Written by Rich Davis, Email Marketing Coordinator at Simplicity Lone Beacon,
Edited by Marcus Roth, Senior Director of Email Marketing, Automation, and Content at Simplicity Lone Beacon.
A few months ago, our client-facing team noticed the monthly open rate for one of our advisor’s emails was a bit lower than the industry average. To improve the situation, the email department removed “dead” contacts from the advisor’s database and asked if there was an additional campaign we could run for the advisors to help boost their open and click rates.
We noticed that this advisor had not launched their new 2024 Tax Guide on their website, and with the tax filing deadline approaching, we decided to run a Tax Guide campaign with three disguised emails. “Disguised emails” is a term we use to describe an email crafted to look like it is organically written by a financial advisor. It is often brief, as hand-written emails tend to be, and utilizes the sending domain of the advisor and their email signature.
We used disguised emails for this campaign because disguised emails are sent from the advisor’s email address, instead of the company’s email address. Emails that come from the advisor’s email address generate more engagement because they offer a human-to-human connection that a branded email from a company email address does not. The three disguised emails were sent to the firm’s entire database over a month.
We implemented an underutilized email tactic for this series. We acknowledged the launch of the upcoming guide in email 1, without allowing it to be downloaded or seen, and then in email 2, we announced the guide’s new release. Essentially, we created a greater-than-normal amount of anticipation to the client’s database for another email to come. We generated hype, like a movie trailer, but less so, given the subject matter and other factors. The results indicate that the hype tactic did work and increased interest in the next email, delivering the promise and the guide itself.
Details:
The first email in this campaign served as an announcement from one of the firm’s advisors to notify the recipients that this firm would launch its 2024 Tax Guide in an upcoming email. This email also highlighted the purpose of the guide and contained a small CTA to schedule a review with the advisor if the recipient had any top-of-mind tax planning questions.
Email two contained the brand new 2024 tax guide for the recipients to download. It also included a first-name personalization feature in the subject line. This personalization lets the recipients of the email know that this new tax guide is specifically for them, and it helps the advisor maintain the human-to-human connection with the individual. The third and final email in the campaign was a follow-up email checking in on the recipients of the previous email, asking if they had any questions about how the information covered in the tax guide could apply to their unique tax situation now and in the future.
Results:
As expected, the tax guide campaign helped increase the open rates for this firm. A decent open rate for an email is around 21.5%. The average open rate for this email campaign (as of May 1st, 2024) is 25.43%, landing above the industry average. The industry average click-through rate for emails is between 2% and 5%. Our tax guide campaign (as of May 1st, 2024) generated a 3.08% click-through rate, landing in the middle of the industry average. Email two of this campaign, which contained the guide, was the best-performing email of this campaign, earning a 34.89% open rate and an 8.57% click-through rate.
Often in email marketing victories are small, much like this one. However, as Co-Founder, John Capuano often says, “We are in the business of onesies and twosies,” meaning a piece of marketing that generates just a handful of more engagement over time might result in 1 or 2 more initial sales meetings with an advisor, vitally giving that advisor more at-bats to convert that prospect to client.
About the Author:
Rich is a Massachusetts native who graduated from Bryant University with a BS Business Administration with a major in Marketing a concentration in Spanish and a minor in Psychology. During his time at Bryant, Richard undertook two internships with the Northeast Investment Group and Banneker Supply Chain Solutions, Inc. He was primarily responsible for working on each company’s social media platforms as well as helping Banneker with their email marketing.
About the Author: Marcus Roth is Simplicity Lone Beacon’s Senior Director of Email, Data, Automation & Content. Marcus has a unique experience in B2B and B2C start-up companies ranging from enterprise-level market research of Artificial Intelligence to self-defense eCommerce products. His experience in AI market research brought him, and his research, to INTERPOL, The United Nations, and Harvard University.
