How Automated Learning Paths Can Free Up Time and Engage Your Clients

The human element is what keeps clients gravitating toward advisors. A recent piece by the Globe and Mail found millennial clients in their 20s to 40s are at the stage in life at which they’ve accumulated some wealth and need the help of a financial advisor to grow and manage it. However, it's difficult to find the time to make every advisor-client relationship consistently personalized. There simply is not enough time in the day. This is where technology and automation can play a key role in your business. If done correctly, it can feel like a personalized touch without a lot of time or oversight. 

One way that financial advisors are leveraging automation while keeping that personalized relationship is by creating email campaigns centered around life events. Here at HeyAdvisor, we like to call these learning paths. Learning paths are a series of emails, usually occurring over 5 weeks, that when sent in a particular order cover key educational aspects. These are the most impactful when created around the life event of a client such as having a baby, buying a house, getting married, etc. Life event based wealth planning is particularly important to millennial clients. 

For example, while in a meeting, a client mentions that they have begun looking at buying a house. As a financial advisor, it is not expected that you will have a major role in this process but it is a big financial endeavour and you can still add value. Your response could be “That's exciting! There are a lot of wealth planning opportunities that arise as you become a homeowner. Over the next few weeks, why don’t I send you some videos and infographics that will help educate you on the key things you need to consider.” It’s simple, impactful and the best thing about it is you set and forget it. This small gesture goes a long way in creating a personalized experience for your client. This method can be applied to all the major life events. 

These learning paths can easily be set up with any email marketing software and the great thing is that, once the work has been done, they can be used over and over again for various clients.

Here are the steps: 

1. Decide on the software that you are going to use to achieve this. You need to ensure that the email marketing software you choose allows you to set up automated drip campaigns. A lot of our users have gravitated towards Mailchimp for its ease of use.

2. Make a plan of what the campaigns will look like. What content will you include? How often will you send them out? If you are using HeyAdvisor’s content library and email templates, we have already done this part for you. If you are using Mailchimp, we have created templates that can be used for each content piece in the content library. 

3. Set up the campaigns and test them out with yourself and other team members.

4. Communicate this to your clients. You can post signup links on your webpage or social media where clients and prospective clients can sign up on their own. Alternatively, you can identify the clients that would benefit from this information. If you haven’t already segmented your clients by age this can be helpful in sending targeted communications. 

The best part of these learning paths is that they can be used multiple times. We've created some example learning paths you can leverage along with a HeyAdvisor subscription so you can get your campaigns up and running in no time.

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Having a Baby Learning Path

Starting to Invest Learning Path

Getting Married Learning Path‍

Buying a House Learning Path‍

Aging Parents Learning Path

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Embracing technology is essential to the success of any business and doesn’t have to be a big undertaking. In an increasingly competitive and digital industry, it’s important that you are leveraging technology to strengthen your client relationships. Small steps such as these automated campaigns can set you apart from other advisors, increase client engagement and free up team capacity.