From their beginnings as a repository and organizer of client information to their current functionality, which includes integration, automation, customization, analytics and more, Customer Relationship Management systems have been an indispensable business-building tool for financial advisors. As wealth management services become increasingly commoditized, today’s CRM capabilities offer financial advisors an efficient and effective way to deliver the customized experience clients expect – efficiently and at scale.
Is it enough?
While multi-channel marketing allows marketers to cast a wider net, it has created both opportunities and challenges for financial advisors seeking to target their messaging, personalize their outreach and connect meaningfully with clients and prospects accustomed to elevated levels of engagement.
How easy is it to stand out in an ecosystem where new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, alter the playing field and redefine engagement rules? It’s not, especially when everyone is leveraging the same tools.
Wealth management itself is evolving quickly due largely to generational shifts in wealth among investors and demographic trends impacting the supply side of advice. Firms must move beyond CRM to deliver an effective messaging platform. We spoke to four industry leaders on the front lines of marketing for their perspectives on what that entails:
- Derek Janis, Chief Marketing Officer, AcquireUp, a leading provider of comprehensive marketing solutions for financial professionals specializing in technology-first, data-led seminar marketing
- Erika Wilson, Chief Marketing Officer, Sound Income Group, a Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based diversified financial services company whose affiliate Sound Income Strategies is an SEC-registered RIA
- Jeff Vivacqua, President, Growth and Development, Cambridge Investment Research, Inc., an internally controlled and operated financial solutions firm focused on serving independent financial professionals and their clients
- Marissa Fox-Foley, Chief Marketing Officer, Choreo, an SEC-registered investment adviser that provides investment advisory services, financial planning, and other wealth management services to individuals and businesses
Our questions:
- With the Great Wealth Transfer on the horizon, what role do CRM platforms play in streamlining multi-channel marketing efforts, and do we need to look beyond CRMs?
- How can CRM systems leverage real-time data to provide more personalized customer service experiences in a highly competitive market for wealth management clients, and is the AI evolution on your company’s horizon?
Here’s what our experts had to say:
Derek Janis: Financial advising and wealth management are fundamentally about people. As financial professionals grow their business, they need efficient ways to maintain personal touches. CRMs serve as the anchor, ensuring no customer or contact is overlooked by centralizing key client data to enhance engagement and streamline operations. By measuring and refining marketing activities, they form the foundation of the marketing technology stack, enabling advisors to target key audiences, deliver timely messages and optimize client conversion and retention, keeping the customer at the center of all marketing activities.
As the complexity of multi-channel marketing grows, it’s critical to go beyond traditional CRM functionalities. Real-time data enables tools to execute automated, personalized lead nurturing and client retention activities that enhance engagement at just the right moments. This is especially important for advisors seeking to connect with tech-savvy Millennials and Gen Z clients who expect digital-first experiences.
The evolution of AI is absolutely on AcquireUp’s horizon. Financial advising is about real people providing peace of mind and financial longevity to real people. We believe that the current role of AI is to make advisors more efficient in the delivery, analysis and optimization of their marketing efforts. This enhances in-person touchpoints and ensures they’re scaling their businesses appropriately.
Consider seminar marketing. It offers financial professionals a live, in-person platform to provide immediate value to prospective households and convert them into clients. It allows them to engage with high-intent leads who have made a time commitment and are actively seeking financial advice, foster relationships, and naturally transition from educator to trusted advisor. Unlike impersonal methods like cold calling, emailing, or billboards, seminar marketing is truly a growth engine you control.
Erika Wilson – The Great Wealth Transfer presents both an opportunity and a challenge for wealth management firms. CRM platforms are instrumental in this shift, especially when it comes to streamlining multi-channel marketing. By centralizing client data and communication, CRMs help firms segment their audience and deliver highly targeted campaigns through multiple touchpoints – whether it’s email, social media or more direct methods. The ability to manage these communications in a scalable and automated way is crucial as firms adapt to a generational change in client needs and expectations.
However, while CRMs provide an essential backbone, we need to consider other technologies that complement or extend beyond them. For instance, marketing automation tools, AI-driven analytics and customer journey platforms are helping firms offer more personalized and timely interactions. Additionally, the integration of advanced data analytics and machine learning tools into CRM systems is already pushing the boundaries, enabling us to look beyond traditional CRMs to a more holistic and predictive model that can better capture the intricacies of client relationships.
In today’s competitive landscape, wealth management firms that can personalize their services in real time have a significant advantage. When equipped with real-time data through AI enhancements, CRM systems allow firms to anticipate client needs and respond proactively.
We have been part of the AI Evolution since day one. We utilize it to increase productivity, streamline processes and enhance our marketing efforts across the board. This shift from reactive to predictive services can deepen trust and loyalty, which is crucial in a market where clients expect exceptional, customized experiences. For any wealth management firm aiming to lead, integrating AI within CRM isn’t just an option – it’s a strategic imperative.
Jeff Vivacqua: There’s a need to differentiate between marketing to existing clients and prospecting for those who will be the beneficiaries of the Great Wealth Transfer. There must be continuous communication and strategic data capture across target verticals for a firm to be successful, and advisors should leverage multi-channel marketing to reach different client demographics effectively. This is why building a CRM for specific business strategies – and not just for contact information – is critical. A CRM is only as good as what you put into it. In the end, it’s just one tool that a defined and achievable business goal must support. Understanding how to reach those goals should be the first consideration when developing a CRM or any other tool.
Real-time data is great for personalized customer service experiences, but the reality is that most of the data being fed into CRMs in our industry is not real-time. We face the industry-wide challenge of not having a common data format, which hinders real-time data integration. However, we can still make effective use of CRMs. What’s important is that advisors spend time deciding what they want from a CRM and aligning it with their business strategy. Advisors also need the right data in the CRM to support strategic outreach and client engagement.
We aim to take full advantage of the AI revolution at Cambridge, with our advisors and staff leveraging several tools to streamline operations so that we can deliver the best client service possible. And much like a CRM, the application of AI is only as good as the data it can utilize.
Marissa Fox-Foley: The Great Wealth Transfer is expected to see a $72 trillion transfer from older generations to younger generations. This transition will create a need for wealth management and financial services and emphasizes the importance of a robust CRM to track and manage comprehensive, holistic programs to further client relationships. While a CRM often serves as a backbone for managing communication channels, it should also be seen as a critical tool that helps support the goal of great and ongoing client engagement. Clients are being bombarded by messaging via email, social media, advertising, text and even traditional mail, so it’s necessary to embrace a marketing construct that can accommodate these myriad touchpoints, as well as provide meaningful visibility into the process and insights as to what is resonating with particular client and prospect segments.
Effective data analysis is imperative to understanding clients and customizing messaging and wealth management solutions, but CRM systems are only as effective as the data they hold. Creating a platform that tracks data relevant to your firm, your advisors and your clients is important but meaningless if the data is incomplete, outdated or incorrect. That means data integrity is everyone’s business – starting with a robust data architecture, fulsome training on CRM tools and applications, and an ongoing commitment to scalability. In certain areas, the independent wealth space is still in the early stages of understanding and adopting AI to help manage data and harness the power of a robust CRM. It’s so important to ask not only “should we use AI,” but “what business need are we trying to solve for by using AI?”
AI applications can be deployed across multiple business functions and for very different use cases – i.e., are you looking to automate a predictable process? Are you looking to optimize an inefficient process or workflow? Are you looking to extract actionable data from a pattern of client touchpoints or interactions? Similar to a CRM, AI is only as good as the “intelligence” it can leverage to provide results. From the most basic standpoint, we should ask ourselves if we are doing all we can to help our advisors ensure data quality, and then we can move forward to leverage the power that technology solutions offer to best serve clients.
