Since January, we have been developing a new client portal for advisors.

The new client portal is built into AdvisorVault, which is used by hundreds of RIAs. AdvisorVault is a highly customized version of Microsoft SharePoint explicitly designed to meet the needs of financial advice professionals.

The integration of Advisor Products content with Constant Contact is boosting advisor email campaign open rates by nearly 100% over the average advisor's open rate, according to data from users.

Advisor Products integrates Constant Contact’s email marketing tools and analytics into financial advisor websites, and the first users of the integrated app provided their email “key performance indicators,” which are tracked in Constant Contact.

In mid-February 2014, Tim McNamara, who heads sales at Constant Contact, the world leader in online marketing, called Steve Gordonson, a partner in Advisor Products. Since then, we’ve worked intensely with the leadership team at Constant Contact, including Alec Stern, the sole co-founder of Constant Contact still working at the company.  The partnership establishes a way for advisors to get email campaign open rates nearly 100% higher than the average financial advisor using Constant Contact. [caption id="attachment_1861" align="aligncenter" width="483"]Advisor Products turns professional education content from Advisors4Advisors into email newsletters, enabling optimal use of Constant Contact for list management and analytics.[/caption]

Tim had spent five years in business development and operations at  Schwab and then 10 years as an advisor at UBS, Morgan Stanley and Wachovia.  He's been an internet entrepreneur, having built the nation's first online divorce platform. A year ago, Tim became the head of business development for North America and Latin America at Constant Contact.

Email marketing is the most effective marketing tool available to financial advisors but not all email marketing platforms perform the same. Fortunately, performance measurement of the efficacy of email marketing platforms comes down to a few well-defined key performance indicators—email open-rates, click-throughs, delivery rates, and adoption of campaign-tracking technology.

Email newsletters are enjoying a renaissance and remain the most effective marketing tool available to financial advisors.

“Email newsletters, an old-school artifact of the web that was supposed to die along with dial-up connections, are not only still around, but very much on the march,” says media columnist David Carr in  The New York Times. “Bloomberg, Fast Company, The New York Times, Politico and many other news organizations are finding that they can grab attention — and readers — in the inbox.”

The entire Advisor Products team is working hard to achieve an ambitious set of goals that will transform the way financial advisors communicate.

Here’s an update on our work at Advisor Products in launching the Financial Advisor Communications System:

Advisor Products is about to launch a new email campaign on our financial advisor communication system (FACS).

The campaign implements a reliable Internet marketing technique to provide financial advisors with a marketing funnel. Anecdotally, we know it will increase RIA AUM.