How to Create a Financial Advisor Newsletter

Nurturing a sense of trust with clients can increase retention rates and potentially generate new clients through referrals. Communication is central to that effort, and if you’re not leveraging the benefits of email marketing, you may be missing out on valuable opportunities to build deeper connections. Sending a weekly or monthly newsletter can help you stay on your clients’ radar and build engagement.

Add new clients and AUM at your desired pace with SmartAsset’s Advisor Marketing Platform. Sign up for a free demo today.

Financial Advisor Newsletter Basics

A financial advisor newsletter is a regularly sent email or print publication that advisors use to communicate with clients and prospects. The primary purpose of the newsletter is to provide valuable information on financial topics, such as market trends, investment strategies, economic insights and personal finance tips. You may also use your newsletter to keep subscribers up to date on the latest happenings within your firm.

Your newsletter is a marketing tool that can help you to build trust with prospects and current clients. A well-written financial advisor newsletter is interesting, engaging and tailored to your audience. Writing one regularly can help strengthen relationships and potentially increase conversions.

Clients want to hear from their advisors, and a newsletter is a way to stay in touch when you can’t meet face-to-face. Need more reasons to start your newsletter? Consider these findings from the YCharts 2024 Advisor-Client Communication Survey ¹ :

• Clients who communicate with their advisors less often have a confidence level of only 22% in their financial plan should the U.S. enter a recession.
• Clients who are “rarely” contacted understood only 54% of what their advisor covers in a typical meeting. Those who are contacted “frequently” understand 71%, by comparison.
• Among high-value clients, 85% believe that increased frequency and/or personalized communication could increase their confidence in their advisor.

In an industry where consistent communication and timely insights are highly valued, developing a newsletter can help you stand apart from competitors. You have an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise and attract potential clients, while keeping current clients in the loop about important financial developments.

Whether you’re sharing investment strategies or simplifying complex financial topics, a newsletter allows you to stay top-of-mind while providing meaningful value to your audience.

Client Acquisition Simplified: For RIAs

• Ideal for RIAs looking to scale.
• Validated referrals to help build your pipeline efficiently.
• Save time + optimize your close rate with high-touch, pre-built campaigns.

CFP®, CEO

Joe Anderson

Pure Financial Advisors

We have seen a remarkable return on investment and comparatively low client acquisition costs even as we’ve multiplied our spend over the years.

Pure Financial Advisors reports $1B in new AUM from SmartAsset investor referrals.

Target New Clients This Year

I am a registered fiduciary*

Book Your Free DemoNot sure? Learn more about AMP.

How to Write a Financial Advisor Newsletter

Drafting an email newsletter for clients starts with identifying your goals. In other words, what is the purpose of your message? Is it to inform, collect feedback, drive traffic to your website or something else? Once you know the end goal, you can get to work. Here’s how to write a financial advisor newsletter, step by step.

1. Choose a Topic

What will you write about? It’s a simple enough question, but one with numerous possible answers, each with different results. You might use your newsletter to:

• Offer clients the latest updates or news about your firm
• Highlight current trends in the market that your clients should be aware of (92% of clients in the YCharts survey said they’re interested in their advisor’s perspective on the market)
• Answer some of the questions clients most often ask
• Ask clients to complete a satisfaction survey or participate in a poll
• Direct them to an article, blog post or case study you’ve published on your website
• Embed the latest video from your firm’s YouTube channel, if you have one
• Share a link to a financial tool you’ve recently discovered that your clients might find helpful

When choosing a topic, remember that you don’t have to repeat the same one over and over. That’s a proven way to bore your clients and make them less inclined to open your emails. Changing up topics gives your clients something different to look forward to so they’re motivated to click when your message lands in their inbox.

If you find yourself struggling to choose a topic, try keeping an idea file. Create a document or spreadsheet where you jot down questions clients repeatedly ask and save links to interesting articles, blog posts or social media content you’ve come across. When you need inspiration for what to write, you can dip into your idea file.

2. Add Value

Any content you share with your audience should be valuable to them in some way. That’s true whether you’re providing links to your content or someone else’s.

It may seem counterintuitive to direct your clients to an article or blog post written by another advisor or financial expert, but clients will appreciate that you’re taking the time to find and share the best information available. You can also pivot that into an opportunity to encourage clients to reach out to you for a chat.

For instance, say you’re sharing an article about a new law that’s set to affect retirement plan contributions. You could include the link in your newsletter, along with a brief description of what your clients will learn, then add a call to action encouraging them to schedule a call or meeting with you to discuss what it might mean for their retirement.

3. Strike the Right Tone

The tone you use to write your email newsletter is just as important as the content you include. Using a tone that’s friendly and conversational, while also authoritative, can produce better results than a dry, boring email or one that comes off as condescending. Clients want to feel that they’re valuable to you, and the wrong tone can be off-putting.

Email marketing tools can make it easier to create personalized messages by including the name of the recipient. It’s a small thing that clients may appreciate more than a generic “Hello” or “Dear client” greeting.

You may also develop email scripts or templates that you can apply for different types of messages. A script that can be easily tweaked and personalized can save time in the email drafting process. 

4. Write a Compelling Subject Line

A good subject line can make or break the success of your newsletter campaign. A financial advisor newsletter with a boring headline is less likely to be opened and read. Using a question format can help with engagement and pique a client’s interest so they open the email. Here are some examples of subject lines that can feed curiosity:

• Are you making this mistake with your money?
• Did you know about this tax break for investors?
• Wondering what the best investments are right now? I’ve got the answers.

Your subject line shouldn’t be misleading in any way, but it should be designed to encourage your clients to find out what the rest of the message says.

5. Choose the Right Structure

Your email newsletter doesn’t need to be book-length; shorter is often better. In terms of how you structure your messages, you may stick with a set format or mix things up depending on what you’re discussing. If you prefer a fixed format, then you might segment your messaging to include:

• An opening, with a short anecdote or update about what’s going on in your life
• Highlights on the latest market news (bullet points can make this section skimmable and easy to read)
• Investment/financial planning tips relevant to your chosen topic
• Links to valuable resources
• Closing and call to action

You don’t have to follow this exact formula; it’s simply intended to be a guide. You might find that your audience is more responsive to emails that follow a storytelling format or include visual aids, such as images, GIFs or videos. Doing some A/B testing allows you to experiment with different formats to find out which structure resonates most with your audience.

6. Create a Schedule

One of the golden rules of email marketing is to be consistent. When your clients become used to seeing your emails show up in their inbox on a certain day of the week at a certain time, they may be more likely to open them to see what you have to say.

There’s no magic number of emails you need to send, and less can be more if your emails are packed with value. Sending too many email blasts could work against you if clients develop a blind spot and automatically send them to the trash folder.

If you’re just getting started with email marketing, you might aim for a weekly or biweekly schedule. You can then monitor your open rates and click rates to get a better idea of what frequency works best.

Using digital marketing tools can help. With SmartAsset AMP, for instance, you can create and send automated email nurture campaigns to prospects with longer sales cycles. That allows you to build a rapport with investors who are ready to work with an advisor, but need more time to make a decision.

7. Include a Clear CTA

A CTA, or call to action, allows you to give clients specific directions about what to do next. For example, you might close your newsletter with any of the following CTAs:

• Wondering what the dip in the markets could mean for you? Schedule a call today to discuss.
• Interested in learning more about estate planning? Head to our website to download our guide on what to include in your plan.
• Are you retirement-ready? Use our interactive calculator to estimate when you’ll be able to retire.

These CTAs work because they’re actionable and designed to encourage clients to reach out to you or visit your website. Your clients may be ready to make a financial decision but not know what step to take next, and your CTA can steer them in the right direction.

8. Maintain Compliance

Advisors are bound by compliance rules when sending email or written communications to clients, including newsletters. SEC rules require you to maintain proper records of messages sent to clients and prospects for at least five years. Messages must be stored securely in a write once, read many (WORM) format to ensure that communications cannot be altered or tampered with in any way.

More importantly, the content of your messages cannot be misleading in any way, and any claims you present must be fair and balanced. If you plan to include testimonials or reviews in your newsletters, the SEC’s marketing rule requires you to make proper disclosures to your subscribers. You can’t use deceptive subject lines, and you must give anyone who subscribes to your newsletter the opportunity to opt out of receiving those messages.

Having your chief compliance officer review newsletter drafts before they’re sent can help avoid potential compliance issues. Compliance software, meanwhile, can help you manage the necessary recordkeeping requirements.

9. Automating Your Newsletters

Don’t have time to write your weekly or monthly newsletters? SmartAsset AMP now gives advisors the ability to automate the creation of newsletters on thousands of topics and send them on weekly, bi-weekly or monthly cadence.

AMP Newsletters allows advisors to personalize content for different audience segments, such as high-net-worth individuals, families and retirees. The feature can also generate newsletter content tailored to specific age groups. This can help advisors make their outreach feel more relevant to the clients and prospects they want to reach.

Outsource Your RIA Marketing

Automate your marketing with a proven system. Automated outreach, nurture campaigns and more.

Get Started

Bottom Line

Starting an email newsletter is an excellent way to connect with your existing clients and reach out to prospective clients who could benefit from your services. If you’re not using email to market your financial advisor business yet, now’s the time to reconsider where it might fit into your overall marketing plan.

Tips for Growing Your Advisory Business

• Email marketing is just one tool you have at your disposal when promoting your advisory firm. Social media, digital ads and direct mail marketing can also help you spread the word about your business. If you’re looking for a simpler solution for generating leads, partnering with an advisor marketing platform could make sense. SmartAsset AMP helps you get matched with right-fit leads while leaving you free to focus on serving your clients.
• Email newsletters can help you stay in touch with clients virtually, but don’t discount the power of direct mail marketing. Direct mail campaigns may resonate with certain types of prospects or clients more than others, so it’s important to understand your target market and ideal client profile. If you’re interested in this marketing strategy, a third-party direct mail platform could help you get your campaign up and running.

Photo credit: ©iStock.com/FlamingoImages, ©iStock.com/insta_photos, ©iStock.com/ferrantraite