You're listening to “Financial Advisor Marketing”: the best show on the planet for financial advisors who want to get more clients, without all the stress. You're about to get the real scoop on everything from lead generation to closing the deal.
James is the founder of TheAdvisorCoach.com, where you can find an entire suite of products designed to help financial advisors grow their businesses more rapidly than ever before. Now, here is your host, James Pollard.
James: A few days ago, I got myself a large iced coffee from Dunky—I call it Dunky. It used to be Dunkin’ Donuts. You call it Dunks. I don't know, people call it whatever the heck it is. It's the purple and orange store that sells coffee. Used to have great donuts, but now they just get them trucked in. They don't make them fresh anymore. It kind of sucks—and I decided to lock in. I was going to go through my collection of 2,670 emails. I wrote every single one of these emails and I had data for all of them, too. I had their open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and more. I had it all, baby. [01:06.2]
What's crazy is that these are only the emails that I have in my email software right now. I actually used to use a company called Mad Mimi for a couple years. They don't even exist anymore. That shows you how long I've been in the game and how long I've been helping financial advisors and doing marketing. I have literally used tools that people getting started today will never see or use. I had lots of emails written in Mad Mimi. That doesn't even include the emails that I've written for other people.
But, anyway, let's round up and say I had 2,700 emails. My goal was to go through all 2,700 and see what patterns I could observe among the best performing ones. It took me all day to go through them and analyze them. I ended up taking more than 20 pages of notes for myself and it was all about what I observed so I can replicate it in my business. Obviously, I want to avoid the losing patterns and I want to do more of the winning patterns. [02:01.4]
What I want to do in this podcast episode is share some of the lessons I learned with you. Now, keep in mind this comes from real-world experience, from someone who has actually written and sent thousands of emails and has the real data showing what works and what doesn't. If you can find someone else who has personally written 2,700 emails and personally set them to his own list and has the data for that, then please listen to that person. Otherwise, listen to me.
Also, I want to keep it real with you. I want to be a hundred percent transparent. That's a policy I have here at the podcast. What I'm going to share with you on this episode is just the tip of the iceberg. I'm not going to give you everything for free, because I want to reserve some of the absolute best stuff for my Inner Circle members who actually pay for it. Still, I know you're going to get a lot from this podcast episode, because, again, it's based on real-world data and years of experience. I am going to give you some good stuff, I promise you, and let's get started. [02:55.5]
The first lesson I want to share with you is that current events worked really well and I don't like this at all because I prefer emails that can be replicated and duplicated. I like the evergreen emails that I can use again and again.
I'll give you an example of a current events email. One of the best ones I sent was on election day and it was about voting. Kind of, I don't want to give it away. If you're on my email list, you could just search for this. The subject line was, “Here's who I'm voting for today.” If I sent that email in the middle of August, it would be weird and it wouldn't work as well, because people would be confused. They would think, Wait a minute, there's no election going on today.
Another email that worked really well was about the Super Bowl. I don't remember what that was, what the subject line was. It was about Mattress Mack, the guy who placed a huge bet. I don't remember the exact-- I mean, come on, 2,700 emails. Give me a break. But if I sent that in October, it wouldn't work as well. So, current events are a double-edged sword, because even though they work really well, you can't use them again, or at least not until the next time that event rolls around. [04:00.0]
The second lesson I want to share with you has to do with open rates. Now, I really don't care about open rates. I care far more about conversion rates, because sometimes the emails that get the lowest open rates make the most sales and vice versa. Only amateur marketers obsess about open rates, but I still like to know what the open rates are because the open rate can give me good information about a potential headline for my ads or my direct mail, because I can use a good subject line elsewhere to get attention.
Here's what I've discovered about subject lines. My most successful—and by “successful,” I mean most opened emails in this case, but keep in mind, I don't consider that to be successful, as the end all be all. I consider money in versus money out to be the primary metric, but my most opened emails—had subject lines that flew in the face of conventional wisdom. [04:52.0]
If you googled how to write a good subject line and you started reading those articles, you would see that my best subject lines followed none of the advice. In fact, I even asked ChatGPT how to write good subject lines, and my best subject lines broke every rule it gave me. That's just another lesson that if you're trying to depend on ChatGPT and artificial intelligence for your marketing, you are going to have a bad time.
You might not realize it and you might think that you're being smart, but someone like me who has the actual data from real-world tests—again, I cannot stress this enough, if you meet someone else who has all this data and has actually tested it and has actually made money from it, then, sure, listen to that person. But until then, okay, you're probably going to want to listen to me—and I'm telling you, every single thing that ChatGPT said about how to write good subject lines, my most opened emails followed none of those rules.
I'll give you one example. One of the things you see quite often is that specificity increases open rates, meaning, if you can include a specific number or something like that, people will be more likely to open it—something like “How I made $101,295” should work better than “How I made $100,000”—but that's not what I found. [06:08.0]
I found that specificity only increases open rates sometimes, not all the time. You could not depend on this. It is not statistically significant enough to influence my open rates on average. I had some emails where I actually tested this because I had this theory. I would test an email like “Marketing lessons from Genesis” against something like “Marketing lessons from Genesis 39:5” and the general ones, the marketing lessons from Genesis where there was no specificity, it was just kind of vague, they won almost every time. So, something to think about if you're trying to depend on these rules and all these amateur marketers who don't actually have the data, you could be screwing yourself.
The third lesson I want to share with you is that my best-performing emails usually got the most unsubscribes, meaning, the more powerful and persuasive, the email was, the more likely it was to push people away—and that's not a bad thing. In fact, it's one of the most successful outcomes you can have. It's one of the best possible outcomes. [07:11.3]
Let me explain. See, when most people see an unsubscribe, they flinch. They treat it as a personal rejection, or worse, they see it as a failure, because it just stings. I get it, people are leaving your world. You want to be friends with people, I get it. We're wired to like other people and be around other people. But when you've been in the game as long as I have, when you've sent thousands of emails and you've watched the numbers like a hawk, you start to realize something—unsubscribes are pretty awesome. They're healthy. They're vital to the success of your list.
Here's why. Every time someone unsubscribes, they're segmenting themselves out of your audience for you. They're raising their hand and they're saying, “Hey, this isn't for me,” and that is fantastic, because the truth is, your emails are not for everyone. Your message isn't for everyone. Your offer isn't for everyone. [07:55.6]
Seriously, listen to me, if you are not listening to this podcast right now, if you're off in your own little world somewhere, come back and listen to this—you want people on your list who are aligned with your worldview, your values and just the way you live life, people who want to hear from you. Life is too short to deal with people who just give you a hard time and you can't stand.
Email marketing is so awesome because it segments those people out of your world. People who should be doing business with you should be the people who are left on your email list. Everyone else is just noise. I would rather have a list of 1,000 engaged, ready-to-do-business-with-me subscribers than a list of 10,000 people who barely care, the lukewarm people. I'd rather have people be hot or cold. I don't want lukewarm.
Here's something else email rookies don't think about. If people are ignoring your emails or deleting them without reading or marking them as spam, your sender reputation takes a hit, but when disengaged people unsubscribe, they actually help you. They're removing themselves before they do real damage to your sender reputation. They're cleaning your list for you, which means engagement rates go up, your open rates go up, and your deliverability stays high, which means your future emails are going to perform even better. So, ironically, the people who leave are actually protecting your ability to reach the people who stay. [09:18.2]
If no one is unsubscribing from your emails, you're probably not seeing anything worth hearing. The emails that get the strongest reactions, both positive and negative—remember, hot and cold. I don't want lukewarm. I want hot or I want cold—those emails are the ones that stand out, because they take a stand. They plant a flag in the ground and say, “This is what I believe,” and that triggers two things. Some people get offended, upset or uncomfortable and unsubscribe, but other people go, “Finally, someone who gets me,” and they move forward. If you're trying to please everyone, you'll likely do business with no one. [09:57.3]
Listen up, financial advisors. This is something special I'm doing exclusively for people who listen to this podcast. If you subscribe to the Inner Circle Newsletter over at TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching, I will send you a collection of seven copyright-free emails, personally written by me, that you can use right away to begin getting more clients.
I call these my “objection-busting” emails, because they are designed to overcome the biggest objections financial advisors face. All you have to do is send me an email letting me know you’ve subscribed and I will reply with a link where you can download them for free.
I originally offered these in the May 2024 Inner Circle Newsletter issue, and it was one of the most popular bonuses I've ever given away. Today, these seven objection-busting, copyright-free emails are only available to listeners of this podcast, because I'm not mentioning them anywhere else. Go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching to subscribe today. Now, back to the show.
The fourth lesson I learned is that I need to do a much better job walking the line between sharing information about myself and keeping a relentless market focus, because I love financial advisors. If you can't tell, I absolutely do. I love helping them get more clients. I love helping them build their businesses. Candidly, I'm the best in the world at it, or at least, in the top five, for sure. [11:18.7]
But here's something funny. I did a lot of test, and here's a psychological lesson for you—sometimes people do things because they want to believe that it will work. They keep doing it and doing it because they believe that it'll eventually work or they want it to be true. This is one of those things where I fell victim to that trap. I kept trying to test emails where I talked about myself a little bit more, just to see if it would work, because deep down, I guess I wanted to talk about myself a lot. Who knows? I would try to write amazing emails by telling a story about me.
For example, I had this email with the subject line, “Why my marketing is 50 times more effective than average,” and on paper, it should have been an absolute monster runaway winner. It had a bold claim. It had insider information. It was actually extremely valuable. I legitimately just flat out told people, “Hey, this is what I'm doing. This is why you should do it. This is what you should take away.” It was an amazing email on paper. [12:20.6]
But guess what? It flopped. It didn't do well at all. It didn't get any replies. I don't think it converted at all. If it did, it only got like one or two people to convert, and it didn't get that many unsubscribes, which, again, is often a good sign, because you're striking nerve. It just landed with a dull thud. It flopped, and it taught me a lesson that has now become one of the core pillars of how I write and think about email marketing—your prospect should be the focus, not you. [12:51.8]
This is kind of tough for me to accept, and it's kind of tough for financial advisors to do, in full transparency, because some of the best emails that I've seen for financial advisors, they do build credibility. They do talk about the financial advisors, but it's not overwhelming. It'll just be a little sentence here and there, like, This is what I learned when I was getting my CFP. This is what I discovered five years ago when I was helping a client do XYZ, because you kind of say unconsciously, hmm, this is how long I've been in business. These are the certifications I have. These are the credentials I have.
So, that's kind of how it works for financial advisors, but if a financial advisor were to send an email, like, “Why I'm a better financial advisor than everyone else,” where it's that overt, it probably wouldn't work as well. So, when I sat back and I reflected on those tests that I did, I realized something obvious in hindsight. No one cares about me, at least not really. What people care about when they're on my email list is how their marketing can become more effective.
They care about their client-acquisition struggles. They care about their pipeline, their fees, their schedule, their revenue, their stress. They care about themselves. They are the main characters, and if your marketing doesn't treat your prospects like they are the main characters and their stories, then you'll probably lose them. I don't want to say you definitely will lose them. You just probably will, because those emails where I went really hard and talking about myself, they didn't do that well. Again, I am super guilty of this and I need to do a better job of it, so I'll keep that in mind going forward. [14:17.8]
The final lesson I want to share with you here is, and I know this will ruffle some feathers, but the more value, quote-unquote, “value” I tried to cram into an email, the worse it performed. Let me repeat that. More value equals worse results. I know, I know, this goes against everything you've been told by the coaches, consultants, gurus and lead-gen agencies. They tell you to provide value and to teach and to educate, and to give away your best stuff for free, and all of these little things.
I understand the intent behind that advice, but in the real world, where results matter, where emails are judged by money in and money out, this advice falls apart really fast. One of the worst-performing emails I've ever sent was this subject line: “How much should advisors pay to acquire clients?” It was phrased as a question, I guess, not that that matters, because questions can do really well, but it was “How much should advisors pay to acquire clients?” [15:15.2]
That sounds really useful, right? It was practical. It addressed a topic that financial advisors wanted to know about, because when I've talked about this topic elsewhere, it worked really well, but it flopped. It did not do very well at all. It had low opens. It had low clicks. It had no traction. Why? Because the value itself—that is an actually valuable email. When I'm telling you, this is how much financial advisors should pay to acquire clients, that is extremely valuable, especially coming from someone who literally does financial advisor marketing every single day.
If a financial advisor wants to grow a profitable business, then that financial advisor needs to understand that profit is revenue minus expenses, and one of the ways that you can decrease your expenses and increase your profit is by reducing the amount that you pay for clients—so, this is extremely valuable, but that's not how the brain works, especially in the inbox. [16:09.2]
Your readers aren't judging your email with a rational spreadsheet in their hand or in their head, or either one. They're reacting in split seconds based on curiosity, emotion, novelty, story, those things, and that email implied none of those. It was just very matter of fact. It was like, Hey, here's what you should be paying.
There's another reason these value-packed emails underperform. They rob the reader of discovery. When you spell everything out, when you do all the thinking for them, you're giving answers without letting them feel the tension of the question, and in persuasion, tension is everything. The best-performing emails don't just give people the value. They don't just give people answers. They build pressure. They agitate that problem. They spotlight the gap between where that person is and where that person wants to be, and when you give people that neat, fully wrapped answer on a silver platter, you're just getting rid of all that tension. There's no reason to keep reading. [17:08.3]
It's like watching a movie where the plot is explained in the first five minutes and everything is just given away for you. It might feel like you're getting information about the movie as you watch. It might be informative. It might teach you stuff, but it's not engaging. You're not really captivated by the movie anymore.
All right, let's bring this home. I want to wrap up this episode. If there's one big takeaway from this whole episode, it's this: real-world marketing is not about theory, it's about behavior. It's about what actually works. It's about watching what actually gets attention, what actually drives clicks, and what actually converts.
After going through 2,700 emails spanning years of trial, error, testing, tweaking and sending, I can tell you firsthand, most of the, quote-unquote, “best practices” you hear online are either incomplete, where they don't tell you the whole story, or they're just flat out wrong—like, unsubscribes are a good thing. They help you refine your audience. They help you sharpen your message. They improve your deliverability, honestly. [18:09.5]
Making your emails all about you, which some articles will say that you should do, because you want to build credibility, especially people in the financial advisor marketing space—they'll say, if getting clients as a financial advisor is a function of trust, then in order to build trust, you need to build credibility, and in order to build credibility, you need to talk about yourself. So, logically, it kind of makes sense—but if you go too hard on the credibility building, where you're just talking about yourself and nothing else, then that can hurt you.
Another piece of advice I've seen everywhere is the whole value thing. Cramming as much value as possible into your emails is the fastest way to get ignored. But the best-performing emails are emotional, curiosity-driven. They're very simple and they're focused on the reader—and I forgot the tension thing. They move people forward by creating that tension, not by overwhelming them with information, not by just giving them the answer or whatever it is that you want them to know right smack dab in the beginning. [19:05.7]
Like I said earlier, all of the stuff that I'm showing you here, it's just the tip of the iceberg, so if you're an Inner Circle member, you already know we go way deeper on stuff like this in the print newsletter every single month. You've seen how I break down these strategies. I give you real-world campaigns. I show you what's working right now to get more clients.
But if you're not in the Inner Circle yet and you're listening to this, thinking, Hey, I kind of like this. I want more of this real stuff, not this fluff and recycled advice that I get everywhere else. I want real marketing advice that actually works for financial advisors, then go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching and check it out. I mail a new issue every single month. I host live office hours where I answer questions. I break down strategies and I share the kind of insight that most financial advisors never get access to.
So, that's it for this week. If you liked this episode, be sure to subscribe. Leave a review. Share it with another advisor who could benefit. Do all the things that people do with podcasts. Thank you so much for listening, and I’ll catch you next week. [20:02.1]
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