Writing E-Mails Your Clients Will Actually Read

Wednesday, November 7th, 2012

by Stephen Wer­sh­ing, The Client Dri­ven Practice

In this third install­ment describ­ing ses­sions from FPA Expe­ri­ence 2012, I wanted to review the ses­sion “Writ­ing Let­ters And E-Mails Peo­ple Will Read” pre­sented by Susan Weiner of Invest​men​twrit​ing​.com.

Did you ever write a note to a client and get no response? Ever talk to a client to follow-up an e-mail only to find they have no rec­ol­lec­tion of it? It may be because your e-mails are put together poorly, dif­fi­cult to under­stand, or not compelling.

Weiner sug­gests keep­ing a few basic prin­ci­ples in mind that will help your writ­ing reach its tar­get much more effec­tively. What is it your clients care about when they hear from you? What keeps them awake at night? Why will they care about your con­tent? Will they under­stand your vocab­u­lary? What do you want to accom­plish by send­ing this e-mail? Here are a few areas where you can prob­a­bly improve the qual­ity and read­abil­ity of your e-mails:

Sub­ject Line

Keep it short. Make it some­thing they care about. You remem­ber the old story about everybody’s favorite radio sta­tion? WIFM– what’s in it for me? Put that right in the sub­ject line and it is more likely your client will read the body.

Head­ings

Con­sider break­ing up your e-mails by using head­ings before cer­tain para­graphs. Stud­ies show that eight out of 10 peo­ple will read a head­ing where only two in 10 will read the body. Draw your client’s atten­tion to the parts you want them to read.

Bul­let Lists

When list­ing a num­ber of things you need to address with your clients, con­sider mak­ing it a list with bul­let points rather than a para­graph. These days espe­cially, we are all con­di­tioned to scan things rather than read them thor­oughly. A bul­let list will help impor­tant items stand out and catch your client’s eye.

Com­plex Sentences

I strug­gle with this one myself. My staff used to refer to me as “the king of the run-on sen­tence.” Be con­scious of when you are try­ing to cover too much in a sin­gle sen­tence. Con­sider break­ing it into shorter sen­tences, or even a list.

Use Sim­ple Language

Advi­sors have a ten­dency to write in jar­gon. Keep your audi­ence in mind. Avoid lan­guage you would use with other pro­fes­sion­als. Write notes to clients using an every­day vocabulary.

Keep these prin­ci­ples in mind and you will get more mes­sages through to the peo­ple you want to com­mu­ni­cate with.

Copy­right © The Client Dri­ven Practice

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Tags: Awake At Night, Bullet Points, Complex Sentences, Driven Practice, E Mail, Favorite Radio Station, Heading, Headings, Paragraph, Paragraphs, Readability, Recollection, Run On Sentence, Sending Mail, Sessions, Subject Line, Susan Weiner, Target, Vocabulary, Writing Letters
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Identifying Client Hot Buttons

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Every advi­sor rec­og­nizes the impor­tance of know­ing the hot but­tons that moti­vate key clients — the things that are really impor­tant to them and in some cases keep them up at night.

The ques­tion is how to iden­tify those hot buttons.

The obvi­ous answer is to ask — and that’s a good start­ing point.  The dif­fi­culty is that the way we ask may not always give us clear answers.

Sup­pose you’re talk­ing to a key client and you say : “What are the most impor­tant things for you when it comes to your money, what keeps you awake at night?”

The prob­lem is that the answers you get may be the obvi­ous ones that are on the sur­face like los­ing money or not hav­ing enough money in retirement.

The chal­lenge is that there are often other hot but­tons that are just beneath the sur­face that we won’t know about unless we ask in a dif­fer­ent way.

So in addi­tion to ask­ing ’”What are the most impor­tant issues for you when it comes to your money?”, advi­sors should also ask some closed end ques­tions that are eas­ier for clients to answer.

Ask­ing closed end questions

The advan­tage of closed end ques­tions is that they’re easy to answer.

One option is to ask clients to go through a list of 10 to 15 areas which they’d like to talk about at some point, on which they’d like to receive infor­ma­tion or on which they’d be inter­ested in attend­ing a lunch or evening ses­sion.

You could ask clients to com­plete this sur­vey when they meet — this might work bet­ter for older clients.

Alter­na­tively, you could send clients an email with a link to one of online sur­vey tools such as Sur­vey Mon­key, Zoomerang or Sur­vey Gizmo.

Con­duct­ing an online survey

A com­mon ques­tion is what kind of response rate to expect to an online survey.

As part of a pilot test of a new ini­tia­tive Cli­entin­sights launched this spring, 20 advi­sors sent clients an email ask­ing them respond to a short online survey.

The aver­age response rate was just under 60%, well above average.

Three things boosted the response rate.

First, the sub­ject line said “A favour” — so the email got opened.

Next, the email said that advi­sors were look­ing for 3 min­utes of the clients’ time to com­plete a sur­vey to allow them to serve clients bet­ter  — and we made sure that the sur­vey was in fact 3 minutes.

And finally, in the PS each advi­sor said that as a small thank-you, one of the clients who responded would be drawn to receive a copy of The Snow­ball, the best-selling book about War­ren Buffett.

Today’s hot buttons

The sur­vey asked five ques­tions, the last of which listed 12 top­ics on which clients were asked whether they’d be inter­ested in receiv­ing arti­cles and video inter­views with experts.

Of these twelve top­ics, the per­cent of clients who expressed inter­est in receiv­ing infor­ma­tion var­ied from a low of 10% to a high of 60%.

Over­all, the responses fell into four categories.

There were three top­ics that got the most inter­est, with over 50% of clients express­ing interest.

The sub­ject that got the most inter­est was retire­ment income strate­gies– a case can be made that this reflects the aging client base that most advi­sors focus on. The other top­ics at the top of the list were pre­dic­tions for the econ­omy and the out­look for the stock market,

In the next cat­e­gory down were four top­ics with 30% to 40% of clients express­ing inter­est in receiv­ing information:

• inter­est rate forecasts
• infor­ma­tion on wills and pow­ers of attorney
• tax sav­ing strate­gies for busi­ness owners
• inter­views with money managers.

In the next tier down were three addi­tional topics:

• fam­ily com­mu­ni­ca­tion on finan­cial issues
• alter­na­tive invest­ments and hedge funds
• elder care

And at the bot­tom of the list with under 20% were two final topics:

• infor­ma­tion on cot­tage succession
• char­i­ta­ble giv­ing strategies.

Act­ing on the findings

There’s lim­ited value to gath­er­ing this infor­ma­tion unless you act on it.

You can use this sur­vey to help shape the areas on which you offer clients braod information.

And you can also use it as a cat­a­lyst for con­ver­sa­tions with key clients in a meet­ing or over the phone, in the process dig­ging deeper about what spe­cific infor­ma­tion clients are look­ing for in each cat­e­gory they’ve ticked off as a priority.

As a result of first iden­ti­fy­ing and then respond­ing to their hot but­tons, you end up serv­ing key clients bet­ter and lock­ing in rela­tion­ships in the process.

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Tags: Awake At Night, Compendium, Email, Enough Money, Evening Session, Gizmo, Good Starting Point, Hot Buttons, Important Things, Initiative, Lunch, Pilot Test, Response Rate, Retirement, Subject Line, Survey Monkey, Survey Tools, Target, Zoomerang
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