The imperative of personalisation in email marketing

Email marketing personisation goes beyond addressing clients by their first names. For HNWIs, it involves delivering bespoke content reflecting their specific preferences and financial situations. This approach is crucial at each stage of the marketing funnel, from awareness to conversion, ensuring communications are relevant and impactful.

According to B2B revenue attribution platform Dreamdata, its benchmark research shows marketing emails are clicked in more than 40% of won deals and have a meaningful impact on the length of the customer journey.

Dreamdata’s founder and chief marketing officer, Steffen Hedebrandt, said personalisation was a core element in B2B marketing and driving sales.

“Tailoring emails to the target recipient with relevant, relatable content drives deeper engagement and builds trust.” Hedebrandt said.

Advanced segmentation techniques

Effective segmentation is the foundation of personalised email campaigns. For wealth and asset managers, advanced data-driven segmentation can be based on several critical factors:

• Investment preferences: Segment clients based on their investment interests, such as equities, real estate, or alternative assets. Provide content aligned with their investment strategies.
• Risk tolerance: Understanding a client’s risk appetite underpins investment recommendations. Segmenting clients by risk tolerance helps firms send appropriate market insights, risk assessments, and investment opportunities matching risk thresholds.
• Life stage: The financial needs and goals of clients vary significantly across life stages. Whether clients are accumulating wealth, planning for retirement, or preserving wealth, segmenting based on life stage helps deliver relevant advice and solutions.
• Wealth level: Different levels of wealth require different management strategies. Segmenting clients by their net worth allows for more precise targeting of services such as estate planning, tax optimisation, or philanthropic advice.

Integrating personalisation throughout the marketing funnel

Personalisation should be woven into every stage of the marketing funnel:

• Awareness: Use personalised content to capture the attention of potential clients. Tailor introductory emails based on publicly available information or initial consultations to create interest.
• Consideration: Provide in-depth, relevant content addressing specific client needs and challenges. Segment your audience so they receive relevant information, such as market analyses or case studies specific to their financial goals.
• Decision: Offer personalised consultations and solutions. Use insights from segmentation to propose tailored strategies and services, making it easy for clients to decide in your favour.
• Retention: Maintain engagement with ongoing personalised communication. Regularly update clients with relevant information to ensure your services continue to meet their evolving needs.

For wealth and asset managers, personalisation and segmentation are not simply marketing tactics—they are strategic initiatives. By leveraging advanced segmentation techniques and crafting highly personalised email campaigns, you can enhance engagement, build deeper relationships, and drive conversions among high-net-worth clients.

The post Personalised Email Marketing To High Net Wealth Clients appeared first on Financial Marketer.

These days you’d be hard-pressed to find a financial services company that doesn’t send a regular newsletter to its customers or clients – and for obvious reasons. One of the most direct ways to communicate with an engaged customer base, not only have these customers opted in to receive your communications, you also don’t need to navigate search and social algorithms to ensure the content gets seen. 

According to Smart Insights and industry benchmarks, financial services newsletters earn an average open rate of 24.94%. Email newsletter campaigns are an effective method to reach and convert customers, as brands are able to bypass algorithms and spam filters, delivering high-quality content directly to the user’s inbox. According to an article by McKinsey & Company, 91% of all US consumers still use email daily. These same emails prompt purchases three times higher than compared to social media, yet the average order value is also 17% higher. However, in the same vein, many financial services brands are also guilty of sending out newsletter content for the sake of it without a clear strategy or goal other than hitting a regular cadence. The numbers speak for themselves, as unsubscribe rates for the industry loom at 0.20% while the average is 0.10%. 

So, how do financial service brands take a basic email marketing strategy and make it worthwhile?  We look at strategies to attract, hold and build customer value using a newsletter.

Get more Subscribers

// short subscriber forms & multiple form placements

We get it, our industry is highly regulated and our opt-in forms for email campaigns require multiple checkboxes for consent. However, the shorter you can make your newsletter sign-up form (with the help of your legal and compliance team) the less barriers there are to entry. Ultimately all you really need from your subscribe form is, at a minimum, a name and valid email address. Our industry commonly feels we need to ask for a number of details including phone #, secondary phone # and an email address. Bypass the desire to mine people for lead data and focus instead on capturing an email address that you can use to nurture potential customers over time. 

Once you’ve simplified your opt-in method, sprinkle your form placement across your website, social media channels and lead email campaigns. Consider running an incentive for potential customers to sign up for your newsletter, such as a complimentary financial consultation session. 

Keep them from Unsubscribing

// Content is key

According to a DMA report, 60% of users sign up for an email newsletter just to receive offers and sales. Now that they’re signed up, to keep them from unsubscribing you need to be mindful of email frequency, timing, and the relevancy of your content, keeping a close eye on performance metrics such as open and click-through rates to ensure the content you’re delivering is hitting the mark. While it’s valuable to test and learn to ensure you’re delivering the right content at the time you want to establish a sense of regularity and for your customers to come to expect – and look forward – to your newsletter arriving. As well as monitoring send time consider other factors that could be impacting engagement with your newsletters such as the style of your subject lines, the imagery you’re using and the actual mix of content you’re sharing with the ideal balance being 90% education and 10% promotional content. 

Build Value for Long-Term Sustainability

// predictability + value = a winning newsletter

At NRL, business was usual for our email newsletter until a technical glitch missed sending out our weekly Thursday newsletter. The response was bad, but so good… A few hours after we missed our 10am deadline, many of our referral and business partners emailed our agents to ask “where’s my newsletter?” The educational newsletter, which consisted mostly of links to other articles, exclusive webinars and updates was vanilla, but predictable, valuable and consistent. A key strategy to long-term sustainability is to be predictable while providing value and exclusive content (such as webinars held only for newsletter subscribers). 

Like almost all things in marketing, if you want your newsletter to be a success it needs to be built around your customers’ wants and needs rather than simply being guided by a schedule or agenda that works for the business. 

The post Is regularity the only thing your newsletter is achieving? appeared first on Financial Marketer.

As with all best-practice content marketing, let’s begin with strategy. 

Is it time to rethink your email marketing strategy?

Email marketing can deliver significant ROI for your finance brand, but are you developing effective email marketing campaigns that have cut-through or simply hitting send?

6 tips for writing irresistible email subject lines

Do away with the market outlook update, and instead, follow our tips to write email subject lines that are deserving of a click.

5 tactics for financial marketers to boost newsletter subscriptions

With so much competition for customers’ email addresses and attention, we recommend five tactics to help financial marketers boost newsletter subscriptions.

How to re-engage dormant newsletter subscribers

Don’t let sleeping subscribers lie. Wake up and re-engage your dormant newsletter subscribers with these tips and tactics.

5 ways to add flavour to your email marketing campaigns

Make your finance email marketing campaigns something customers are hungry to digest. We share tips to help you beat industry email benchmarks.

The post The Financial Marketer’s guide to effective email marketing appeared first on Financial Marketer.

You might have a large subscriber base. But if many of your subscribers have first, stopped opening your newsletter, and second, stopped engaging with it, then you’re wasting valuable time, energy and resources. This is particularly a problem for financial content marketers, whose performance is measured by statistics. The retention of a high number of dormant newsletter subscribers can significantly skew your results.

But before striking all sleepers off the list, try re-awakening them with these tried-and-tested tips.

A/B testing

One of the most powerful tools at your disposal is A/B testing. This allows you to pit two finance content marketing approaches against one another to determine which gets the most attention. 

A/B testing may be applied to any aspect of your newsletter, from subject lines and headlines to images and CTAs. Plus, you can test as narrowly or broadly as you like. For example, you might test subject lines by changing just one word or by running two completely different ideas. However, it’s important to only test one element at a time so you can clearly identify the leading option.  

Kiva, a US-based non-profit, peer-to-peer, online micro-lender, achieved an 11.5% increase in donations by A/B testing two landing pages—one with a break-out box containing persuasive data and one without. 

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Paid posts that target dormant newsletter subscribers

Take a hyper-targeted approach via LinkedIn retargeting. This clever tool enables you to find your dormant newsletter subscribers on LinkedIn and target them with paid posts. 

The way it works is this. You upload a list containing the email addresses of your dormant newsletter subscribers. Over the following 48 hours LinkedIn trawls profiles looking for matching addresses. If at least 300 matches are made, then you get the green light to publish paid finance content that targets these profiles. 

Sage, a UK-based multinational that provides cloud-based accounting services for businesses, ran a LinkedIn retargeting campaign that generated more than 700,000 impressions in six weeks, saw a 20% increase in organic sharing of content, and fulfilled four times its lead generation target. 

Ask, ask, ask

This might be the simplest yet most effective strategy. If your subscribers have given up on your finance content marketing newsletter, then ask why. Don’t forget: the essence of finance content marketing is helping your audience through education, which means finding out what your readers want to know—and delivering it. There’s a variety of ways to do this, from conducting polls, to making open requests for ideas, to hosting webinars during which readers can ask questions in real-time.

Last, but not least, there’s no harm in asking dormant newsletter subscribers point blank whether or not they want to continue receiving your newsletter, then where necessary, removing their addresses from your email list. 

Are you ready to transform your finance content marketing newsletter and re-engage dormant newsletter subscribers? Need a hand? Get in touch.

The post How to re-engage dormant newsletter subscribers appeared first on Financial Marketer.

1. Position your CTAs where everyone can see them

Your calls to action (CTAs) to drive newsletter subscriptions should be easy to find, in multiple locations if possible. At the top of the sidebar and above the navigation/in the header are two common spots that are hard to miss – but it can vary depending on your site design.

Vanguard’s home page for Institutional Investors uses a ‘subscribe’ link in its top navigation bar, and another link in the web footer to catch people using the site map.

The UBS Chief Investment Office has links from several of its relevant pages to increase the likelihood of attracting newsletter subscriptions, using different wording depending on context.

It’s surprising how many firms bury their sign-up CTAs on interior pages, given the great ROI newsletters deliver to marketers. When you’ve figured out your best potential placements, it’s a good idea to A/B test different options and see what works best for you. 
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2. Reduce clicks where you can

When asking people to subscribe to your EDM, as a general rule avoid having them click away to a sign-up page. Every click is making it more likely they’ll drop off, regardless of the incentives.

Instead, grab their email using an easy, immediate entry field, often through an embedded data capture form on the home page and other highly-trafficked pages. 

The other general rule with newsletters is if you do have a sign-up form, try and make it as short as possible, asking for essential information only – again, to deter people from dropping off during the subscription process.

The reality for many financial services brands, in particular asset managers, is there are regulatory requirements that mean you need to ask clients to read terms and conditions first, then enter their details. This definitely increases the number of clicks required and necessitates a sign-up page. 

Because large firms often publish a range of daily, weekly and/or monthly emails for investors to select from depending on their areas of interest, it also means asset and wealth manager sign-up pages may have more steps than your average consumer brands. (See these BlackRock and Vanguard pages as examples.) 

This makes it a longer journey for the subscriber, but the pay-off is the email marketing is more personalised to the user.

3. Put links to your sign-up page on all your online assets

Hosting a free webinar or other desirable event is an opportunity to add a link to solicit more sign-ups: free insights in exchange for contact details.

Adding CTAs in your social media is another option. While there are apps that let you add sign-up pages on Facebook, and X Cards that let subscribers sign up for an email list, LinkedIn doesn’t encourage it. The best you can do is add a subscription form on your LinkedIn company page by pasting your sign-up form URL into your contact information.

You can also include links to sign up within your blog pages, like this UBS example – see the ‘Want more insights?’ CTA at the end of this article about 5G in China.

If you have a current report available that’s likely to be attractive to your desired segment, try publishing a short article that summarises the report and ask for newsletter subscriptions at the end of the article to have the full guide or report emailed to the reader.

Also, think about having everyone in your organisation include the newsletter subscription link in their email signatures with a strong opt-in message.

4. Language in your newsletter subscription messaging

The language in your subscription CTA needs to be on-brand, relevant and to the point. It’s a good idea to experiment with different phrases that speak to your audience. Attract your reader’s attention with something fresh and appropriate for the business area in question. 

Be specific about what you’re offering, remind them of the benefits of subscribing; and be clear about how often they will receive the newsletter, in case they’re concerned about being overwhelmed with emails.

Also note that the language around your sign-up box should vary according to where the site visitor is in their journey. For example, if they’ve just read a great article, the language should be along the lines of: “sign up for more insights”. 

5. Offer incentives for newsletter subscriptions

Marketers across many sectors use ‘lead magnets’ – a reward for visitors in exchange for filling in their email address in a sign-up form.

Commonly a whitepaper, report, case study or other data-driven research that’s gated, lead magnets are designed to address readers’ pain points and showcase the intellect and capabilities of the business. 

You can extend the reach of this content by promoting it via your social channels. (Just make sure they get the valuable asset immediately.)

If you’re looking to rethink your email marketing strategy, we can help, get in touch.

The post 5 tactics for financial marketers to boost newsletter subscriptions appeared first on Financial Marketer.

What’s the goal for your email marketing?

Whether you’re re-engaging with new subscribers, telling them about an event you’re hosting or sharing insights from within your business, all emails should have a clear purpose that can be measured against. “Often clients have an email marketing program in place that hasn’t been reviewed in years and they’re just punching out emails with no real reason as to why they’re doing it,” says The Dubs general manager, Justin Buckwell. Finance brands should identify a clear goal or purpose and make sure it’s being reviewed regularly to stay on track.

Is your email marketing working?

It’s not a case of set and forget once you press send. It’s important to make sure you’re constantly reviewing the analytics and engagement with audiences. With the CTR affecting your ROI and CR, it can be easy to get lost in all of the acronyms. So if that sentence sounded like a foreign language, Hubspot offers a crib sheet as a starting point which shows the metrics you should be paying attention to in your email marketing efforts. Analytics will tell you if your email marketing campaigns are effectively contributing to reaching overall marketing goals. Need something to compare yourself against? Take a look at some finance brands spicing up their email marketing campaigns to boost engagement.
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Is your email designed for mobile?

In 2019, 52.2% of global web traffic came from mobile, a clear sign for finance brands to think mobile-first and foremost rather than shoehorning desktop designs to fit for the smaller screen. Technology experts, Smart insights have found that “mobile is providing a greater number of email opens than desktop, mirroring mobile shifts across the digital marketing spectrum”. Finance brands should make sure the user experience is optimised for mobile-first, then desktop and tablet users.

Are you segmenting your audience?

Segmenting your audience and sending them tailored messaging in emails can improve open and click-through rates. Email marketing platform Mailchimp has found that “on average, segmented campaigns result in 23% higher open rates and 49% higher click-through rates than unsegmented campaigns”. Finance brands should start simple and then as more data and insights come in, layer filter options to give greater targeting.

Have you set up marketing automation?

Marketing automation allows you to set up personalised, automated email workflows that can be triggered in a number of different ways like when a contact gets added to a subscription list, submits a form on your website, clicks a link in an email, views a page on your blog, clicks on one of your AdWords ads, etc. Buckwell says, “we’ve seen with clients that smarter automated email segmentation has led to increased performance, customisation and accessibility”. Finance brands should look to develop a customer workflow and see how delivering timely content that’s smarter, more tailored and more accessible can generate higher engagement with audiences.

When do you send your email marketing?

There’s a bunch of sources that will say Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. But if everyone’s sending emails on those days, is it better to opt for Monday or Friday? “The key here is to test and learn. A/B test your newsletter send on various days over a three month period and you’ll hopefully see trends start to form,” says Buckwell. There’s no hard and fast rule with this one.

Is your email marketing imagery arresting to the eye?

“A picture is worth a thousand words or a 42% higher click-through rate,” says email platform Vero. Finance brands need to step away from the stock images of shaking hands in a boardroom and select images that catch the reader’s attention. “Imagery that makes you look twice can be more powerful than text,” says Buckwell.

Your email subject lines should be just as irresistible as your imagery so make sure you follow tips to write email subject lines that are deserving of a click.

The key to a successful email marketing strategy is to make sure that a “test and learn” process is put in place and that campaigns are being reviewed against wider business goals. Your audience is unique to your business so don’t use a cookie-cutter approach to your email marketing. Make sure all data that is being collected is being reviewed, analysed and tweaked to deliver valuable content to their inbox.

To find out if your email marketing is working for you, or to get a helping hand with setting up your email marketing campaigns, get in touch with The Dubs.

The post Is it time to rethink your email marketing strategy? appeared first on Financial Marketer.

But here’s the good news. Writing irresistible subject lines isn’t merely a matter of guesswork. Thanks to the oodles of data now at our fingertips, we can work out what’s likely to cut through – and what isn’t. Here are six tips for writing killer subject lines, backed by reliable research.

1. Length matters

In 2018, a whopping 64% of emails were opened on mobile devices – in contrast to 27% in 2011. So, if your subject line is too long for a smartphone display, shorten it. A good rule of thumb is around 41 characters, which is the maximum length visible in an iPhone portrait view. This 2015 study of 9,313, 885 emails shows subject lines of 41-50 characters inspire the highest read rates.

A study of 9,313, 885 emails shows subject lines of 41-50 characters inspire the highest read rates.

2. Personalise, personalise, personalise subject lines

You’ve no doubt heard this word at every marketing session you’ve attended in the past year. There’s a good reason for that. According to MailChimp’s study of 24 billion emails, the inclusion of first names in subject lines increases open rates by 0.11% in the business and finance industries.

3. Make your subject line time sensitive

MailChimp’s research also found time sensitivity attracts attention. The word “urgency” boosts open rates by 0.79%, while “breaking” does by 0.68%, “important” by 0.55% and “alert” by 0.31%. But be sure to use these only when appropriate. A subject line should never mislead a reader about its content – and thereby risk a breach of trust.

4. Mind your manners

It turns out your parents were right. The magic words really are magic. In a 2015 study of more than 125,000 email campaigns, Adestra found that “thank you” was the top-performing keyword in subject lines, while “thanks” came in fourth. And, in case you’re curious, the worst performer was “journal”, followed by “forecast”, “training” and “whitepaper”. Could someone hit the snooze button?

5. Be specific

Think about why your readers sign up to your email list, in the first place. What do they want from you? Financial advice? Great offers? Knowledge of new products and services? Whatever it is, one thing’s for sure: no one wants to waste time.

So, be specific in your subject line. Describe what’s relevant, useful and/or valuable in your email. Avoid generic terms like “market outlook” and “market report”, which fail to give the reader any insight into what to expect and which will get lost alongside your competitors’ content.

6. Test, test, test

Ultimately, you should optimise your subject lines for your audience. What works for some readers doesn’t necessarily work for others. Plus, every now and again a copywriting genius comes up with a subject line that performs brilliantly – despite breaking some of the rules.

Be sure to run A/B tests, every step of the way. Money Dashboard, a UK-based online financial management company, found out the power of this approach, after testing the subject line, “What’s your opinion, [first name]?” against, “Please put us out of our misery”. The latter increased the open rate by 104.5% – and the click rate by 228.5%.

Related articles

• 5 ways to add flavour to your email marketing campaigns
• 5 finance marketing faux pas you don’t want to make
• Facebook Messenger poised to overtake email marketing

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On 3 June 2019, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the private details of almost 100,000 Westpac bank customers had been exposed by a cyber hack on the real-time payment platform PayID. Westpac confirmed that the attacks had been occurring since April 7, with computer security experts warning the data could be used to commit fraud on a mass scale.

In a case of very bad timing, Westpac sent out an EDM on 4 June that warned businesses about criminals using bots to attack their websites and gain access to sensitive customer and other data. It linked to an article headlined ‘Bot’ battle: why business must up the fight.

When NAB advertised for a ‘Head of Financial Crime’ on LinkedIn in February 2019, reddit users remarked on the poorly-worded position title and its unfortunate timing – given that the final report from Australia’s banking royal commission had been tabled only days before; and the ad went out simultaneously with NAB announcing CEO Andrew Thorburn and chairman Dr Ken Henry would stand down after being named in the report.

And it’s not just Aussies mucking up their messaging

In a famous example of misjudging your audience sentiment, JP Morgan staged a campaign – #AskJPM, based around a X chat where students would be able to ask a senior banker questions. The bank had been in the news for some misdeeds and were not enjoying a period of great consumer trust at the time – hence the avalanche of sarcastic and annoyed tweets. The Q&A was cancelled the day before it was due to run.

Context was also the issue in 2019 when US bank Chase posted on X, seemingly chastising consumers who questioned their low bank balances, suggesting they were spending too much on takeaway coffees, groceries, and cabs. This is a bank that had received a $25 million government bailout in 2008 at a time when people were losing their jobs, homes, and savings. At the time there was also heightened criticism of financial practices in the US.

In 2013, an activist from the Occupy movement wrote angry messages about Bank of America in chalk on the sidewalk outside a branch and posted a tweet with a picture of himself being chased away by police. In that tweet he tagged @bankofamerica, whose X autoresponder came back and said:

@OccupyLA We’d be happy to review your account with you to discuss any concerns. Please let us know if you need assistance. ^sa

Clearly nobody at the bank had actually read that message until it was too late. Critics referred to the bank as a “tone deaf robot.”

Critics referred to the bank as a “tone deaf robot”.

No more marketing ‘set and forget’

While the automation of email sends and social media posting can seem like a miracle cure for marketers,it doesn’t mean you can take your eyes off the process. Marketers still need to be aware of what’s going on in the bigger picture of their brand, and engaged with the world their audience lives in. Here are five tips for avoiding major marketing gaffes.

1. Keep up to date with current events, from climate disasters to scandals in your industry – anything that could lead to insensitive or offensive messaging on your part, or misunderstandings. Also, get second opinions from people in other departments outside your echo chamber who might see things differently. Set up a review process that includes a last-minute reading of your messaging close to the launch of a campaign.That might have helped Airbnb who in August 2017 sent out an email with a picture of a floating house and the phrase: “Floating world: how to spend a day – or an entire trip – without touching dry land.” The email was sent at the same time that Hurricane Harvey was destroying Houston.
2. Analyse your hashtags from every angle to avoid hashtag fail, as X’s head of global brand strategy advises.
3. Be careful of inviting open consumer feedback on social media at a time when your brand is experiencing a period of consumer mistrust. You risk a flood of negative reactions and hijacking of hashtags.
4. Don’t rely on autoresponders, as there’s potential you may look inauthentic and like you don’t care. Instead appoint a real person to manage your social media accounts and put a clear social media marketing strategy and guidelines in place.
5. And while we’re talking about autoresponding – what about them bots?! In 2016 Microsoft infamously tested out its artificial intelligence software on X through a chatbot called Tay. “The more you talk the smarter Tay gets,” said her X bio. What Tay actually did was absorb messages she was sent – including racist and anti-Semitic rants from internet trolls. Then she relayed some of them as updates, which led to her suspension by Microsoft.

It’s essential to plan ahead, but be sure to keep your eye on the prize and your hands on the wheel to avoid ending up with egg on your face.

Related articles

• AMP and the royal commission: anatomy of a PR disaster
• 5 ways to add flavour to your email marketing campaigns
• B Corp finance brands match purpose with profit

Image: Alex E. Proimos

The post 5 finance marketing faux pas you don’t want to make appeared first on Financial Marketer.

1. Making finance a fun escape: Acorns

Way too many finance brands limit their digital comms to outlooks or market updates. So, differentiate yourself with content that’s enticing or fun. Remember: for many office workers, an email is an opportunity for a cheeky desk-ape.

Acorns, an app that invests the user’s spare change in the stock market, embraces this with their partner referral emails. A series of partners are represented by photos, superimposed with phrases stating how much the user would invest per purchase. For example, ‘HotelTonight: $10 Invested in your Acorns account’ appears across an image of a stunning hotel pool.

2. In tune with the times: Toyota Financial Services

Special events are gold for marketers. Rather than having to create relevance, you get it served to you – on a silver platter.

Toyota Financial Services took advantage of this in 2017, with a campaign dedicated solely to Giving Tuesday. The first email stated the brand’s commitment to donating $150,000, asking customers to decide where the money should go by selecting from four charities. Then, the follow-up email conveyed the results. This was a powerful way of engaging readers while strengthening the brand’s image.

3. Headlines that holler: Mint

59% of links shared on social media aren’t clicked first, according to a 2016 study by Columbia University and the French National Institute. In other words, headlines get more attention than content does. But, when it comes to email, your goal is click-throughs. So, your headlines must compel the user to read on. If it’s the first time you’re connecting with a contact, it’s even more important that your subject lines hit the mark. hunter offers some tips for the email equivalent of cold-calling. 

One finance brand that’s mastered headlines is Mint, a personal financial management app by Intuit. While one of their educational emails about credit began with the provocative headline, ‘Don’t be fooled by credit myths’, another, dedicated to new products, was titled, ‘Be good with your money: see what’s fresh with mint’.

4. CTAs that get clicks: GoCardless

One of the quickest and easiest ways to improve CTAs is through split testing, also known as A/B testing. GoCardless, a direct debit payment platform, wanted more visitors to see an online demo of their services – and was wondering if changing just one word in the CTA would make a difference. So, 50% of visitors were served the CTA, ‘Request a demo’, and the others, ‘Watch a demo’. Everything else on the page was identical. The second group converted at a 139% higher rate than the former.

5. Personalised subject lines: the research speaks

Personalisation is one of the most bandied about buzzwords of 2019. But, just how personal should you go? Well, according to MailChimp’s study of 24 billion emails, subject lines containing first and last names improve open rates by 0.33%, while the use of first name only had a 0.17% impact.

So, is it time to re-think your approach to email marketing? Apply our tips, watch what happens, but most importantly, test and learn to determine what works for your specific brand and audience.

Related articles

• Facebook messenger poised to overtake email marketing
• A finance marketer’s cheat sheet to Google analytics
• Optimise content to avoid being a one trick pony

The post 5 ways to add flavour to your email marketing campaigns appeared first on Financial Marketer.

Here we interview Elissa to find out more about the experiments, how/when we might be using Facebook Messenger in the (near) future, and what financial brands stand to gain.

Why did you decide to use Facebook Messenger for your Grow With HubSpot event instead of email – can you share some of your strategy and thinking with us?

One of the biggest opportunities for improving the ROI of our events was developing a more efficient way for attendees to connect with our sales reps. The Facebook Messenger bot we built for Grow with HubSpot enables attendees to do just that – they can scroll through photos of our reps, find the person they’ve been chatting to, and book time in their calendar using the HubSpot Meetings tool.

Another feature we’re currently experimenting with is live chat, enabling attendees to live chat in Facebook Messenger with our reps whilst at the event. This is particularly effective at large events where it’s difficult to find someone to meet for an in-person conversation – in Messenger, you can start the conversation, and then agree to meet somewhere specific if needed.

Beyond event ROI, the bot works so well at events because it enriches the attendee experience. They have a direct line to ask us questions and get help throughout the day, and even have the opportunity to contribute to what’s going on stage by submitting questions for interviews and panels in real time.

How did you measure the success of using Messenger at Grow with HubSpot?

We split our metrics into two categories: engagement metrics, and funnel metrics. For engagement metrics, we looked at:

• Number of attendees enrolled in the bot as a % of total attendees
• Open rate of messages sent throughout the day

And for funnel metrics we look at:

• Number of meetings booked with sales reps
• Number of live chats initiated

[NB. For the actual numbers, see Elissa’s original article.]

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Might there be an element of novelty in this, i.e. your audience is yet to be inundated with Messaging resulting in better response rates than email?

There’s absolutely an element of novelty in this. As with any new channel, the early adopters see the most value because they’re riding the wave before anybody else jumps on and spoils it!

As with any new channel, the early adopters see the most value because they’re riding the wave before anybody else jumps on and spoils it!

We’ll be continuing to optimise to increase the number of meetings booked, and live chat has huge potential for additional tweaks (the first time we tested this was in Sydney!).

Currently, we’re offering Facebook Messenger as an alternative content delivery channel in all our regular, content-based email sends (i.e. when we send out ebooks etc.) This is live in North America and APAC, and will be rolling out in other regions soon.

We’re also in the process of rolling out Facebook Messenger as an alternative download option across all our gated content. Where the existing option is form + email, the new option will be a conversational form in Messenger, and we’ll deliver the content there too.

Soon, we’ll be trialling trigger-based nurturing in Messenger – when a high-value prospect views a high-intent page, we can send them a message in Messenger vs. email in order to connect with them (and help them) faster.

What should financial brands take away in relation to how they might be using Facebook Messenger for events, and potentially other purposes?

It depends what a business’s goals are, what’s going to help them achieve those goals, and figuring out how Facebook Messenger (like any other channel) might contribute to that.

If Messenger is looking like it could have impact on your business, then my advice would be to start now. If you can build out a solid infrastructure and get the channel cranking before your competitors do, you’ll have an outsized share of voice (and an outsized share of results) on that channel until they catch up.

Are you aware of any finance brands, or the equivalent, using Messenger, and if so, how?

Absolutely! This article lists a ton of them that were launched at F8.

How could you see a bank or other financial business in Australia using Messenger?

I think it’ll become commonplace to manage your finances via Messenger using your bank’s bot, much like you might use their app to do this today. The difference is banks will be able to use a conversational interface to serve their customers in Facebook Messenger.

Instead of navigating an app to check your balance or make a payment, I can absolutely see a world where you simply tell the bot to do that for you as part of a conversation with it.

If the sky’s the limit and money’s no object, how do you see HubSpot using Facebook Messenger?

Ultimately, we want to connect with our audience where they are, and for a lot of people, that’s on Messenger. We want to enable our audience to choose how they interact with us – to the point where they can do pretty much anything in Facebook Messenger that they’d normally be able to do on our website without ever leaving the app they’re currently in.

Related Article: Why Chatbots Will Rule Everyday Banking

Related Article: The Future Of Artificial Intelligence In Banking

Related Article: How Voice Recognition Is Changing The Game For Content

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