This post has been written by wealth advisers Susan Chesson and Helen Modly of Focus Wealth Management, a U.S.-based fee-only registered investment adviser. Susan Chesson is CIO and Helen Modly is president. This post initially appeared on MorningstarAdvisor.com.
Several years ago, when all performance reports and newsletters went out to clients via regular mail, it was impossible to see which clients ran to the mailbox to see their investment returns and soak up the wisdom from your newsletter, and who left it buried under an ever-growing mountain of catalogs and bills on the kitchen table.
The adoption of electronic portals to securely disseminate information to clients is not just a simple convenience. It also permits us to see which clients are truly engaged and which clients are not. Reviewing tracking reports on portal activity, especially after quarterly performance uploads, clearly indicates which clients are aware of our messages and attempts at connecting with them, and which clients may be feeling neglected.
Using "push" technology--the act of proactively sending information to clients--will always be more effective than "pull" technology, where the client is required to take action to log in to a website in order to review their accounts. Data security concerns prevent us from emailing out performance reports, but more-generic information such as newsletters or economic updates should be pushed out to clients and made more freely available.
As you design your communication plan, consider both the level of customisation of the information you are sending out, as well as the method of communication. For example, you may determine that a top-tier client should get an annual in-person review meeting, a financial plan update, a couple of check-in calls, plus six to eight other touches.
When you review your client service performance from the prior year, create a table (see sample below) to list the interactions--meetings, phone calls, email, other communication--for each client, and assign them a score.
You may already know which clients need more hand-holding and which are content to meet every couple of years unless there's a problem, but you should also know whether your efforts are actually reaching your clients and maintaining the level of connection and service you anticipated.
An annual review of your outgoing communications and client-specific metrics enables you to put yourself in your client's position and gain a better sense of what they are seeing and hearing from you. For example, if you send out your newsletter via an email marketing service and your clients never open it, they will never know about your new staff introductions, your request for their most recent tax filing, and any other story you would like them to see before you finally meet up in person.
Did they ignore it because it went straight to their junk or clutter folder because they receive 200+ emails per day? Did they assume it was spam because it wasn't flagged with your firm name in the sender/subject line?
If you are concerned your mass mailings do end up in your clients' spam folder, there are free services available online that will check the content of your email and verify whether or not it will pass most standard commercially available spam filters. There are also free services online to check your email server's Internet protocol (IP) address against blacklists if you suspect your emails are not getting through at all.
If this all sounds complicated, the easiest option is to employ an email delivery service. Most services will allow you to maintain multiple mailing lists, keep track of delivery and open rates, and even see if your clients are forwarding emails that were of particular interest to them. This information can be invaluable in developing more meaningful client engagement.
In a high-touch practice such as ours, we have found that setting activity triggers in our CRM program around key birthdays or major life events is an effective way of communicating information at a time when clients might be seeking guidance on a specific topic. For example, for clients with children starting college, we might send out an article on preparing young adults for financial responsibility in June--after they make their college decision in May and before they pack their bags in August. Or we may send out information about Social Security claiming strategies as a client approaches age 62, then again at "full retirement age." Typically, articles that are relevant to a transition in our clients' lives, timed appropriately and including actionable recommendations, will be opened. If you then follow up with a phone call, you will add value to your clients' financial life and further cement your relationship.
Many of our clients are busy professionals just looking for the facts--and they benefit, as do prospective clients, from being able to web-surf at their leisure. We rewrote our website in 2015 and made it mobile-friendly.
Following that, an important adjustment to our communication plan in 2016 is to begin posting our firm's quarterly newsletters and economic updates to our website.
Another improvement we will make is to add links under our email signature driving traffic to our website by linking to recent blog posts.
As we improve our social media presence, we will also add links to our firm's Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn pages.
Effective client communication is never one-size-fits-all. Regular monitoring of your clients' open and forward rates offers clear guidance on what is working and what is not. We have great tools at our disposal--let's use them to become better advisers and stronger relationship managers.
