Back in 2008, as the world was heading into the financial meltdown, we began working with a leading wealth management firm to help streamline local marketing efforts for their 2,500 financial advisors. The experience made a potent case for a modular approach to marketing collateral management.
Never Underestimate the Power of a Financial Advisor's Resume
Our first challenge struck us at first as a modest document type—the financial advisor's individual resume. But it turns out, what looks simple on its surface, is actually filled with complexity once you take a deeper look.
Each of these different versions shared a few components in common, like the FA's educational background, or certifications, or contact details. But each also included descriptions of specific engagements that were unique to the target segment. That meant a single FA could develop dozens upon dozens of unique marketing content blocks, and then would need to combine and recombine these building blocks to suit the needs of a specific market segment, or even a specific prospective customer.
Fortunately, the content management system in CampaignDrive was already well suited to this challenge. We gave FAs the ability to write and format new resume-content blocks whenever they needed; to name them and organize them so they would be easy to find; and then to drag-and-drop these content blocks into a sequence that made good sense for their immediate need.
Once the FA had the resume content organized to his/her liking, we used CampaignDrive to inspect the content and determine if any of it was new, and therefore required compliance review by the firm's Financial Operations team. If the content had already been reviewed, the system would generate the resume for the FA's immediate use. But, if CampaignDrive detected a content block that was new or that had been changed, the system routed it for FINRA review.
The combination of on-demand content and as-needed compliance review was a hit from the beginning. The year after we launched the system, we saw production of customized resumes skyrocket. We also heard from FAs that the system was helping them to address the #1 sales and marketing challenge they had on a daily basis—and to do so within a resume template that guaranteed compliance with brand standards and guidelines.
Which, to paraphrase that old movie "Field of Dreams", goes to show that "if you let FAs build it themselves, they will!"
In our next post on marketing content management in the Wealth Management Industry, we'll cover another tremendously valuable document type—the pitchbook. Stay tuned!
