How to Nurture Leads as a Financial Advisor

Leads can help your business continue growing. But once you’ve made an initial connection, you’ll need to spend time building a rapport to gain trust from a prospective client. Emails and texts are an effective way to keep the lines of communication open. If you’re looking for ways to save time in this area, automated lead nurturing for financial advisors can help you deliver your messaging while leaving you free to focus on other aspects of running your business.

SmartAsset’s Advisor Marketing Platform (AMP) offers financial advisors services like client lead generation, automated marketing and more. Learn about SmartAsset AMP today.

Direct vs. Automated Lead Nurturing for Financial Advisors

Direct outreach for lead nurturing involves some type of one-on-one contact, whether it’s a face-to-face meeting, a quick text or a phone call. Automated lead nurturing, on the other hand, is all about using digital tools to cultivate relationships with prospective clients.

Some advisors favor direct outreach to nurture leads, while others are comfortable exploring the possibilities of automation. You might be somewhere in the middle, which is understandable. And both sides do have their merits.

One of the primary appeals of direct outreach for lead nurturing is personalization. You can customize messages to fit individual clients, which can help transform cold leads into warm leads. The downside, of course, is that direct outreach is often time-consuming.

Automated lead nurturing allows you to simplify and streamline outreach without sacrificing a personal touch. It enables you to be more efficient in the way you run your business, as well as potentially scale your business at a faster pace.

3 Ways to Implement Automated Lead Nurturing for Financial Advisors

Your approach to nurturing leads may look different from another advisor’s. As you review the tips below, consider how they fit into your overall marketing plan.

1. Add AI to Your Content Creation Toolbox

An advisor discussing the use of AI for client services.

Artificial intelligence tools are increasingly finding their way into the financial advisor landscape, assisting with everything from client communications to portfolio management. While not exclusive to financial services, AI writing tools have also become popular for digital content creation.

If you’re using content to connect with leads online, AI can help you create it in less time. Common AI applications for lead nurturing include:

Drafting email templates for drip campaigns, weekly or monthly newsletters and follow-up communications.
Creating engaging content for social media that’s tailored to the tone and audience of individual platforms.
Crafting website content, including landing pages, blog posts and informative articles that speak to the needs and pain points of prospective clients.

Not sure how it works? Automating content creation with AI starts with a prompt. This is the direction you feed to your AI writing tool to produce your desired result. Specificity matters here, as the quality of your results depends on the quality of your input.

For example, you might direct your AI tool to develop a series of five email messages to be used in a drip campaign to nurture leads who are interested in your firm’s retirement planning services. You can provide input about the leads’ financial backgrounds, goals and needs to create the messages in minutes.

As with any AI tool, you’ll still need to have a hand in the final product. That means reviewing the content to ensure that it aligns with your desired message and strikes the right tone with the leads you’re trying to reach.

2. Automate Email and Text Campaigns

Email and text have increasingly become clients’ preferred methods of staying in touch with their advisors. In a 2024 YCharts survey, 61% of investors said they’d rather hear from their advisor via email, while 26% chose text messages to communicate. By comparison, 38% said they’d choose an in-person meeting.

The numbers underscore the importance of building an email list. When a lead shares their email, they’re giving you an invitation to their inbox, which is an opportunity to develop a relationship.

Here are some of the ways you can nurture leads via email:

Create a welcome sequence to introduce your firm and gather some details about prospects’ financial objectives.
Develop a drip campaign that offers a deeper dive into the services you offer and your firm’s unique value proposition.
Send follow-up emails at appropriately spaced intervals to keep your firm on the lead’s radar.
Share a weekly or monthly newsletter highlighting the latest market trends, firm news or sharing a valuable resource with your audience.

Those are all tasks you can automate through your email marketing service. Many platforms offer integrated services that allow you to schedule and send text messages to your leads, as well.

If developing these types of campaigns sounds intimidating, you may consider working with an advisor marketing platform that offers automation features. SmartAsset AMP gives you access to automated, personalized mobile and SMS outreach tools as well as email nurture campaigns. Once you’ve matched with a qualified lead through the platform, you’ll have everything you need to begin building a relationship.

3. Leverage Your CRM

An advisor reviewing a client portfolio.

Your customer relationship management platform is more than just a tool for collecting prospect and client data. You can also use it to create automated workflows to help nurture leads.

For example, say you’re exploring the possibilities of seminar marketing to warm up leads. You can use your CRM to:

Schedule webinar dates
Invite leads, based on the content of the seminar and which segment of your prospect list it’s tailored to
Send automated reminders as the seminar date approaches
Engage in discussions or answer questions about the seminar
Add notes from those discussions into individual lead files

Scheduling, invitations and reminders are all tasks you can automate through your CRM. Your CRM may also feature email templates that you can use to craft follow-up messages and schedule to send after the seminar concludes.

If you’re considering an automated marketing platform for lead nurturing, look for one that integrates with your CRM. SmartAsset AMP, for example, integrates with common CRMs like Redtail and Salesforce, so you can easily see where a lead is in the pipeline at any given time.

Bottom Line

Automated nurturing tools can keep warm leads from going cold, and there are numerous ways you can implement them in your marketing plan. It’s worth exploring the possibilities of automation if you’re ready to convert more prospects to clients.

Tips for Growing Your Advisory Business

While offline marketing still carries weight, more advisors are turning their attention to digital marketing avenues. A website, social media profiles, email and digital ad campaigns can help you get on the radar of prospective clients and make your brand more visible. SmartAsset AMP (Advisor Marketing Platform) is a holistic marketing service that financial advisors can use for client lead generation and automated marketing. Sign up for a free demo to explore how SmartAsset AMP can help you expand your practice’s marketing operation. Get started today.
Automations and AI are not substitutes for a personal touch. Automated outreach paired with direct lead nurturing ensures that you’re making real connections while saving time. For instance, you might pair email drip campaigns with personalized outreach through LinkedIn Sales Navigator. If you’re leveraging AI to create social media content, show up and engage with your audience once a post goes live. Responding to comments and answering questions are two of the best ways to foster a genuine rapport and spark interest in your firm’s services.