Why every mortgage & protection adviser needs a newsletter and how to get started

Under the FCA’s Consumer Duty one of the major requirements is to support consumers with their understanding of the financial products that will help them achieve positive outcomes.

Keeping in touch with your client, isn’t just a nice thing to do nor is it just a tool to help raise brand awareness, it is an essential method that can help customers with their own financial literacy.

Of course, under Consumer Duty you also have a responsibility to ensure all of your communications, written or verbal are clear, fair and not misleading.

So it is clear that a monthly newsletter may not just be a nice thing to have but actually an essential tool to have but how do you get started?

Choosing an email marketing platform

Once you have decided that you’re going to launch a monthly, quarterly, bi-monthly or however frequently newsletter, you are going to need to find the email marketing tool to do the job.

There are a wide range of them out there, a lot of them offering very similar tools and options to the other.

Take a look at both Mailchimp and Mailerlite as good places to start, these provide you with both entry level options and the tools you need with which to grow over the long term.

Ideally you’re going to want a platform that allows for some automation. The purpose behind automation is so that you can build a series of emails that get sent to your client over a period of time.

Automation is perfect for nurturing those cold leads. Remember it takes 7 – 12 touch points before a new prospect will consider becoming a customer. A single email is just one of those touch points.

Collecting email addresses

Once you have chosen your email marketing application a lot of them come with the capability for you to embed forms onto your website.

These forms act as data collectors on your live site and send the email addresses directly into your email application. Saving you time and ensuring data entry is accurate.

If you already have a list of emails, you could import these directly into the email marketing application, and you can start marketing as soon as you have compliant content with which to promote.

A quick note on data processing, remember you are handling personal data and as such you will need to ensure your are doing so compliantly and inline with Data Protection. Equally you will need to obtain a Data Protection Certificate from the ICO (Information Commissioners Office).

This certificate is compulsory and there is a yearly renewable fee of £45.

Data Collection Methods

Other methods that you can use to obtain a clients email address is to ask for it as part of your advice process.

You may then need to do some manual work in adding it to the email marketing application, either via direct input or through using Excel spreadsheets to upload the data from your CRM.

Permissions

A lot of the time you will be able to email the client on the grounds of legitimate interest, essentially they have done business with you and therefore they would expect to hear from you.

However, if a client has made it clear that they don’t want to receive email communications from you during the advice process then ensure your their marketing preferences reflect the same in your CRM.

Preparing your content

With your email addresses now collected and forms on your website collecting new prospects, you’re going to need fresh content to send them.

This is where advisers need to pay close attention if you start promoting financial products within your newsletter you’re moving into the realm of financial promotions and compliance, more on that below.

However, if you have information about your business such as a new hire, new office or perhaps a charity event that you are running then that kind of information will not need to go to the financial promotions team, as you are not promoting a financial product or service.

Of course, I’d certainly expect your newsletter to talk about financial products, offer helpful advice and guidance on how I could improve my financial position and also recommend products that maybe of interest to me.

The best way to prepare your content is to draft it out in a Word document and follow these steps:

• Drop the Jargon: Nobody cares what an SVR or an ERC is. Talk to them like human beings, not like a compliance manual. If a 12-year-old can’t understand your email, delete it and start again.
  
• Keep it Mobile: 80% of your clients are opening your emails on their phones. If you are sending them a giant wall of text, it’s going straight to the bin. Bullet points. Short sentences. Get to the point.
  
• ONE Call to Action: Stop putting 4 different links in your email. “Read my blog, follow us on Facebook, book a call, look at my amazing steak.” One email needs just one call to action. Tell them exactly what to do next.
  
• Stop Making Them Wait: If a lead comes through your website and they don’t have an autoresponder in their inbox within 5 minutes, they are already looking at your competitor. Speed is power.

Once done, you’re good to send the email over to the compliance team for them to have sight of it, make recommendations for improvement.

Financial Promotion and compliance

I cannot stress this enough, always, always get your email marketing signed off by someone within your firms Compliance Team.

Sending out non-compliant marketing communications is a breach of Section 21 of the Financial Services Markets Act 2000.

Sending your first newsletter

With everything signed off, branded up with your colours, logo you are good to send it out to your clients.

The best time to send out your email is in the morning between 08:30 and 09:30 in the morning, and in the afternoon between 14:00 – 15:00.

That being said you may find you have different times and metrics. Let your audience guide you in terms of open rates, bounce rates, click through rates and unsubscribes.

Adjust your content, subject lines and the times in which you send out your newsletter.

Email marketing and a regular newsletter isn’t dead, so long as it is personalised to the needs and requirements of your consumers. A blanket, none solicited email, now that is dead.

Through email marketing you can keep in touch with your client bank, build a relationship and help grow your firm over the long term.

I’m documenting my journey into financial services, combining my 16 years of marketing know how with compliance. For more tips and tricks like this, subscribe to my weekly newsletter below: