Why it’s time 2 txt ur clients and prospects

If a 2021 study of advisors and digital marketing could speak, it would say: Text your clients!

Research conducted for the Financial Advisor Online Marketing Report & Benchmarking Study for our firm found that text messaging is the top area of opportunity for financial advisors to foster and grow relationships with clients and prospects. Here are a few reasons why:

According to data from Pew Research, 97% of Americans own a cellphone and 85% percent have a smartphone. Further, smartphone dependency has not only held steady but increased over the last two years among the 18-to-29 age group. For advisors who want to make headway with young professionals at the start of their careers, this is a prime opportunity to meet them where they are.

And then when it comes to the read rate of text messages versus emails, the difference is striking: 98% of texts get read — 82% within the first five minutes — while only 25% of emails are opened at all. If you think about it, this makes a ton of sense. We’re constantly getting spammed with emails. You probably have a folder of them right now on your screen you can’t bear to click on, because, who has the time?

Texting, by contrast, is a powerful form of fast, effective communication. When we looked at the data on appointment reminders, the same open-rate trend held true with 55% of respondents saying they would prefer to receive reminders via text message versus 35% saying they would prefer to receive notices by email. (In response, our firm is going to market later this year with a text-messaging platform for broker-dealers that enables advisors to engender compliant conversations with their clients.)

Anecdotally, text messaging is just a more personal mode of communication than email. Texts arrive on an object that is always at our side — and when it’s not, we feel lost. So simply by texting, advisors interject themselves into the client’s environment in an authentic way that stretches past the advisor-client dynamic.

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Text messaging has come a long way since 1992 when you had to press 9 four times to get the letter “Z.” In the 20 years since, even your parents have become pros at texting you without extra spaces and typos (mostly).

So if you’ve been living in the flip-phone world, perhaps it’s time to update your view on text messaging clients and see it for what it is: the best marketing and client relationship management tool in your arsenal.

For advisors who haven’t gotten into texting their clients yet but are interested in doing so, there is no time like the present. Start doing your research and strategize about how to fit texting into your practice.

And LMK how it goes.