Historically one of the key reasons that investors worked with advisors was to get access to basic information.  Just by providing that information you were adding value - and the general view was that you could  send all clients the same information, taking a "one size fits all " approach

Today, we're moving to a "one size fits none" world. Going forward, to be effective you'll have to tailor communication to client preferences - sending clients information that's relevant to them, at the frequency they want, in the form they want.

And in the process letting them know that the reason they're getting something is that it relates to their specific needs.

Communication then

This is a big departure from the recent past, where investors were starving for information and happy with almost anything you sent them.

In 1990, one investment firm helped rookie broker by generating leads. Two weeks before the end of their training program, they would drop 200 letters in high income areas in the rookie's home market offering a free research report on opportunities in bonds upon the return of a postage paid  card. So the rookie would then have leads to follow up when they started. Of  200 letters dropped by offering free basic information.,  typically they got anywhere from 30 to 50 back, so a response rate of 15% to 25%. Today, you'd have to send fifty or one hundred times as many letters to get the same response.  

Another example: In the late 90s, in many cities you had investment shows, weekends where thousands of investors lined up to get basic information and attend seminars, hoping to get questions answered from fund companies and investment firms.  Or you had people thronging to investment seminars that were really often poorly disguised sales pitches, again because they were starved for information.

In this environment, it didn't take much for advisors to add value - you won points for providing general, basic information.

Communication now

The world has obviously changed dramatically. Investors are much more knowledgeable. The internet has opened up access to information in a way that wasn't conceivable not that long ago. And finally competition has kicked in, so investors can go on the website of any discount broker and get all the information they want.

This has profound implications for advisors.  For more and more investors, providing high level generic information is no longer seen as being a source of value.

Yes, tailoring communication to individual clients is much harder than blasting out the same newsletter to all clients every quarter.  But in the new world we've entered, what matters is not whether something is sent, it's whether it's read and whether it communicates effectively - and to do that communication needs to feel tailored to each client's needs.

An example of tailored communication

Here's an example of tailored communication.

Suppose you've got a  client who owns a business that exports into the US . Or perhaps you have retirees who own a condo in Florida or Arizona.   As a result,  they're interested in the outlook for  the US dollar and the US economy.

If you send you them a generic article with a market forecast,  even if they look at it chances are they won't see it as providing much value. But if you send them something on the outlook for the dollar or the US economy, they're much more likely to look at it and see it as providing value - especially if there's a handwritten note on the report saying "In light of our conversation, thought you'd be interested in this."

Let's be clear - it's not just sending clients information that's tailored to them, it's also ensuring they know you've selected it especially for them.

Making this happen           

If you've got twenty clients, it's not overwhelming difficult to do this, it just takes focus and priority to regularly set aside the time to find the right information and send it out. If you've got 100 or 200 clients it's much harder ... unless of course you're organized to do this efficiently.

Start by looking for common areas of interest in your client base. If you've got lots of snowbirds, they're going to be interested in the US dollar and tax and accounting implications of owning US real estate, changes in the rules for seniors benefits, anything relating to their specific situation. If you've got families with young kids, their hot buttons are going to be different - more related to education and planning for retirement.

Note that there will often also be interest in more general information - the key is how you position it. Suppose you say to a client: "Here are six areas of information that I'm going to be concentrating on sending clients in the next while."  These might include tax savings strategies, the outlook for the economy, forecasts for interest rates and money manager interviews on the stock market. Those are pretty general - but they're still areas of interest for many clients.

The key is being able to say when you send that information: "Based on our conversation, here's information on interest rates that you expressed interest in."

 It might be exactly the same information you're sending now, but it's presented in a different form -   you're not sending this to everyone but only to those who asked for it.

The devil's in the details

This sounds simple on the surface - but as the expression goes "the devil is in the details."

Suppose you've decided to focus on six areas of potential interest. For each important client, go through the list with them and identify which they'd be interested in. At the end of this process,  you'll have a list of interested clients for each topic area.

Next you need to establish each of those six topic areas as a separate group in your database. And then once a month you and your team have to look for a report or article you can send one or perhaps two of those lists, remembering to position this as something  you're sending  because these clients asked for it.           

As I said at the top, this is much more work than blasting out a newsletter to all your clients. Just remember, though,  today generic communication won't cut it - to be read and have an impact, increasingly the content has to be seen as specific to each individual client's needs.  And you're far better off doing something hard and seeing results than going the route of least resistance and wasting time and money.