Regular contact with both existing clients and prospects is invaluable and sending them a regular client newsletter from your adviser business is a great way to do it.

At a high level, it reminds them you’re there and raises awareness of what you do and the services you can offer.

At a more granular level, it’s also a great opportunity to let them have information about your advice process and your thoughts about specific issues around financial planning and personal finance that could affect them.

Read on for some handy tips to help you produce a newsletter they will want to read, and how you can maximise its effectiveness.

1. Give yourself the best possible chance of your email being opened

As your newsletter will usually be sent as an email, your first aim should be to ensure as many people open it as possible.

Remember, you’ll probably be fighting for their attention with any number of other companies trying to sell them something, so you need to give your email every possible chance of being the one in their inbox that they open.

There are some important factors you should bear in mind.

Eye-catching subject headings can help improve your open rate. A client is much more likely to open “7 essential things you must know about saving for your retirement” than “Client newsletter – July 2023.”

Your open rate can also be affected by the time of day you send your newsletter out. Often this is a case of trial and error, so you may want to send it at different times and days of the week until you find the optimum time that works for you.

You can also start referencing your newsletter in other communication you have with your clients. A simple “did you see my last newsletter – what did you think?” when you’re on a call or at a client meeting will encourage them to take a look, and help boost your engagement levels.

2. The content needs to be relevant to your target audience

Once they’ve opened the email, your next challenge is to try to ensure your clients read what you send them. So, at a very simple level, you need to provide them with articles they will want to read.

You’ll no doubt be aware that we work in an industry that can be prone to technical jargon and lengthy analysis.

You’ll know your clients better than anyone, but we’d suggest an overly technical analysis of an obscure tax change that only affects a small percentage of business owners probably won’t be read by many people, or effectively absorbed.

Make sure that every finance-related article is relevant and written from the client’s perspective. So ensure you’re constantly referencing what the points you are making mean to them.

For example, if you’re telling them about a change in legislation, you should either look to explain how it will affect your clients, how they could benefit from it or, conversely, the steps they need to take to mitigate its effect.

3. Keep the articles short and to the point

Once you have their attention, your next challenge is to ensure you keep it.

You can improve your chances of that by providing articles that are engaging and easy to digest quickly.

It can also help to break up paragraphs of text with charts and tables if they help illustrate the points you’re trying to make.

Your articles need to be long enough for you to cover all the key points but not too long that your readers lose interest.

One simple trick to encourage someone to read a whole article is to include a number in the title. If your reader knows that what they are reading contains seven key points, they’re more likely to read to the end to discover what all seven are.

4. Don’t be afraid to mix in some non-business subjects

Based on the “all work and no play” maxim, there’s no harm in adding the occasional lifestyle article to your newsletter content.

For example, if you know a lot of your clients are keen sports fans, you could include a topical article about a forthcoming event such as the Rugby World Cup or the start of the new Premier League football season.

Likewise, if your client list consists of primarily high net worth individuals, they may well be interested in articles about top luxury hotels or spa breaks around the world.

If your clients are concentrated in one particular region of the country, provide them with an article about some of the top restaurants, markets, or days out in the area.

It’s also possible to mix business and pleasure in a single article. Any cricket fan will surely be intrigued by an article titled “10 things the Ashes can teach you about planning your financial future”.

5. Always include a call to action

Think about what you want your clients and prospects to do after reading your newsletter.

Newsletters aren’t necessarily about getting business right away, but you still want to take the opportunity to connect with clients, and hopefully get them to interact with you and your business.

At a very simple level, you can encourage them to look at your website. For example, if one of your newsletter articles references critical illness cover and you have something about that on your website, link back to it.

Make sure you have “get in touch” wording at the end of each article so they don’t have to look too hard to find your contact details. Ensure the wording you use references, and relates directly to, the article above it. For example, “If you’d like to find out more about how changes to the Lifetime Allowance could affect you, please get in touch.”

Finally, in the email you send with your newsletter, ask for their ideas or requests for subjects they’d like you to cover in future newsletters.

Bonus tip:  Get experts to do all the work for you

Having made the decision that a regular client newsletter will help your business, you may then worry about the likely time commitment.

So, why not get an expert to do it for you?

We have a wealth of experience in writing engaging content for client newsletters.

We can come up with bespoke article ideas for you or we can produce content based on your brief and instructions.

We’ll then write your newsletter and, once you’re happy with the content, we’ll design it based on your business branding and send it to your mailing list with a resend a few days later to give everyone a second chance to open it.

Get in touch

If you’d like to talk to us about how we can help you produce a client newsletter, or just want to know what the seven things the Ashes can teach you about planning your financial future are, then please get in touch.

You can email us at hi@theyardstickagency.co.uk or call 0115 8965 300 today.