Increasing Client Engagement - a Lesson from Facebook
I joined Facebook in February 2007. My sister-in-law worked in media and told me about this new website everyone was joining. She sent me a friend request, I joined up and sent friend requests to a handful of friends and colleagues at work. They all signed up, then signed up their friends as well.
Facebook wasn’t exactly a new idea; Friends Reunited had been around since 2000. Facebook wasn’t founded until 2004, but it took an existing good idea, reuniting with old school friends; and applied it to all your friends, those current and the ones you had lost touch with.
Facebook makes communicating fun and allows you to connect with far more friends than you could otherwise. I’m not a hard-core user but I dip in and out to see what my friends have been up to and share my news. The key to the adoption of Facebook was getting people to make a personal connection with it.
It’s the same when I discuss adoption with companies implementing moneyinfo. The key to adoption of moneyinfo is getting your clients to make a personal connection with it.
"The key to adoption of moneyinfo is getting your clients to make a personal connection with it..."
For starters, a demo account with the information that clients will see helps bring it to life: demo bank accounts with simulated transactions; example pensions; ISAs; insurances; assets and liabilities will get clients interested. Seeing moneyinfo with their own information online, often for the first-time, is enlightening but it doesn’t mean that they’ll use it other than on an occasional basis.
Regular communications from you, fresh content, secure messages and automated notifications, will get your clients logging in repeatedly; and with shared documents it starts to become a tool that you and your clients really rely on. Ultimately, getting your clients to add their own finances on to moneyinfo is when it really comes alive.
The key steps to adoption.
The first step in adoption is getting people logging in to moneyinfo on a regular basis. This may seem like an obvious task but it can be the biggest hurdle. Anticipation can be built up ahead of giving people access to their own account. A steady stream of communications describing the benefits of the system, showing an online demo and explaining why you see this a key part of your business, all helps to ensure that the first live login is a success.
The second step is keeping them engaged. Taking the example of Facebook again, they do this with a steady stream of friend updates, news and new features, each designed to get you back into Facebook and reminding you it’s there.
moneyinfo is no different. Like Facebook it’s designed to make regular communication with your clients easy. A post on Facebook is the equivalent of a single document being sent to all clients using moneyinfo. A status update is the same as a message to all your clients. Facebook allows you to setup groups with a common interest, so does moneyinfo.
"A status update is the same as a message to all your clients. Facebook allows you to setup groups with a common interest, so does moneyinfo"
We have exciting new features in the pipeline to develop this idea further, using the concept of profile building to encourage clients to add more information into moneyinfo. If you’re a user of LinkedIN you’ll be familiar with this concept. The big benefit to advisory firms is that we will be showing you and your clients a new way to complete a factfind that’s engaging and gives something back to the client.
Moneyinfo: Business as Usual
- An adviser has a relationship with a client, managing their finances on their behalf.
- The adviser provides documents detailing the performance of assets and investments.
- They may discuss choices of investment and they will probably have a review meeting at least once a year.
- The adviser wants to communicate the good work they are doing on the client’s behalf.
moneyinfo enables you to bring all of this together, manage it one place, not just for you but for your clients as well.
Provide them with the latest information on their assets and investments, serve documents that would normally be lost in email or forgotten in a filing cabinet. Send regular communications and most importantly replace your email communications with moneyinfo’s secure messaging.
Encourage them to add their bank accounts, properties and other insurances. Show them how they can easily organise their financial documents by linking them to their home and other assets.
Within a few years, we’ll all be managing our finances through technologies such as moneyinfo. Why? Because it makes our lives simpler and encourages us towards better financial outcomes. moneyinfo ensures that your clients are using your app not someone else’s. At the moment, you’re the only person that can provide your clients with an app that delivers most of their financial information updated regularly.
Don’t miss the opportunity to make your app your clients app. Talk to us in the adoption team and let us demonstrate how you can successfully encourage client adoption.
Adoption Manager
Sammedia Limited