calendar, which is a detailed schedule mapping out your content for the coming year.
“This way, you’re not left scrambling each issue to come up with ideas,” Heft says. Since the majority of your content won’t be time-sensitive economic news, planning a year in advance will streamline the writing process.
Most of the time, Heft says, you’ll be writing about lifestyle topics, financial planning and products. You should have ample opportunity to plan — and even create content — ahead of time.
2. Develop a theme
Try to stick with an over-arching theme for each issue, Heft says. For example, in spring, you might create an article about RRSPs, paired with one on tax strategies. In the summer, you can write about registered education savings plans because children will be heading back to school in the September.
3. Avoid over-communicating
Heft generally doesn’t recommend contacting clients more often than quarterly. “You don’t want to overwhelm your clients with information every month,” he says.
A newsletter is an opportunity to position yourself as an expert, but you may run out of good ideas if you communicate too frequently, he adds.
This is the first part in a three-part series on client newsletters.
Next: Content tips for your newsletters.