Digital Wealth News is pleased to bring you our “Fintech Luminaries” series – featuring thought leaders within the digital wealth ecosystems. For our latest feature, we’d like you to meet our friend Kelly Waltrich of Intention.ly, which works with fintech and finserv companies who want to transform the trajectory of their business by building an intentionally designed marketing engine.
NAME: Kelly Kdubs Waltrich
TITLE: Co-founder
COMPANY: Intention.ly
WEB ADDRESS: https://www.growintentionally.com/
How did you personally become involved in fintech?
I began my marketing career in financial services, and my experience runs the gamut from broker-dealers to RIAs to the wealth management division of a bank.
I loved the industry overall, but in terms of being able to really flex any marketing creativity, compliance regulations at the time were incredibly restrictive.
So when a recruiter friend of mine, Mark Constan, called me about a job opening at eMoney Advisor, a financial planning technology company, I went for it. On the day of the interview, I rode the elevator up with a man I would discover at the top floor was actually Edmond Walters, eMoney’s CEO. He offered me the job before we got out of the elevator, and I’ve never looked back. It’s been a wild ride since this moment but in terms of my career, saying yes to Edmond that day was one of the best decisions I ever made.
What does your firm do/offer within the fintech sector?
I recently made a major career change, transitioning from leading marketing at fintech firms to supporting them with my own business, Intention.ly.
Intention.ly works to accelerate the growth efforts of some of the best, most innovative fintech and finserv firms in the space today.
From wealth management startups to established platform players to some of the industry’s biggest disruptors, we’re excited about working with businesses that aren’t just trying to repackage the same tired playbooks that already exist, but are willing to step out of their comfort zone to grow faster and more sustainably.
What is your role within your firm and what do you do there on any given
Day?
At Intention.ly, I focus on big-picture strategy with our clients: helping them set specific growth goals, analyzing their current brand positioning and building the framework to transform their marketing efforts.
My co-founder, Meghan Richter, runs the agency arm of Intention.ly and translates that high-level strategic vision into detail-oriented execution for our clients.
What fintech leader do you admire the most and why?
To choose just one would be doing a tremendous disservice to some of the best and most innovative leaders in our space, many of whom I’ve had the opportunity to learn from over the past ten years.
I’m very grateful to have worked alongside Edmond Walters, Mike Durbin, Ed O’Brien and Eric Clarke, helping them grow two of the largest and most successful fintech firms in the industry.
And while I have no plans to publicize our current client roster, I can say that I’m very lucky to be working with a whole new wave of fintech masterminds.
If you were to personally invest in just one fintech firm (other than yours),
which one would it be and why?
I really believe in firms that are trying to help advisors embrace the power of great marketing to acquire new clients and drive growth beyond traditional word-of-mouth referrals.
Again, it would be too hard to choose just one. That said, I love being an advisory board member for Vestorly and Bento Engine, and I’ve also been a long-time admirer of SmartAsset.
For over 15 years, Intention.ly Co-founder Kelly Waltrich has been championing the role of marketing in the financial services industry, building powerhouse marketing teams from the ground up and developing the engines that would fuel the highest periods of growth for companies like eMoney and Orion Advisor Solutions.
Intention.ly is the culmination of every lesson Waltrich has learned thus far in her tenure as a marketing disruptor, born from her passion and persistent belief that when it’s done right, marketing is the accelerant financial services firms need to transform their growth trajectory.
