psychology

Case Study: Financial Advisor Client Onboarding + Alexa Skill (Podcast / Voice Marketing)

Welcome new clients or customers with an Echo Dot welcome kit so they can access your content on Alexa. The right client gift will boost positive regard and lower churn. Voice adds value and builds trust. Here’s why this technique is so effective:

Before we discuss the psychology of giving a gift, let’s talk about CAC.

The average Client Acquisition Cost (CAC) of a financial advisor is $3,119 per client. The cost of the marketing method below averages under $75 per client (using the Echo Dot, or under $200 with the Echo Show) and it will pay dividends because these WealthVoice welcome kits:

  1. Build your brand

  2. Let you communicate authentically

  3. Encourage word of mouth referrals

  4. Reduce churn through positive sentiment and trust over time (with your voice updates)

These most-scalable ‘standout’ marketing strategies included client referrals (which amongst top advisors generated an average of almost 19X the new revenue as the cost to acquire the referral), books (an average 10X multiplier of revenue/cost for top marketing firms), direct mail (a 9.1X multiplier), paid web listings (8.3X multiplier), COIs (7.8X multiplier), marketing lists (7.2X multiplier), and SEO (6.8X multiplier).

-Michael Kitces

If you delight a client, they will talk about you to their friends, and say nice things. This will get you referrals and grow your business. This will reduce churn. A great way to delight them is to demonstrate your tech savvy, your accessibility, and your commitment to offering helpful guidance: send a badass gift like a smart speaker with your custom Alexa skill so they can get your updates hands-free.

Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the customer gets out of it.

-Jay Baer, customer experience marketing expert

When you make a purchase decision, you typically experience some degree of uncertainty afterward. Important decisions are all the more taxing and incite more powerful feelings after pulling the trigger. It’s called buyer’s remorse when a decision leads to an undesirable outcome.

Your Clients / Customers Want to Feel Good About Their Decisions

The good news for your business is that social science research reveals that we are psychologically motivated to be satisfied with our decisions. People want to think they’ve chosen well. It’s usually pretty easy to help them feel that way.

Decision making is stressful. Clients want to be reassured they’ve chosen wisely.

Decision making is stressful. Clients want to be reassured they’ve chosen wisely.

Smart marketers know that the period after purchase is a sensitive time where there’s an opportunity to reassure your customer they made the right choice. This is why after a product purchase, you’ll often get follow-up emails that educate you on the great features you can access. Marketers want to reduce any potential for buyer’s remorse, a return of the purchase, or churn.

When someone hires you in a professional role, like as their financial advisor or any type of consultant, it’s important to reassure them they chose wisely. Doing this helps avoid churn and starts the relationship off on the right foot. Here’s how we helped our client do this with their end clients using a gift and voice marketing.

The Psychology of Gifts

From an evolutionary perspective, gift giving includes tactical motivations, such as creating a good impression, displaying financial resources, or as a means for seduction. This applies to your personal and business life.

From an evolutionary perspective, gift giving includes tactical motivations, such as creating a good impression, displaying financial resources, or as a means for seduction. This applies to your personal and business life.

Gifts are part of our universal social fabric. For thousands of years, gifts have been exchanged to build political and social relationships. They evoke feelings. They are loaded. They are powerful. Gifts usually become a sentimental value to the receiver because it helps recognize the special connection with the gift giver. In this sense, gifts are a way to show caring or commitment and a way to communicate.

First we built Protect Your Assets, an Alexa Skill and Google Action, for Liberty Group LLC (a financial advisor in the Bay Area). (Read more about our social media strategy and podcast marketing for this client.)

The challenge:

  1. Level up their client onboarding

  2. Educate clients about the Protect Your Assets smart speaker voice apps and all the interactive features like hands-free access to Protect Your Assets podcast and interactive quizzes on long term care and gray divorce

The solution:

We created a voice marketing hub page for Protect Your Assets on Alexa and Google Assistant, and accordion insert card to be shipped with Echo Dots (with Clocks) to each new client.

Our process:

  1. We designed the insert cards to fit in the square blue boxes, just like Amazon’s (why reinvent the wheel?) - the cards have simple language to welcome clients and educate them on using the Alexa skill

  2. We included QR codes and one-shot invocation phrases to enable the Alexa skill: “Alexa, enable Protect Your Assets.”

  3. We included sample phrases to access more content

  4. We tested the process with three existing clients we hand picked. Then we asked for their feedback via survey.

  5. Based on the trial and error around printing, packaging, and shipping we streamlined the process to send an Echo Dot Welcome Kit to every new client.

Here’s the new client greeting from David Hollander. It plays when you say:

“Alexa, tell Protect Your Assets that I am a new client.”

New Client Greeting (voice recorded on Alexa by CEO/Founder David Hollander):

You may have a mix of assets ranging from a business you own, to real estate, to investments, a 401k, IRAs, art, or cryptocurrency. And sometimes you also want tax and legal advice. We're here to help with all of it to get you on track and keep you strategically invested for the retirement you've always dreamed of. I'm David Hollander, Founder of Liberty Group. Welcome to our family and thank you for trusting us to protect your assets. You can say "learn more", "play the latest podcast," or "goodbye"

WealthVoice is a voice marketing platform to easily build your Alexa skill and send clients voice updates on their smart speaker with notifications. You reap the benefits of podcasting without the time commitment or competition. Get a spot on the waitlist: