E-mail marketing should be a standard part of every advisor's marketing strategy. Unfortunately, many advisors confuse the ability to send hundreds of e-mails through Outlook as "e-mail marketing." Advisors who use this program put themselves at risk of violating the federal CAN-SPAM Act and also exposing private client e-mail addresses to their entire e-mail database if they don't properly blind carbon copy recipients.
Luckily, this risk can be mitigated by using an e-mail marketing system such as Constant Contact or MailChimp. These systems such provide:
- Visually appealing HTML e-mail templates that are available for immediate use.
- Tools to create custom templates based on your brand.
- Inserts an "unsubscribe" button in every e-mail sent, ensuring you are in compliance with one of the CAN-SPAM rules that requires senders to honor opt-out requests.
- Records of the list of contacts who were sent each e-mail as well as the names of recipients who opened the e-mail.
- The ability to create links and forms that can be added to your website.
- The segmentation of contacts into different groups (e.g. clients, prospects, COIs) allowing customized e-mails for each group.
- Reports that include information such as who opened the e-mail, who clicked on links within the e-mail and which e-mail addresses are no longer valid.
- The ability to merge data into the body of an e-mail such as first name, last name, location, anniversary date, etc for personalized e-mails.
Before you send out your next marketing e-mail to your hundreds of contacts in Outlook, think about the benefits of switching to an e-mail marketing system. Not only do your e-mails look more professional, you can track the success of the e-mail and mitigate your risk.
