As the largest generational wealth transfer takes place right now (to the tune of $30 trillion), a new wave of millennial investors are queued up to adjust, re-invest, and transition their money in the manner that suits them. If that’s not daunting enough, consider the fact that a recent study finds that only 8% of millennials trust financial institutions and 45% would switch financial firms for any better options.
If millennials aren’t hesitating to change the way their money is managed from the way that their parents did, what can your firm do to keep, attract, and win their trust? Personalized communication touchpoints across the client lifecycle is the number one way to gain millennials’ trust. This is something they’ve come to expect, as personalized content is pervasive across their daily interactions. Mobile news feeds suggest relevant articles and Netflix serves up TV shows and movies based on viewing behaviors. Adjusting your firm’s communication strategies to align with the on-demand consumption habits of millennials improves the level of trust millennials will place in your firm.
Know how to reach them and how they consume content:
Start by taking inventory of the content and communications you currently use to engage with your millennial audience. Which assets perform best with this audience? Which are disregarded? Look for patterns in your audience’s content consumption. Is the length of the piece impacting the level of engagement? What about the format? And the content itself—do data-rich pieces perform better than those that are anecdotal in nature? A best-in-class sales enablement platform will help you uncover these data points and truly understand how your content is performing.
Tailor your message:
Once you understand the state of your content you’re ready to start personalizing it to better engage with the millennial audience. With three areas of personalization (behavioral, segmented, and actual), you’ll need a concrete strategy for how to approach each.
Behavioral personalization is the ability to customize an experience based on a user’s actions. Engagement metrics like heat mapping and time on page are key indicators of how to personalize future content for your clients and prospects. Which elements of the content are most appealing? Can they be broken out into individual pieces of their own? Are they fodder for the next client or prospect meeting?
Segmented personalization can be tailored by your firm based on what you know about a client. What types of investment strategies are they active in? Based on previous performance, what investment advice can you offer them? Use this information to group content into profiles. The further you can segment your audience, the more personalized your outreach becomes.
Active personalization is the nitty-gritty of tailored, content personalization. Use this opportunity to serve up information on an active basis about their accounts and holdings or strategies they may not have in place. This doesn’t have to be a manual process at the end of each quarter. Powerful tools like Seismic make it easy to pull data automatically from wherever your fund performance information is stored, and populate content appropriately.
The extent to which your firm implements content personalization will depend on your client acquisition strategy. But if your firm, like most, wants to stay relevant amid the millennial wealth transfer, consider what younger generations look for in a financial services provider: trust, validation, and the ability to easily conduct transactions online. Personalization of content allows you to gain their confidence while showing millennials what’s possible with their investments.
