How to Track Your Direct Mail Campaign Digitally

By Jordan Collins
Tucker Advisors Senior Digital Marketing Specialist

Table of Contents

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“What gets measured gets improved”

How to track direct mail

What are my options:

1. Tracking Links
2. QR Codes
3. Telephone Number Tracking
4. Landing Pages & Forms

Why Track Direct Mail Online?

“What Gets Measured Gets Improved”

Peter Drucker, an Austrian-American management consultant and author, once said “what gets measured gets improved.” He understood that for something to get better, first, you needed to know how it was doing. When you have a marketing effort that leads to an increase in sales, subscriptions, or transactions, it is obvious that something went right, but what about when you don’t see results? How do you know what is pushing your business forward?

When it comes to traditional marketing efforts like radio, television, or mail, it is hard to know whether it is money well-spent or just brand awareness to a target audience. Many businesses have started using comment cards and surveys to try and crowdsource this information. You’ve probably seen them asking, “how did you find us.”

While it is a good practice to be surveying and understanding your clients, it is not a good practice to be unaware of where your business is coming from.

Many marketing services will tell you about how many people in your geography they can reach, what they can put in their mail, and prospecting lists targeted at your industry, but how many really educate you on the data? When you spend a lot of money with a company and it doesn’t translate into business results, it’s time to go deeper and find growth opportunities. If you don’t have any reliable information to rely on, how will you ensure that your future marketing efforts succeed?

How to Track Direct Mail Digitally

To track direct mail, your call to action needs to capture some piece of information. One of the simplest ways to do this is to have a tracking link. A tracking link is a web address with unique values that signal where the call is coming from. By this, I don’t mean the current physical address of your caller, I mean what campaign, mailer, or outreach provided them the information to get in contact with you.

What if someone is calling you instead of using email or social media?

There are phone services available that can provide you with information on a lead’s name, phone number, location, and some of the offline marketing pieces they have interacted with. The key takeaway here is that there is more information to dive into than ever before.

Tracking Links

When it comes to tracking data online, there are a lot of options. In this section, I’ll give you two options, with the first being the simpler of the two.

If you’re looking to dip a toe into capturing information but don’t want analysis paralysis, use bit.ly to create branded links. You can create a free account and start seeing how many clicks a link is receiving (or visits seeing as you can’t click a print piece), where the clicks are coming from geographically, and what medium is driving people to your site. Is it through someone typing it directly, from email, or another channel where the link was shared? With Bitly you can also subscribe to get added functionality like creating custom links that don’t say “bitly” in them. I would suggest this for the financial advisor on a budget who wants to know how their campaign is performing.

The second method is using Google’s URL Builder. This powerful tool integrates with Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager to pull your data into one platform (Google Analytics) for comparison from campaign to campaign. There’s an ocean of information about all three of these products so we will try to briefly give context to Google’s URL Builder and then explain how that folds into Google Analytics.

The URL Builder allows you to take the page you want to send visitors to then add a source, medium, and more identifiers so you can differentiate visitors by where they see your link. This way when they visit, they are immediately signaling to your system where they came from. Doing this allows you to identify, compare, and contrast where your traffic is coming from and decide what drives the most traffic and what doesn’t. This takes the mystery out of where your leads are coming from. With that in mind, you need to be sure you are training your staff to interpret the tracking information. This way you can have a larger discussion on the data with those who are working with it hands-on.

With this new information in hand for your next campaign, you’ll make better decisions based on the efficacy of a marketing channel and waste less ad spend. In direct mail, they’ll sell you on how many houses there are to send to, but tracking the responses can get tricky. Creating trackable URLs will give you the transparency you’re looking for.

QR Codes (With Trackable Links)

QR codes have been around for a long time but up until 2021, they’ve rarely been adapted. People don’t use them and haven’t wanted to learn. Created in Japan in 1994 they were produced to help the auto industry work more efficiently. In 2002, mobile phones were release with the ability to read these “quick response” codes. Now anyone with a mobile phone could visit a website, use a coupon, or gain admittance to a show with the scan of an image. In 2020, QR code adoption expanded immensely with the world adapting to Covid-19 and the need for touchless transactions. Because of this many have been forced to learn how to use QR codes through visiting restaurants and attending public events.

The great thing about QR codes is the amount of access they offer. Without having to type, you can instantly scan it with your mobile device’s camera and you’re on your way. Creating a QR code for your marketing campaign is incredibly flexible and simple. So easy that you can right click a page or image and instantly be given the option to create a quick response code.

When using a QR code, create your tracking link first. This way it will register with your tracking when someone scans the QR code. If you are looking to get more specific with your QR code creation, Google a QR code generator and customize it. This way you can get all the bells and whistles, the ability to track it, and a high-res file to add to your print materials. Now that you have your materials ready, all someone needs to do is look at your mailer, scan the code, and you’ll see it on your end.

Call Tracking

While some will respond to your marketing campaigns with emails and other electronic messages, some will prefer to just give you a call. Call tracking software matches incoming phone calls and texts to your marketing channels and tactics. This measures whether you are spending your money wisely or if shifting your spend could result in more leads. Call tracking uses a unique phone number that forwards calls to your main phone number.

To use this effectively, you’ll need to use a third party like Callrail or Call Tracking Metrics.

You can add these tracking phone numbers to your print campaigns, website, or other materials to get more insight into who is calling, where they’re calling from, and how they’ve interacted with your materials in the past. If you decide to do call tracking, be sure that you set up your tracking phone number with your local area code. Many people will not answer a phone number calling them from out of town or outside their contact list. Another tip is that if you don’t have a lot of calls coming in, paying to track the information may not be necessary. If you’re receiving a high volume of calls, then you’d likely want to take advantage of something like this.

Landing Pages & Forms

If you use a third party for landing pages like Leadpages or Clickfunnels, you can collect data and make customized pages independent of your website. These services deliver analytics on page views and other key metrics. Receiving a page view is comparable to receiving a click on your trackable link. It means someone who has received your information from a marketing campaign is checking out your information. This is where it is crucial to differentiate your marketing campaigns and their channels to make sure when you look through the data, you can deduce what’s working and what isn’t.

Forms that you can embed and integrate into your website will come with analytics about how many form fill-outs you’ve had. This is another good way to see how successful your campaign is. According to WPForms, the median conversion rate on a form is around one in five. The highest success-rate forms had only five fields. Adding more fields or requiring a phone number made many of these statistics go down in efficacy. If you’d like to see more statistics to inform your form creation visit here.

Why Track Direct Mail?

You’ve read on how to track direct mail digitally but you may have wondered, why track direct mail in this way? The answer is that when you are paying companies for advertising, they can’t guarantee results. What can they guarantee? The answer is detailed data. While it would be great to measure each campaign purely through sales, not all campaigns lead to sales. If you’ve done direct mail, bought a list, or done a social media campaigns that didn’t pan out, why do you think it didn’t work? The clues to why it didn’t work are in the data. You want to use services that allow you to see behind the curtain. We live in a time where you can get live, transparent information on how your content is performing. Traditional marketing like direct mail can be held to the same standards as a Facebook or Google campaign if you set it up with tracking, but many don’t know that it is an option. If you are able to use tracking links on each of your different offerings and campaigns, you will see a more complete picture of where you should be spending to make more money.

If your site is struggling for traffic, be sure to see our piece on organic and paid traffic strategies here.

If you would like more information on digital marketing strategy visit here.

For Financial Professional Use Only. NOT INTENDED FOR VIEWING OR DISTRIBUTION TO THE PUBLIC. Insurance-only agents are not licensed to offer investment advice.

Keys to Preparing for ‘The Great Wealth Transfer’

By Sam Deleo
Tucker Advisors Senior Content Specialist/Editor

Nearly $70 trillion. According to research firm Cerulli Associates, that’s how much wealth aging generations like baby boomers will transfer to their children and grandchildren in the next two decades or so. This figure represents the largest generational inheritance of wealth ever, which some are now tagging “The Great Wealth Transfer.”

The effects of this massive transfer will introduce new challenges for financial advisors. Gen Xers, millennials and members of Generation Z think differently about money than their parents and grandparents. The methods advisors use in serving this new client base will need to adapt, also.

In addressing this subject, we won’t be so bold as to offer specific recommendations in this space because the challenges are still so new to both this potential client base and advisors alike. We simply want to introduce some methods that advisors may want to consider now and moving forward.

There are many generalizations we can make about younger generations that are as unfair to them as the stereotypes leveled at previous generations. Instead, let’s talk about prevailing tendencies that may or may not exist in the younger folks you might meet as prospects:

They might not be rebellious, but they likely won’t be traditional or “establishment,” either; They might not be impressed by your marketing efforts simply because they’ve already seen everything repeatedly, having been saturated with advertising, marketing and digital culture their whole lives; They might also be less impressed by your credentials and expertise, unless you can show them how your industry experience can directly impact their lives.

Additionally, more young adults live at home than at any point since 1969, according to Generational Insights, a leading research firm on generational demographics. This is not always by their design or preference, as they have weathered unique financial circumstances such as The Great Recession, housing slumps and aggressive valuations, as well as skyrocketing college debt.

Generational Insights summarizes younger generations’ view on experts like financial advisors as follows: Experts are teachers; Experts acknowledge the uniqueness of an individual’s situation; Experts guide, rather than seek to control; Expert’s resources should be available repeatedly, even long after a transaction has closed.

Financial advisors seeking to connect with younger generations would do well to emphasize both their personal characteristics as well as their professional traits. Younger people engage with personal details of people every day in social media settings. While it might be more appropriate to reveal such details in Instagram or Facebook than on LinkedIn, advisors should feel free to express their preferences when it comes to movies, music, sports and other media. What are your hobbies, collections, travel interests and outdoor pursuits? What interests inspire passion in you? You may not feel as comfortable about it yet, but younger people have seen information like this about others as long as they can likely remember.

We spoke with the founder of Generational Insights, Cam Marston, for his expert’s take on what it means to be an expert to younger people today.

“It appears to us,” said Marston, “that many experts in the financial industry who are age 50 and older have some expectation the methods and manners that worked with the parents and grandparents are going to work with the children and grandchildren. Unfortunately, that’s usually not the case.”

For starters, the parents and grandparents either missed the brunt of the Great Depression or had already secured careers and wealth by the time of the Great Recession. They experienced their share of market pressures, but they were different in scope than what young people face today.

“Keep in mind that for some members of this younger audience, like millennials, for instance,” said Marston, “there is still a stain on the financial industry because of the Great Recession. This event occurred right when many of them were trying to enter the work force and begin their careers. And, this new audience views a financial advisor as even more of a burden when they consider what ‘robo’ offers, where you don’t have to interact with a human to set up accounts or undergo the small talk that comes with human interactions. So, the question they ask themselves is, ‘Why should I work with a human?’ That’s why it’s so important financial advisors communicate with them on their level in the ways they prefer.”

What works for older clients, such as telling your story or presenting credentials and awards, may not elicit the same responses from younger prospects.

“Your ‘story’ remains effective with older clients,” said Marston, “but get out of your story and into the future with younger clients. They don’t want to know about you as much as they want to know how you can help them. So, it’s not just the future of the client, it’s, ‘Here is what I see happening if we work together.’ It’s a future focused with the advisor involved. Draw the picture of what the future will look like and then attach an emotion to this future: ‘This is going to be fun’; ‘I think you’re going to like what you’ll learn.’; ‘I think this will be an exciting experience for you,’ and so on.”

One of the biggest challenges facing financial advisors, Marston believes, involves the sales process. It should be a careful and deliberative process with clients of any age, but the way that process functions moving forward may change dramatically with younger prospects.

“Selling has always involved both emotion and logic. Now it’s generational, too,” said Marston. “When it comes to offering a sales pitch, my advice is to first create a picture of the future, with you the advisor as a part of that future. Second, sell in herds, that is to say, ‘Hey, I’d love the opportunity to tell you about what I do. Why don’t you grab a few friends, I’ll buy you all a round of beers and I’ll tell you about how my business works?’ It’s hard to isolate people alone in these younger generations, they’re often more comfortable in groups and with friends. Third, when given the opportunity, say something to the effect of, ‘Before I tell you what we do, why don’t you tell me everything I need to know about you?’ And in that moment of conversation, hopefully, that person feels heard, feels like you are invested in who he or she is. This then allows you to move on to telling them what you can do for them.”

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Referral Marketing Guide

Using data that Generational Insights has compiled, we gathered a list of methods that may still be too new to call “best practices.” That said, here are:

5 Keys to Working with Younger Clients

1. Online Reputation

• The first step younger clients will take to learn about you is to search your name, business name and website online. Make sure you have put in the work for them to find positive results across multiple search engines and/or review sites.
• Maintain a presence on LinkedIn that is updated, followed by Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, in that order.
• If there are communications at this stage, present yourself as an information source, not a salesperson.
• If a “meeting” develops in this initial stage, keep it as informal as possible and don’t insist that it can only be in person.

For more information on building your online reputation, click here.

2. Key Considerations

• Gen Xers have weathered The Great Recession, a housing slump and massive college debt, so they remain highly suspicious of the financial market.
• They trust recommendations from their peers more than “experts.”
• Don’t take their casual attitude as a personal affront.
• Millennials use online and convenience financial services more than any other group.
• They are more likely to invest in their causes and beliefs than any other generation.
• They are comfortable in groups, value their peers and may post online about their interactions with you.

3. Introductions

• In general, be transparent and authentic. Don’t pretend to share their lifestyle and interests if you really don’t. You can be yourself and still be curious about them at the same time.
• For men, a collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a sport coat by your side is fine; Women can also dress business casual—comfortable slacks and a blouse.
• Ask them what you need to know about them and really listen.
• Get to your points without wasting time.
• Ask more questions.

4. Selling

• Avoid aggressive pitches and don’t pressure people for decisions.
• Instead, offer information, ask questions and wait for feedback.
• When explaining your suggestions, offer options.
• Show them where they can research your suggestions on the internet, but provide advice you feel they cannot find online, also.
• Consider offering free services for a limited time, or show how you are customizing your services to fit their needs.

5. Follow-up

• Be responsive to emails, texts and voicemails within 24 hours.
• Your ongoing service should match their initial experience with you.
• Be succinct in your messaging and ask them which they prefer: Email, texts, social media, etc.
• Don’t sign them up for newsletters or email opt-ins without their permission.
• Only reach out when necessary.

Thus far, we have largely discussed working with younger generations of clients as a future event. It’s not. The Great Wealth Transfer has begun and is in full progress.

You may have helped the parents and grandparents of today’s children. You might believe that, because of that service, new business is owed to you. But it’s not. The sooner you realize that, the better it will be for your bottom line.

Instead, embrace this new challenge of getting to know younger generations. What could possibly be more exciting than meeting the future in the form of bright, engaging young adults? It will be as much a new experience for you as it is for them. There is much to teach, and even more to learn.

Notes

For more information about generational demographics, please email Cam@CamMarston.com.

Sources:
1. Cerulli Associates
2. Generational Insights
3. F&G

– For Financial Professional Use Only. Insurance-only agents are not licensed to offer investment advice.

4 Reasons Why You Should Be Using Lead Magnets

By Jordan Collins
Tucker Advisors Senior Digital Marketing Specialist

Table of Contents

Click the links below to jump to a page section specific to your needs.

Why do we visit the sites we do?

What is a lead magnet?

Why should financial advisors use lead magnets

1-Improved Conversion rates

2-Show expertise

3-Touchpoint for users not ready to contact or buy

4-Help visitors with a problem

Lead magnet examples

Why do we visit the sites we do?

Around 93 Percent of website visits start with a search. Many users have an idea of the direction they are going, but they need a helping hand getting the right information. Adding modifiers can give search engines the information needed to receive results that will help users get to their desired end goal. A good example of a modifier is adding “near me” to a search. In recent years, “near me” searches have grown exponentially with the advances made in cell phones and other mobile device networks. If you think back a few years, it was incredibly difficult to get videos to load while out of WiFi’s reach. Today it is commonplace to see people searching and loading content in real time as they go about their day.

According to Hubspot, “near me” searches have grown 900% between 2015-2017. This example of a search modifier shows clear intent for what the user is looking for. Whatever good or service they are searching for, they want to be able to access in person. They don’t want to wait! For numerous reasons, they are looking to check something off their to-do list and time is of the essence. This motivation is called “user intent.” User intent is the cornerstone of what Google and other major search engines use to anticipate what results they should show on the search engine results page. While there are over 200 ranking factors in Google’s search algorithm, at the core of its results is a conventional human instinct.

Give the people what they want

As time passes and machine-learning grows, search engines have become extremely efficient at giving users the results they are looking for. In kind, users have created new search conventions to find the information they are looking for faster and on their mobile devices.

For businesses and website owners, a user’s search is a touchpoint opportunity. Every business and industry has information that the general public is searching for. Using search engine optimization, you can index your website’s information to pull these users towards your site and it’s services. The catch is, their intentions need to match what you can help them with. If it doesn’t, there’s a very high likelihood that they will visit another site with more relevant information to their intent or change their search query to get better results. 

At the core of every search is the desire to get answers. For questions like “Will I run out of money in retirement?” or “How can I optimize my Social Security?”, you want to be found as an expert who can help them answer those questions.

Many financial advisor websites talk about their services but they don’t create content surrounding a topic. Your services page may give an overview of how you might be able to help, but a whitepaper or blog post explaining a topic does more.

You can really delve into the topic-specific challenges associated with retirement and show your expertise before a client steps foot in your office. If you establish yourself as a resource with answers to your prospects’ questions, you will not only improve your value to your clients, you will be seen as an authority on a topic.

Some advisors may be thinking, “Why am I giving away my knowledge for free?” The answer to that has two parts. First, you should not be giving away proprietary information in your content. We are looking to hook users with interesting ideas, not make yourself redundant. Secondly, it may not cost money, but lead magnets are an exchange of value that ultimately helps both your audience and you as a financial advisor. If you are worried about giving away too much information, do a specific google search for the information and see if it is out there. If you’re finding it, it’s likely that everyone else is too.

What is a lead magnet?

A lead magnet is an incentive added to your website for prospects to provide contact information in exchange for an asset. Assets can be videos, whitepapers, or other content that helps them solve a problem or educates them on a topic relevant to what they are looking for. At the same time, this identifies them as a person who is interested in this topic, information that can be profitable to your business when you know who your customers are and which problems you can help them solve. 

Taking frequently asked questions from prospects and making resources to answer their questions is a great way to create lead magnets. This works because other prospects will have similar questions, and having the answers on-hand in an easily consumable format not only helps your prospects, it positions you as an expert on the subject they’d like to learn about.

Why should advisors use lead magnets?

A lead magnet is an incentive on your website for prospects to provide contact information in exchange for an asset. Assets can be videos, whitepapers, or other content that helps them solve a problem or educates them on a topic relevant to what they are looking for. At the same time, this identifies them as a person who is interested in your topic. 

Taking frequently asked questions from prospects and making resources to answer their questions is a great way to create lead magnets. This works because other prospects will have similar questions and pain points. If you have the answers on-hand in an easily consumable format it will help your prospects, position you as an expert, and identify your key audience.

1. Lead magnets improve conversion rates

There is no easier way to receive something than by offering something in return. The basic psychology of exchanging value applies to lead magnets in a way that is simple to understand. If someone approaches you and immediately asks for your contact information, why would you give it to them? You wouldn’t. If you lead with something your prospects want, it doesn’t feel like a transaction, it feels like a partnership.

Some marketers have seen a 30-40% uptick in lead capture using lead magnets to generate contact information. This type of improvement is not surprising, considering forms and pop-ups often ask for something without first offering value. By offering an incentive, it fundamentally changes the exchange. It’s clear that people don’t want to be asked for their information without a reason. Giving them something they want isn’t just a tactic, it’s a necessity.

Most traditional marketing approaches have an offer to entice and incentivize action. Why shouldn’t your website? Give your offerings a fighting chance of making important results for your business by using a lead magnet.

2. They sell your expertise

When financial advisors meet a new client, they need to establish expertise and rapport quickly. Wouldn’t it be nice to have prospects who already know you’re an expert?

Lead magnets can take time to produce, but the pay off can be phenomenal. Prospects who have read a whitepaper from your website will already be warm leads. They’ve seen your website and the type of work you do. They won’t need the same type of selling that a person walking in off the street may require.

Another great aspect of lead magnets is that they can be made “evergreen.” When we say evergreen, we mean that they won’t require constant updates. They can continue to work for your business autonomously when you’re with other clients, doing a seminar, or sleeping. You can educate and show that you’re the right person for the job without ever being present. The cherry on top is that they provided their information to receive your content so you can follow up.

3. Connects you with contacts who aren’t ready to buy

As time goes on, we are learning more and more information about our buying habits. Everyone is online researching their next trip, purchase, or activity. With that in mind, most users visiting your site aren’t ready to buy. According to transaction.agency, 81% of shoppers research their product online before purchasing.

For financial advisors, that means you can’t just appeal to people who are ready to buy, you need to think about those who are still weighing their options. It’s important that your website has something for users regardless of the buying stage they are currently in. These habits will show themselves in your Google Analytics based on what pages they are viewing. For example, if someone is viewing your contact page, it’s likely they are looking to contact you. If someone is visiting your home page, they are probably just checking you out and seeking out more information. Lead magnets are a good bridge to taking someone from brand awareness to lead generation. The incentives you offer can push them to really consider you for their business.

4. Helps visitors with a problem

As mentioned earlier, turning to your “frequently asked questions” into content is a great start to creating lead magnets. This ensures that your prospects have a demand for the information you are providing. It also shows that the people downloading assets fit the correct demographic details to be a future client. Incentives like these aren’t wanted by people who they don’t apply to, but for those that do, it will be hard to ignore a solid offer helping them learn more about a pain point they’d really like to solve.

If you are looking for other problems to help clients with, it could be helpful to visit an industry competitor, view lead magnet examples, or look at Google’s suggestions at the bottom of a Google results page. The suggestions related to retirement or financial products usually come with adjacent queries. These topics will signal to advisors that they have knowledge on a topic that is not readily available on Google and could be turned into an asset that pulls users to their site.

Pro tip: Use Google Trends to see how much interest a topic has.

Google Trends and Google Keyword Planner can show you the number of searches on a topic, giving more weight to how you spend your time making lead magnets. Search interest data from these sources should always inform your content decisions. When your click-through or conversion rates aren’t what you expected, you need more than a hunch to find what needs to be fixed.

Lead magnet examples

If you search around the web, there are countless examples of what to offer. If you’re asking yourself what to do, the answer is a combination of what you can make easily and what works the best. Where those meet, you have gold. On the simplest level, this should be a connection point for your business to your website visitors. Create a good first impression and offer something of value but don’t put all your eggs in one basket. A data-backed strategy is one where there is A/B testing and multiple options, so you’re not overly reliant on one piece of content to carry your prospecting. Here are a few examples of prompts you could use:

1. Create a short survey for prospects to assess how much risk they are willing to take on with their portfolio. This can be fun for them and also provide valuable information on how they see their financial portfolio. The questions included can reflect that you understand how to assess risk and that you provide unique plans—nothing is cookie cutter.  
2. Create a whitepaper on the “10 Pitfalls to Avoid When Dealing with Social Security.” Social Security can be a confusing topic for many retirees. Show that you know how to help them with this problem in a PDF explaining what to look for and how the decisions they make can affect their future.
3. Create an online spreadsheet through Google Sheets or Excel for prospects to organize their finances. This download provides value and bakes in financial pieces that your prospect either doesn’t know about or isn’t planning for. It shows that you know more about the financial process than they bargained for and can be a resource to their financial future.

These are just three basic examples of what a lead magnet can be, not an all-encompassing guide. Do some searching around the internet to see what is out there. The beauty of this is you can see what your competition is offering, find data about the different formats, and explore techniques to get the best out of your web traffic.

When done right, lead magnets can be a great tool for generating leads, building email newsletter lists, and providing value that will entice prospects to call you for help when the time comes.

If your site is struggling for traffic, be sure to see our piece on organic and paid traffic strategies here.

If you would like more information on digital marketing strategy visit here.

For Financial Professional Use Only. NOT INTENDED FOR VIEWING OR DISTRIBUTION TO THE PUBLIC. Insurance-only agents are not licensed to offer investment advice.