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15th January, 2025 - Webinar replay

Free webinar - New client touchpoints to deepen relationships and boost referrals in 2025

Phil Bray 

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our first Yardstick webinar of 2025. How did that happen, eh? 2025. This year, we’re going to be alternating between Yardstick content and special guests. Our special guests are going to be marketing experts who aren’t necessarily known in the financial services community or indeed in the UK. Next month, we’ve got an incredibly good guest joining us. Abi will talk about that in a bit and explain how to book on. Today it’s just me, Dan, and Abi. We are going to talk about client touch points and how we can use them to deepen relationships and boost the referrals you get in 2025. Specifically, we’re going to as Simon Sinek would say, start with “why”. We’re going to start with why client touch points are important, we’re going to talk about two touch points after a referral is received, other touch points you can put in place in 2025, and we are going to use one slide at the end to talk about things like habits of processes and other top tips for helping you turn what is essentially some ideas today into action that will benefit your business. This is going to be a really practical session where hopefully you’re going to have some things that you can add to your to-do list. Before we get into it, though, for the first time this year, Dan, welcome back. Do you want to do your normal housekeeping slot please mate?

Dan Campbell 

I would love nothing more. Just us two and Abi, who else do you need? So, we’ve got a new year and a new series of webinars, but one thing that will stay the same is me playing the unglamorous assistant and taking care of our housekeeping. I can only apologise for that. What do we need to know for today’s session? Right, well, first things first, we are recording today’s session. For anybody that needs to not take notes and just participate, absolutely do that. Don’t worry about catching everything, you’ll be able to watch it back at your leisure. As usual, we provide a safe and welcoming environment where we encourage lots of open dialogue. Feel free to share your thoughts, whether you agree or think we’re talking nonsense, though, of course, if we are making sense, do let us know; it’s always nice to be told. You can participate through either the Q&A box or the chat. I’m going to be monitoring both today, and we’ll address questions as we go through the session and of course, time permitting, we’ll tackle any remaining questions before we wrap up our hour together. There’s lots to get through, so it will go quickly. As mentioned, since we are recording, you’ll receive a follow-up email with the video link and all relevant notes and resources later today. Our client engagement manager, Abi Robinson, will be working diligently behind the scenes to prepare this for you. So, as ever, we have her to thank for that. Phil, we want to deepen relationships and boost referrals this year. How do we go about doing that?

Phil Bray 

Thank you, Dan. We’re also going to be doing a couple of polls today. If you’ve not voted in the poll already, please, can you go and do that? Dan will reveal the results for poll number one in a bit, and then we’ll launch poll number two shortly. To answer Dan’s question “How do we do that?” Well, let’s start with why. Why are touch points important? There are several reasons. The first is that, if we get touch points right -. We speak to advice firms who have no client touch points between one annual review and the next, literally nothing. I suspect the people on this call might not be in this camp, and I hope you’re not. But we speak to firms who have no touch points between the first annual review meeting and the next, and if we change that for them by adding new touch points, they will add value to your clients. They might add value after specific events, they might add value throughout the year, and they might add value when times are tough. It might be that times are tough because of something that’s going on with clients personally, or it might be something that’s out of their control. Just think back four years and think about what was happening with the slow march of Covid towards the UK. Think about how that made your clients feel from a pandemic perspective, but also from a market perspective. Your touch points should add value throughout the year. They will strengthen and build relationships, create trust, show you care, and make clients feel valued. They will also help with client retention. Clients rarely leave their financial adviser or planner. There are various triggers where financial advisers and planners are more likely to lose a client for example, when one partner dies, divorce or separation, there are times when clients potentially look elsewhere but there is evidence to show that more touch points and better quality touch points will aid client retention. It also helps improve client confidence. There’s research from the US, the 2024 YCharts Advisor-Client Communication Survey, not a catchy title but it’s very good, shows that 71% of clients who received frequent communication, which is defined as monthly or more, from their advisers, felt more comfortable with their financial plan in the event of a recession. That dropped 22% where the contact was less frequent, defined as every four to six months. So, the number of touch points, the amount of communication, absolutely helps clients’ confidence. It also helps to increase the number of referrals and recommendations you receive from existing clients. We all know referrals and recommendations from existing clients are the best type of new enquiry. They’ve got the highest conversion rate and the lowest cost of acquisition, so that makes them the best type of new enquiry. Research and VouchedFor, everybody on this call will know who VouchedFor is, that’s an assumption so if you don’t know, just put a note in the chat and I’ll certainly tell you who they are and tell you a bit more about them. Research from VouchedFor shows that when an adviser or planner speaks with their client less than once a year, they make an average of 0.78 referrals per year. Where the contact is dialed up to four times per year or more, the number of referrals rises quite significantly, more than doubles to close to 2.00 per year. That’s evidence to show that touch points are linked to the number of referrals received. Here’s an anecdote from a firm we were speaking to before Christmas, they were one of the firms with no client touch points between the two annual reviews and their referral rate was tiny, teeny tiny. I forget the exact numbers, but they’ve had something like two or three client referrals in the past year from 250 client households, it was absolutely tiny. You see what you want to see, don’t you? But I do believe there is a link there and it’s shown anecdotally and evidentially through what VouchedFor are talking about. To finish off on that point, back to the YCharts study, 81% of people said increased frequency and/or increased personalisation of communication with their adviser, improved the likelihood of them making a recommendation. Then I thought this was fascinating as well, that 81% rises to 89% for clients with more than $500,000 of investable assets. So whether you’re aiming your touch points to help client retention, increase the number of referrals and recommendations you receive, add value, deepen the relationship, or to provide reassurance to clients in tough times, there are so many reasons to get these touch points right. That’s the “why”. We’re going to move on to the how in a second but Dan, there are a couple of things in the chat, is there anything that we need to deal with now?

Dan Campbell 

For Karen’s benefit, give us a few sentences about who VouchedFor are.

Phil Bray 

Sure, the sort of pithy, TLDR version is VouchedFor is TripAdvisor for financial advisers and planners. 90% of its value, that’s not an accurate number, I’m just trying to share a point, is in social proof and showing the value of your work with clients, and getting ratings and reviews online, and then being able to showcase those throughout your marketing. It will, during the year, provide the occasional lead but that’s not its main aim. Its main aim is being a ratings and review platform and as a companion platform to Google. That is what VouchedFor is. Abi, we’ve probably got loads of stuff on our website about what VouchedFor is and if we could maybe put some stuff in the follow-up, that’d be cool. Anything else, Dan?

Dan Campbell 

No, no, as you were.

Phil Bray 

Are we good? Fantastic. So, we talked about the reasons why we should increase the number of touch points, we now need to think about how we do that and when we do that. There are two really important touch points that we need to talk about. After you’ve received a referral from an existing client. I wouldn’t apply this to professional connections. For me, this is about after you’ve received a referral from existing clients. If anybody wants to talk about how we would suggest you do this with professional connections, I’m absolutely happy to do that. As we said earlier, referrals and recommendations from existing clients are the best type of new enquiry, they have the highest conversion rate compared to all other enquiries, lowest cost of acquisition. Therefore, we should be building a referral and recommendation strategy on three things, appreciation, education, and communication. I think there are two key touch points to show appreciation to clients. Touch point number one is after the referral has been made. I believe strongly that after the referral has been made, you should say thank you. We did some research last year, and 6% of advisers admitted to not saying thank you to clients when the referral was received, the vast majority sent an email. I think we can do better than that. If an email is a 6/10 or 7/10, I think we can raise the bar and do better than that. That’s why we believe strongly that when a referral is received, you should send a handwritten thank you card to the client who made the referral. There are a few reasons to do that. It stands out. When was the last time you got something handwritten in the post? Here at Yardstick, we got two handwritten envelopes last year. One was a thank you card from the lovely people at Portfolio Metrics saying thank you to me for speaking at one of their events, the other was an offer to find out whether we’re interested in selling Yardstick. We’re not, but out of a pile of post of all sorts of different things like bills, junk etc. those two handwritten envelopes really stood out, and I opened them first before the rest of the mail. I would imagine most people would do the same because a handwritten envelope in the post stands out. It also harnesses the power of something called effort bias. It takes more effort to buy a card, write it and write on the envelope by hand, stick a stamp on it, and put it in the post, than it does to bang out an email. People appreciate things more when a greater effort has been put into producing it. It harvests something called effort bias, and it’s just more personal than an email. If you’re on our newsletter list, there’s a blog out on Friday to explain the power of handwritten cards and explain a bit more about that. If you want more information about that, go and listen to one of the latest episodes of Phill Agnew’s nudge podcast. Abi perhaps you could look that up and put a link in the chat. We’ll certainly put a link in the follow-up. Phill Agnew along with Rory Sutherland on this podcast, talks about the power of handwritten notes. The first touch point to take away today and add to your to-do list: handwritten cards when you have received a referral. Then, the second touch point for receiving referrals is when the referral converts into a client. Now it might take between 1 – 6 months for a referral to be converted into a client, and clearly that creates income for your business, both in the short-term and long-term, and increases the value of your business, if that’s relevant to you. So we believe that you should introduce a second touch point when the referral converts of sending a personalised gift. All the research that we see when we’re running client surveys is that clients don’t generally, 90% of clients say that a financial incentive would not increase the likelihood of them making a referral. However, clients, because we’re all human, do like to be appreciated, therefore, rather than a financial inducement or gift vouchers or something like that, I would recommend sending a personalised gift through the post when the referral converts. A card when the referral is received, and a personalised gift when the referral converts. The personalisation of the gift is more important than the value. For example, behind me on my bookcase down there is a book about cricket grounds of the world, that was sent to me to say thank you for something I did for Phil Calvert. Many of you will know Phil Calvert. He also sent me six bottles of French red wine as well. He’d taken the time to personalise the gift and work out what I was interested in. So it wasn’t just a standard bottle of champagne, a hamper, or an Amazon voucher; Phil had taken the time to think about what I might like. The personalisation is more important than the value, and I would also consider gifts that arrive on a regular basis for example, subscriptions. If you know your client is into motorbikes or bird watching or books, send them a regular subscription that lands on their doormat once per month for six months. It might be wine, whiskey, or coffee, but something they’ll enjoy, because every time that lands on their doormat, they will remember you and why they are getting what they’re getting. So, gifts. When the referral converts, not incentives, consider the gifts that provide regular reminders about why they’re getting it, and personalisation is more important than value. If you take anything away from today, take those two really important touch points that will show appreciation to your clients when you receive a referral. Dan, I think we might have a couple of questions.

Dan Campbell 

We certainly have, yes. We’ll start with Robert’s question about sending a gift. Robert asks, “How does the GDPR / data protection issue conflict with sending a gift when a referral becomes a client? Surely saying to someone, “This person is a client and has paid us money”, is a conflict. It’s no different to advertising who your clients are.”

Phil Bray 

Okay, I’m not sure I agree with the last point, that it’s no different to advertising who your clients are, because if you’re advertising who your clients are, that would be to the general public. If you concerned about it, I would just say to the – and I’ve never heard of any adviser getting any pushback from doing these two things – but if you are concerned about it, what I would do is go to the new client and say, “I’d just like to send the person who made the recommendation something in the post to thank them for connecting us.” I would imagine that nine times out of ten, the new client who has been referred to you will be only too happy for you to do that because of the value you will have added, the delight that you will have created, the change that you will have driven in their financial circumstances, they will be very grateful of the fact that you are now in their lives, and will be very happy for you to thank the person who made the introduction in that way. So, if you’ve got any concerns here, Rob, I would just go to the new client and ask their permission.

Dan Campbell 

Brilliant. A really nice comment from Jono, who mentions, “Someone contacted my wife to ask me what I liked once on LinkedIn, which was much appreciated.” Again, it shows the effort, doesn’t it? If you go to lengths to find out what somebody wants if it’s not immediately obvious, the sentiment is appreciated.

Phil Bray 

It is. And just to build on that point I’ve just made to you, Rob, you could use the opportunity when you go to the new client and say, “Would you mind if” you could then ask a supplementary question, “What do you think they’d like?” It’s another opportunity to personalise the gift. Hopefully that answers Robert’s question, and Jonathan, thanks for your input. Okay, those are two touch points after a referral. Let’s think about some more general touch points that we could introduce in 2025. Regular communications. There are three things that I want to talk about here, the first is newsletters. This is a good opportunity for the results in the poll to be revealed. Dan let’s see if the tech works. What have you got?

Dan Campbell 

Okay. Our question was “How often do you send client newsletters?” Monthly, 45% of our audience send them monthly, which is wonderful news. Quarterly, we’ve got 17%, six-monthly, we’ve got 1%. Then other, we’ve got 17 votes and that leaves 20% of the audience, for those quick with mental maths, who don’t send newsletters.

Phil Bray 

Thanks. One in five don’t send newsletters. I’d be fascinated to know if you are one of those one in five that don’t send newsletters and if you’d prepared to share, I’d love you to put a note in the chat about what the reasons are why you don’t send newsletters. Is it time, skill, inclination? Tell us a bit about why not. Because we passionately believe, because the evidence shows this, that advice planning firms should be sending monthly newsletters. Quarterly isn’t enough, and we’ve got data to prove that open rates and engagement on monthly newsletters is higher than quarterly newsletters. There are a bunch of other reasons as well, which I won’t bore you with, but we did write a blog on this: A definitive guide to why newsletters should be sent monthly. There are seven or eight reasons in there, so we’ll get Abi to put that into the chat now as well as the follow-up email. Thank you, Abi. The foundation of your touch points should be that newsletter that ideally lands in somebody’s inbox at the same time each week or, each month. It provides value, information, and reassurance. The fact it lands monthly shows that you are consistent, that you do what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it, rather than missing months and going long periods of time without sending. That actually has the opposite effect and erodes content confidence. We also believe that there is benefit in sending a quarterly referral email. This is an email that goes out once a quarter, every three months, as the name suggests, and it does a few things. It’s a standalone email, it isn’t part of the newsletter, and it does a few things. It shows appreciation to the clients who have made recommendations. Name check them, just their first name. “Thanks to Bill and Ben, Rob, Jane, and Freddie for the referrals that you’ve given us over the past three months. We appreciate you and thank you for the faith and trust you’ve put in us by recommending us to people that you care about.” You can go on to remind people about who you would like to be recommended to, why people can recommend you in confidence, a couple of client stories because people love a story, that sort of stuff. As we said earlier, your referral and recommendation strategy should be based on three things. One of those things is education, another is communication. So, your quarterly referral email does those two things, and also does the third, showing appreciation. Also, in terms of regular comms, we’re seeing a small but growing number of firms run webinars for clients and prospects, and they are proving quite popular with firms who do them and their clients and prospects. Most firms run them probably once a quarter and we’ve got some larger firms with more resource who do them monthly. Those webinars are another touch point, another way of delivering information because the monthly newsletter and the email are written and clearly the webinar is not. They work really well together with webinars. They also provide some actionable data when prospects show up that you might be able to follow up. The three touch points that I would consider introducing and doing more with in 2025 are 1) monthly newsletters, quarterly isn’t enough. 2) Quarterly referral email 3) Webinars. Consider the cadence of webinars. Dan, is there anything coming through the chat we need to deal with?

Dan Campbell 

Yeah, plenty. So, on the subject of sending newsletters, Toby asks, “What is the best time and day to send?”

Phil Bray 

Really good question. I think it depends on your audience. If your audience is a B2C audience, that’s business to consumer where you’re sending it to your clients, then we tend to think Saturday morning at 08:00. 09:00, or 10:00 in the morning, something along those lines. The logic being that some people are still on emails, whether it’s on their phone or they’re doing a bit of work early on a Saturday morning. You might be stood by the side of the rugby pitch while your kids are playing rugby, you might be sat in the cafe while they’re in swimming lessons, that sort of stuff. Also, it’s likely to be at the top of their inbox, or still towards the top of their inbox on a Monday, if they open their emails then. If it’s B2C, that’s the time we tend to recommend. If it’s B2B, we tend to think Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. Mid-week, again, fairly early in the morning, 07:30 or 08:00. There is an exception to that, of course, at Yardstick, we send ours on a Friday morning. I’d avoid Thursday afternoon and Friday afternoon because a lot of stuff goes out then. We’re doing some work at the moment, actually, because we’ve got a huge amount of email data. So, we’re doing some work to retest those two hypotheses, and we’ll report back later in the year on that.

Dan Campbell 

Brilliant. Thanks, Phil. Next we’ll go to Emma, who says, “What do you think is the maximum amount of comms before you become annoying? We have debates around contacting ad hoc on top of monthly”

Phil Bray 

That’s a lovely segue to my next slide. I think you need to be led by the data. Be led by the evidence and the data, not your gut feel. I was on the phone with an adviser yesterday and he said, “I don’t send a monthly newsletter because I don’t think my clients will engage with it. They won’t open it.” we had a conversation about how his clients are different to all the other firms that we work with and their clients. And you know what? They’re not different at all, they have exactly the same profile. Our data shows, if you’re sending newsletters to a database that’s entirely made up of clients, you should be getting an open rate of 70 to 80%. To answer that question about “How do you know?”, be led by the data and test different things. Test ad hoc emails as well as monthly and see what lands. If they land, do more of them, keep doing them and if they don’t land, change them or stop doing them but be led by the data, not someone’s gut feel, myths, misconceptions, or limiting beliefs. Look at the data. I’ll also say that you can probably send more than you think you might be able to, providing there’s a reason and providing it adds value.

Dan Campbell 

Brill, thanks, Phil. There’s a final one we’ll pick up now from a good friend of Yardstick. Ian admits to being one of the 20% who don’t send newsletters. Ian says “My logic is that financial planning adds most value when personal, which I imagine is difficult to do with a newsletter. Also, they can be a bit wanky and repetitive with the content.” And Ian does add a caveat there with, “Clearly, I could easily be wrong.”

Phil Bray 

Firstly, one is easy, it’s dead straightforward. Don’t send wanky, repetitive content. Pretty straightforward that one, although there is a reason to repeat things. Politicians repeat messages for a reason. The big reason politicians repeat messages is they need to do it to get the point home. You don’t have to say things in exactly the same way; you can say the same thing in a different way, but repetition is important. In terms of the personalisation, again, let’s be led by the data. 70 to 80% of financial advisers’ clients, generally speaking, will open the newsletter, and then maybe 50% will engage with something in there. So let’s be led by the data. You can still make it personal by writing about what’s going on in the business, by giving your opinion, and by making sure that whatever you’ve got in there is relevant to the audience. That would be my answer there. Follow the data and don’t make it wanky. Thanks for giving us permission to use that word Ian, I appreciate that. Dan, anything else?

Dan Campbell 

Yes, actually. I will just pick up on Darren’s point. Darren looks like they are going to the other extreme. Darren says, “Folks, in my honest opinion, weekly two or three times minimum. That’s what I do but then I consider retaining a professional marketing strategy as integral to business growth. Monthly is just nuts and out of date with modern marketing touch points.”

Phil Bray 

Darren, I salute you for being able to do two to three minimum a week. We’ve had firms that have done weekly newsletters. I can think of one specific firm in London, and their data and their engagement rates were as good as monthly. There is a myth around bombarding people with newsletters. If you are bombarding people with newsletters, it needs reframing, or your content needs changing.

Dan Campbell 

Brilliant. Thanks, Phil. We do have plenty more but carry on and we’ll pick up a few of these afterwards.

Phil Bray 

Yeah, no worries. Thank you. Okay, so touch points to introduce in 2025, continuing the theme. We talked about regular communications, now, let’s think about some additional communications that can be added in, these ad hoc comms. I forgot who said it earlier, maybe it was Emma. A benchmark for ad hoc communications, look at your open rate on these ad hocs, compare them with previous ad hocs, and compare the open rate with the long-term average on your newsletter. I think what you’re looking for without ad hoc communications is for the open rate and engagement rate to be broadly the same, or maybe slightly higher than your regular newsletters. So, when could you send additional comms? Economic and political events are sometimes a driver for one-off comms. Now I’m not saying you should be doing these often, something like, “Tulip Siddiq resigned yesterday, and you should be sending an email out to your clients.” I’m absolutely not saying that, but there are times when it makes sense to do it. For example, the fallout from the Kwasi Kwarteng budget. Was that 2023? October time in 2023, something like that. There was clearly a lot going on there and we know, because we sent communications out on this basis and we saw the data, clients valued that touch point. There are times in the markets, and some economic and political events when it makes sense to be sending communication out. Again, you can judge the success on open rates and engagement. If you qualify for VouchedFor top rated and you are in the Times Guide that’s going to be published in March, send a communication that day. You can use these additional communications to celebrate things like VouchedFor Top Rated and award successes. So do introduce some ad hoc communications throughout the year when it makes sense to do so. Don’t do them just because you’ve not done one for a while, do them when it makes sense to do so. One of the times when it does make sense to do this is around the budget. The budget that we had, when was it? 30th of October, 2024? Clearly, there was a long lead up to it. There were a lot of your clients who will have been concerned during that lead up period and we saw a large number of firms do a variety of different things. Some sent a pre-Budget communication because they were getting a lot of clients asking whether they should do X, Y or Z. They wanted us to send on their behalf and some did it themselves, a pre-Budget communication to try and calm things down a little bit. We know that the clients of advisers and planners valued that touch point. Post-Budget update of the changes. We believe, because we’ve tested it with the data, the ideal time to send that post-Budget communication is on the day of the Budget. Our aim, when we’re working with Yardstick clients, is to get that mailer out by the time the Six O’Clock News starts. Not a lot of people watch scheduled telly these days compared to what they used to but it’s just a line in the sand, and that’s because people expect to hear from you. It’s just a summary of the changes. And you want them to hear from you, you want them to be reassured that you are around and ready to help. Again, evidence shows that the open rate on those comms is the same or slightly higher than regular newsletters. We had a bunch of financial advisers and planners who went further and provided another touch point to provide some reassurance. You can do all of this! Use this as a template for this year’s Budget whenever it comes. They emailed their clients to say, “We’re offering the opportunity to have some quick check ins before the Budget. We’ve put some slots in our diary, 30-minute slots. Here are the times.” or they used Calendly or some sort of online diary. This was pre-Budget and gave people the opportunity to book a 30-minute slot. We had some advisers who emailed their clients the day before the Budget, or the day of the Budget, to say, “I’ve cleared my diary for Thursday and the Friday after the Budget. We’ve got 30-minute slots, do you want to book in?” That gave clients two things. It gave them the reassurance that the adviser was there, if necessary, and it gave them the opportunity to speak to the adviser if they were concerned. I know from the feedback I had from advisers who did this and had a few clients book in, the fact that they got to talk to the adviser was quite therapeutic and quite reassuring. The other touch point that a few firms did was webinars. We had probably half a dozen firms run webinars. One did it really ambitiously on the day of the Budget, and did a brilliant job. Most did it the day after, and they got good numbers on these webinars. So just think about your Budget strategy and the touch points for next year. Dan, any questions that we need to deal with now?

Dan Campbell 

Kerry mentioned that they sent pre-comms, post-comms, and held a webinar to talk clients through the changes, and they report that their clients were really happy with the approach. So, those that do it tend to yield good results.

Phil Bray 

Yeah, I completely agree. The feedback we had from advisers on whether it was pre-comms, post-comms, clearing the diary, or webinars, was that their clients felt reassured, and that the adviser was on the case.

Dan Campbell 

Lovely. And Paul mentioned “Wow, the Kwasi Kwarteng budget was 2022, where’s all the time going?”

Phil Bray 

Wow. Was it that long ago? Wow. Okay, next. Significant market volatility. It’s a subjective term, you decide on significance. The key here is to understand the difference between personalisation and generic. You will know that some of your clients are more nervous and more sensitive to market movements than others. You will also know that some of your clients may get spooked if you get in touch with them, and have the opposite effect when markets are volatile. So, it’s a really important touch point to have quick check-ins with the clients that are sensitive to markets when they move negatively, and knowing which ones to speak to and which ones not speak to. We did a webinar on this. Abi, you’re working hard today. There’s a webinar on this way back that we did with Brian Portnoy and Neil Bage. It’s really good on this topic. Perhaps Abi, you could do the honours, look it up and stick it in the follow-up email? One-off emails are a really good way of getting content out there to provide reassurance, but also continue client education and coaching, to avoid knee-jerk reactions. You can talk about other things like time in the market, etc. So, one-off emails can help as well. We’ve seen some firms during times of market volatility, just jump on a webinar. A flash webinar with 24 hours’ notice, or “We’re online tonight at 7pm come and talk.” You do have to be careful with this stuff, but I know because one of the questions we ask in client surveys, we ask about comms that were sent around Covid time, the market volatility that was caused after the Ukraine crisis started, and we know clients feel reassured when they get some of these comms. But do go and watch the Neil Bage and Brian Portnoy webinar. End of tax year. You could, as the tax year comes around every year, send “anything you need” messages, like “The tax year end is eight weeks away, is there anything you need from us right now?” Most of your clients will say, “No, there’s nothing I need.” But they’ll appreciate the touch point, they’ll appreciate the check in. It could be a quick email, it could be a quick phone call, and one of the things that we’ll talk about shortly is the fact that this stuff doesn’t necessarily have to come from the adviser or planner. We can introduce other members of the team to deliver these touch points. The tax year end comes around every single year, and those little messages, “Anything you need from us? Anything you’re concerned about? Is there any paperwork you need for your accountant?” That sort of stuff, just quick check ins. Most people will say, “No, nothing I need.” but they’ll appreciate the effort that you’ve made. Then special occasions, so I’m talking about birthdays and Christmas cards here. Dan let’s see if the tech works. Do you want to try the poll again?

Dan Campbell 

Yeah, absolutely. I’m deploying the poll. Let me know if that has worked. Look at that.

Phil Bray 

What we’re asking here is, do you send physical birthday or Christmas cards to your clients? I’m really interested to know the answer to this. I have some theories and want to see whether they’re true or not. I’ll come back to the answer to that in a minute, Dan. Some advisers, and we’ll find out how many in a minute, send birthday cards or Christmas cards to clients but I think we can get even more creative here. Examples of that might be your client says, during the annual review, that they’re going on a great holiday. They’re heading to South Africa, Australia, the far East, a holiday of a lifetime. You get back to the office, pop onto Amazon, send them a guide to wherever they’re going with a quick note. “Really thought you might like this.” Again, it’s a point of contact. Touch points. Marking significant events in their life, so retirement or business sale, marking that with a card, personalised gift, that sort of stuff. Landmarks for their children. I think advisers and planners can get much better with this. It’s a common theme that wealth will soon be passing down in an unprecedented amount from one generation to the next or might even skip a generation. We speak to a lot of advisers who want to get closer to their clients’ children or grandchildren. One of the things you can do to aid that is start marking landmarks in your clients’ children or grandchildren’s lives. What might they be? They could be graduation from university, A Level results, passing a driving test. It shows that you’re listening, shows that you’re taking stuff on board and people will appreciate those touch points. You’ve then got significant personal anniversaries like a wedding anniversary. It could be the anniversary, as it says on the slide there, of the client engaging with you. “You’ve been a client for 10 years, I just want to say thank you.” Every year, Me, Dan, and Abi send little messages to each other about our work anniversaries at Yardstick. It marks time and it’s a nice thing to do. The anniversary of a client engaging with you is something else that you could be marking. You don’t have to all this stuff either, I just want to put some ideas out here that you could use. So, Dan, poll answers, and I’ve seen some stuff coming in through the chat.

Dan Campbell 

Yes. This is where we wade into the subjective, isn’t it? Because people have lots of strong opinions about cards and sending stuff. In terms of the poll, 48% of our audience send none. No physical birthday or Christmas cards to the client. 20% send both birthday and Christmas, 22% do Christmas only, which leaves 10% who send on birthdays only. We’ve got a few messages in the chat. Tracy’s got a really nice idea, they use magic moments and send gifts to clients for special events and special birthdays, which is nice. Howard said, “There’s nothing worse than digital cards.” So again, we wade into the subjective. Then, Chris mentioned they used to send Christmas cards, but now they’ve taken to an email with a charity donation instead. So there are quite a few ideas floating around, which shows the myriad of opinions, doesn’t it?

Phil Bray 

Yes, it does. Again, do what you think is the right fit for your clients, but I do think we can get creative here and do more than nothing, and more than just birthday and Christmas cards. We can mark other things and other occasions as well. Between annual reviews, let’s assume we’re doing annual reviews because I know some firms might do them more or less frequently than that, what else could you be doing between annual reviews? You could be doing quick check-ins or calls, quick messages, maybe on a quarterly rota. Divide your clients up into four and Group A get quick call or check-in, and that check in could be a telephone call, an email, a WhatsApp message, a text message. It doesn’t have to be from the adviser, it could be from another member of the team. There’s a couple of key benefits I can think about if it is another member of the team. We’re not putting something else on the adviser’s to d- list, so therefore it might be more likely to be done. A lot of firms want to create a connection or a greater connection between the client and the support staff. So, quick check ins or called on a quarterly rota. Mid review cycle. If your annual review meeting with a client is in January, then in July, six months later, have a quick check in email, what’s message, text message or call that says, “Six months since our last review, six months to the next one? Is there anything we need to discuss? Any changes?” etc. This all can be driven by process and habits, which we’ll get to in a minute. As I said, consider getting other team members involved, there are huge benefits to that. And consider the method of communication. Who said this? Joe Glover said this on a webinar late last year, he talked about meeting people where they are. It’s important to send these communications, if you decide to do them, in the method that is most likely to be engaged with by the client, whether that’s WhatsApp, text, telephone or email. Those quick check ins, I think, can be incredibly powerful. A process can be built to deliver them, and time can be allocated to do them. The complete opposite of that are “I saw this and thought of you” messages. This isn’t quite as creepy as it sounds. You will be scrolling through your Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn feed, you might be reading the newspaper, or see a magazine article, and a client’s name pops into your head. Most times, we’ll do nothing with that information; we’ll move on. If it happens, just pause and send whatever it is that triggered the client’s name to come to mind. Send it to them. Clip it and send it in an email, share the social media message, take a photograph of it on your phone and send it because A) it will provide value to the person you send it to. B) It shows you’re thinking of them. C) It shows you care enough to have done it. I did this yesterday, or was it Monday? There was an article in New Model Adviser about a firm selling to an EOT (an employee ownership trust), Chris Budd is a good mate of mine, he’s a specialist expert in EOTs, so I clipped it and sent it to him with a note saying, “Saw this, thought of you.” just in case he’d not seen it. “I saw this in the thought of you” messages really deepen relationships and create other opportunities to have conversation as well. Hopefully you’ve got some things there that appeal to you. Touch points that you can start adding to your client relationships. A plan is only ever as good as its implementation. So, I thought I’d finish on this slide before we hand over to Abi to introduce next month’s webinar guest and answer any questions that we’ve got. What’s going to turn these top tips and ideas into action? For me, the firms that focus and prioritise are the ones who do this best. They don’t try and bite off more than they can chew because that would give them indigestion. They focus, they pick two or three things, they prioritise, and they actually do those two or three things. They might pick the budget stuff, because you can plan ahead for that, they might pick the mid review touch points, because you can plan for that and they’ll get divided over the year broadly, equally, and they might choose to do the card and the gift idea. Other firms who mark as a success try different communication methods. So, meet people where they are, whether it’s email, WhatsApp, phone calls, text messages, etc. They will spread the load as well. They realise that advisers, and clearly if you’re a sole practitioner, this is harder, but they spread the load so that other people in the team are involved. It means things are more likely to get done, and it creates and deepens relationships between people in the support staff and the clients, rather than just the advisers. They absolutely avoid limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs is a bit of a theme that we’re going to be working on this year, 2025. For example, the client I spoke to who said, “My clients won’t read newsletters.” Alright, let’s give it a go and see whether they do or not. I’m pretty confident, unless your clients are different to most financial advisory clients, and they weren’t in this case, your client will read it. So, avoid limiting beliefs that people won’t value these touch points; we saw at the start, the evidence that they absolutely do. We also need to reframe. Know your client (KYC) has been a compliance term over the years but we need to reframe this from a marketing perspective and from a touch point perspective. Think about what clients might value in the way of gifts to show appreciation, what the key dates are in their lives, what’s going on in their children’s lives. That soft stuff. You might pick up on some of it in meetings. You might pick up on some of it in their homes. You might pick up on some of it from following their social media, that’s a really good source of information about these softer things going on in your clients lives. Do reframe the whole “know your client” piece. We’ve covered three things today: the “why”, why is this important? The “how”, there were hopefully some ideas that you could take away, the touch points you can introduce into your business, and then some top tips to turn those ideas into action. We’ll come back and answer some questions in a minute, and clearly, everybody will get the recording from today, but I want Abi to tell you about our special guest for next month.

Abi Robinson 

Thanks, Phil. I know you’ll already have the message scheduled, so this reminder is totally unnecessary, but it is my three-year work anniversary on Friday. I know you’re way ahead of the game on that one. Next month, this is very exciting. If anybody is an avid user of LinkedIn, uses LinkedIn to get their financial services marketing tips, then you will have heard of Samantha Russell. She is an expert on branding, digital marketing, and inbound lead generation, specifically for financial advice and planners much like us. Samantha is based in the US, so next month we will be going live a little bit later than usual. It’s February 19 at 2pm. She’s moving to London for four months from April, so, if anybody really enjoys the webinar and wants to arrange a bit of an in-person meet up, she’s already said she’s very keen for that. Next month, we’ll be hitting the ground running with guest webinars talking about lead generation tactics, what you need to have on your website, why social proof is really important, and the issues that you need to avoid on social media. Once I’ve finished gabbering, I will put the link in the chat and of course, it will be in the follow-up email, which is getting pretty chunky after the session, which is great. There have been lots of questions, and lots of relevant things that have come to mind, so don’t worry, they are all in the follow-up if you’ve missed them in the chat. Just before I come to your questions, which I can see flooding in, could we ask a favor? This is our favorite touch point of all, which Phil failed to mention, Google reviews. If you want to leave a Google review, we would be massively grateful. We’re going to be talking about social proof with Samantha next month, it’s hugely important both for you and us. Because these webinars are always free, we would be really grateful if you could take a couple of minutes just to give us some feedback. We did a webinar survey at the end of last year and we got some great ideas from that, and we use Google reviews in the same way to help us improve the sessions moving forward. The link I’ll put in the chat now, it will be in the follow-up email and thank you for all your questions which we will now get to.

Phil Bray 

Thank you, Abi. If anybody wants to stay in touch with Yardstick and find a bit more about what we do, go and look at theyardstickagency.co.uk, our website, and go and look at us on LinkedIn and X. We’re probably a bit more active on LinkedIn these days than X but do go and have a look there. Right, Dan, questions!

Dan Campbell 

Okay, where shall we start? Let’s ask Scott’s question from a while ago. Scott asked, “Does your advice change for mortgage and/or protection advisers? As their content they can use in their newsletters is less dynamic than for full financial planning firms. For example, someone locked in on a 5% fixed rate is probably not too keen to get a newsletter from me saying they could get a new deal at 4.5%.”

Phil Bray 

Yeah, I do think there are differences. It’s a really valid point. You’ve got to balance with mortgages, and this is easier if mortgages are part of a wider wealth offering. But I do agree, if someone’s just signed up to a 60-month fixed rate it is harder to find meaningful touch points during those 60 months, those five years. I think you can do it. I think you can still within the realms of what you’re allowed to talk about, you could still talk about interesting things with them, but I agree you won’t necessarily want to be talking about rates. You could be talking about house prices, things going in the local area, things going on in your business, etc. So I do think that you have to reimagine those touch points and do them differently to a firm that provides a service where they meet the clients once a year, but I do think it’s incredibly important you do it, because clearly you want the client coming back to you at the time of the deal running out or moving house, rather than going to a different mortgage broker, the estate agent’s mortgage broker, or just doing the switch with the existing lender. I agree it’s harder, but I still think it’s doable.

Dan Campbell 

Brilliant, thanks. The next question, I imagine the answer would be, “Let’s have a chat.” but if anybody else is thinking of the same question, I’ll read it out for their benefit. This is from Ravenska, who says, “We currently send a monthly newsletter through Yardstick. Do you think it would be well-received by clients if we started sending out a weekly email as well? These emails would focus on current issues, while linking back to our services.”

Phil Bray 

I think it depends on what you say in them, Ravenska. I think that the weekly and fortnightly cadence, monthly, six-monthly, etc., is probably a bit of a red herring in terms of that question. I think it depends more on what you get. For example, daily I get a message that lands in my inbox from Seth Godin because I’m on his newsletter list. I love it. I read it, I get it. I get a weekly email from James Clear. Love that and read it. I signed up for an event, or to be on the priority list for an event about 10 days ago, and I got deluged with stuff. It provided no value at all, and I’ve unsubscribed. So, this is more about the relevancy of the content. It’s really important.

Dan Campbell 

As a side note to that, I get the Andy Bounds Tuesday email, and ever since he’s been on the webinar, I can’t not read it in his voice, so it’s quite trippy now. The next question is from Joanne, who asks, “What are the rules around GDPR/ data protection when contacting clients? Do they need to have consented to marketing for email newsletters, personal emails, cards etc.” All those cards we were referring to earlier.

Phil Bray 

The cards are dead straightforward, GDPR doesn’t cover things going through the post. Most advisers in their privacy policy will use legitimate interest as the legal basis for processing data. Processing data being sending a marketing email, a newsletter, etc. if somebody unsubscribes, then you can’t send it to them.

Dan Campbell 

Brilliant. Let’s go for Robert’s question next, who asks “If we start to send newsletters, I assume we would have to go through an exercise of checking all client data information. Also, if clients have previously or historically opted out of marketing, would/ should we take them out of any marketing lists?”

Phil Bray 

Okay, so working back. If they’ve previously unsubscribed, yes, I think you should. I think you should respect their wishes. Most firms use legitimate interest, but if they’ve previously unsubscribed, I think you need to respect their wishes. And yes, you need to make sure that your data is clean. I would suggest that there are three data points that are really important to send a newsletter effectively. Those are the correct email addresses and the right salutation. If we sent a newsletter to Daniel Campbell, Dan, you’d think it was a bit weird. If we sent it to Dan Campbell, that’s your name that you go by. The same with Abigail and Phillip. You need clean data. I would remove anybody that’s unsubscribed, and most advisers will rely on legitimate interest.

Dan Campbell 

Yeah, if anybody called me Daniel, I’d think I was in trouble. Right. A quick question from Darren, who says, “I’ve considered creating a sub stack. Do many advisers currently use this as a way to write articles or blogs?”

Phil Bray 

No is the short answer. Again, this is about meeting people where they are as Joe Glover rightly said. Take social media, for example, we know some advisers have a preference for this channel over here, but their clients are on this channel over here. The adviser needs to move to this channel where their clients hang out, so meet people where they are.

Dan Campbell 

Brilliant. The final comment is a question from Paul to me, saying, “Let’s hear your Andy Bounds voice, Dan?” The answer to that is no, because I’d probably need another eight cups of coffee to do him any justice. Maybe one day, but today won’t be that day, I’m afraid. Swiftly moving on, I think that’s all of our questions so unless anyone’s got any final ones for us to sweep up, let’s call that a day.

Phil Bray 

Thank you, Dan, thank you, Abi, and thank you to everybody on the call today. We really appreciate you being here and all of your questions. They always make it more engaging and interesting. Abi has got a long email to write. We’ll see you all next month. Cheers, everybody, bye, bye.

Dan Campbell 

Take care, guys. Bye.