How to Build a Quarterly Newsletter as a Financial Advisor

Email marketing can be an effective way to build engagement with clients while keeping them updated on the latest trends and happenings within your firm. Thirty-seven percent of advisors include newsletters as part of their content marketing plan, according to a 2024 Kitces report on how advisors market their services.¹ One of the keys to success with email campaigns is choosing the right frequency to share your messages. A mix of short weekly emails and longer quarterly newsletters can strike the right balance. And building a financial advisor quarterly newsletter is easier than you might think.

SmartAsset’s Advisor Marketing Platform (AMP) offers financial advisors services like client lead generation, automated marketing and more. Learn about SmartAsset AMP today.

Creating a Financial Advisor Quarterly Newsletter: 7 Tips for Success

Developing a quarterly newsletter for your advisory practice doesn’t have to be complicated. It comes down to developing a process that could help increase referrals and newsletter sign-ups.

Use these tips to streamline your quarterly newsletter efforts and create messages that will resonate with your audience, and that they’ll look forward to reading.

1. Define Your Audience

Quarterly newsletters are most effective when you know your audience well, and each newsletter you send has a clear purpose. If you’ve already taken the time to flesh out ideal client profiles or buyer personas, you may already be clear about which type of message is most likely to resonate.

If you’ve segmented your book of business, it may be necessary to draft quarterly newsletters that are tailored to each category of client you serve. For example, high-net-worth clients may be interested in reading detailed breakdowns of major market news, while someone who’s still in the early stages of building wealth may appreciate a newsletter that offers tips for balancing retirement plan contributions with debt repayment.

Once you identify your target audience, consider your goal for sending the newsletter. You obviously want to stay in touch with clients, but what else can your newsletter achieve? For example, can your message strengthen brand loyalty or encourage referrals? Establishing a core goal can help you draft your quarterly newsletter with purpose and confidence.

2. Choose the Right Mix of Content

A quarterly financial advisor newsletter allows space for a broader range of topics than a brief weekly email. First, decide what topics you want to cover.

For example, your newsletter may include:

• Market updates for the most recent quarter, or year-to-date
• Insights on current events or economic trends
• A recap of firm-specific news and happenings
• Financial planning tips for the upcoming quarter
• Links to relevant articles, tools or resources

You might choose specific themes for each quarterly newsletter you send. For example, your Q1 newsletter may emphasize tax planning, or you might focus on end-of-year planning for your Q4 update.

Consider adding some visual appeal by incorporating charts, graphs or images into your newsletter. Breaking up text with bullet points to include easily scannable lists can be more attention-grabbing than a large wall of text.

Remember that the most basic rule of email marketing: Anything you share should be helpful, interesting or a combination of the two. If you’re drafting a two- or three-page newsletter, you need to give your clients a reason to want to read it from beginning to end.

Also, think about making your content accessible in more than one format. For example, you might share your quarterly newsletter in the body of your emails, but you could also:

• Link to a PDF version of your newsletter in the email
• Make the file downloadable in Microsoft Word and attach it to your message
• Create a newsletter archive on your website
• Send a physical copy to clients via direct mail

It may take a little extra effort to do these things, but your clients may appreciate having multiple options to choose from.

3. Use Templates to Streamline Newsletter Drafts

Templates allow you to produce quarterly newsletters or other email marketing materials in less time. You can create specific sections for each part of the template. Then, when it’s time to send out a fresh newsletter, you simply update the information for each section.

For example, a basic financial advisor quarterly newsletter template might follow this format:

• Greeting
• Market news/trends
• Financial planning tips/reminders
• Graphs/charts
• Firm news and updates
• Helpful links/resources
• Closing

You might reorder these sections or add different ones to reflect what your clients are most likely to be interested in.

Using a template creates familiarity for your readers so that your updates feel consistent and focused. Plus, breaking your newsletter into distinct sections makes it easier for clients to digest what you’re sharing.

4. Automate Your Newsletters

Automation and technology can simplify various parts of the quarterly newsletter process, from topic selection to scheduling and delivery.

Artificial intelligence tools, for instance, can help you draft content more quickly, which you can then revise and personalize for your audience. Email marketing tools can also help you schedule newsletters, manage distribution and track performance metrics so you can see how clients and prospects respond.

SmartAsset AMP now includes an email newsletter tool that allows advisors to create and automatically send newsletters on thousands of financial topics spanning categories from retirement and investing to insurance and estate planning. That can make it easier to maintain regular communication with prospects and clients without starting from scratch each quarter.

If you plan to use AI tools to develop newsletter content, review it carefully before sharing. Human review is still needed to check for accuracy, compliance, tone and alignment with your firm’s brand.

5. Encourage Sharing

Shareability can be a useful trait regardless of the type of marketing content you create, and that includes your quarterly newsletters. The more often your message is shared, the more opportunities you have to connect with prospective clients and/or add new subscribers to your newsletter list.

Adding social media buttons to your email newsletters and including a simple call to action can nudge clients to promote your firm. For example, you might include a brief CTA like this one:

Enjoying our quarterly newsletter updates? We’d love for you to share our latest message with your inner circle. Click the social sharing buttons below to spread the word, or feel free to forward this email to friends and family.

You can include a second message directed to anyone who had the email forwarded to them. Simply tell them they can subscribe to your email list to receive the latest quarterly newsletters as soon as they’re published, with a link to your email sign-up form.

These are relatively low-effort marketing tactics that could potentially have a significant impact if they lead to more referrals and an influx of new prospects.

6. Develop a Schedule

A publishing schedule and content calendar can go a long way toward helping you stay organized when drafting quarterly newsletters.

Your schedule simply details when you send your newsletters. For example, you may schedule them to go out the first or last day of the quarter, depending on how you format your newsletter content.

A content calendar details what topics you’ll cover for each newsletter. Keeping a calendar for email messages, blog content, social media and any other content you produce can help you:

• Avoid unnecessary repetition of topics
• Draft timely content to reflect changing seasons or trends
• Track the performance of your content

Planning for quarterly updates is not something you can wait to do until the last minute. Using a content calendar allows you to plan out the entire year with evergreen topics, then schedule time to determine what newsworthy or trending topics to include for the upcoming quarter. That way, nothing falls through the cracks, and your messages always feel fresh when they arrive in clients’ inboxes.

7. Maintain Compliance

Compliance is a central concern for advisors and there are certain requirements RIAs must meet when using email for marketing. The SEC’s marketing rule, for instance, stipulates that advisors cannot share information that is inaccurate or misleading in any way. You cannot present gross investment performance without also presenting net performance. If you include any testimonials or reviews in your quarterly newsletters, you must also add proper disclosures detailing how the testimonial or review was obtained.

Aside from compliant formatting and content, RIAs must also maintain proper records of email communications. You must store these records for a minimum of three years in a write-once, read-many (WORM) format. Using a compliance software program to manage recordkeeping and marketing can help you minimize the risk of a rule violation.

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Pure Financial Advisors

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Bottom Line

Quarterly newsletters offer financial advisors a unique opportunity to deepen client relationships, demonstrate ongoing value and reinforce your firm’s brand. They provide a consistent, professional way to educate clients on market trends, financial planning strategies and updates within your firm, all while keeping your services top of mind.

Tips for Growing Your Advisory Business

• Email is a powerful way to reach prospective and current clients, but it’s not the only digital marketing avenue that’s open to you. Social media, content creation and collaborations are all ways to expand your reach and increase your firm’s visibility with your target audience. But what if you have limited time to promote your business? Partnering with an advisor marketing platform could make sense. SmartAsset AMP (Advisor Marketing Platform) is a holistic marketing service that financial advisors can use for client lead generation and automated marketing. Sign up for a free demo to explore how SmartAsset AMP can help you expand your practice’s marketing operation. Get started today.
• When sending quarterly newsletters or any other type of communication to clients, keep compliance in mind. Specifically, be aware of recordkeeping requirements for emails, including what you’re required to archive and how long you must maintain those records. Integrating your email marketing platform with your customer relationship management (CRM) platform can help you manage recordkeeping compliance requirements.

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