In an internal study of 700 advisors, Cetera discovered that financial planners who contact their best clients more than 12 times a year generate, on average, 68% more revenue per principal than those who communicate with these clients less than six times a year.
“Engagement drives loyalty,” said Cetera Chief Marketing Officer Susan Theder.
Roughly 80% of advisors think 75% clients are loyal, she said citing a book by Russ Alan Prince, Cultivating the Middleclass Millionaire.
“When you ask clients with $550,000 to $1 million in investable assets, only about 23% say they are loyal to their advisors,” she added. “Just 7.6% are loyal between $2 million and $6 million. So there’s a real perception gap.”
To help busy advisors increase the frequency with which they contact clients, Cetera recently launched a new online marketing solution, Connect2Client. It’s designed to enable advisors to send out emails, paper postcards, newsletters with in-depth articles and a variety of messages, including birthday greetings, on a regular basis. Theder described the service as 100% online and offline with a deep library of content and customization features.
Cetera built it by creating a private label version of the financial services marketing materials from Peter Montoya’s MarketingLibrary and MarketingPro products.
“We’ve made it single sign on from our work station,” she added.
The service is free to Cetera advisors with revenues of $175,000 or more – about a third of the advisors in the Cetera network – and available for a nominal fee to smaller advisors.
“If we can facilitate client communications and make it easier,” Theder said, “then we can help them significantly drive revenue per business.”
The new offering is part of Cetera’s ongoing effort to drive significant growth not only via strategic acquisition but through the development of its existing advisors’ businesses.
Ann Marsh writes for
