Generic to Genuine Content: A Vestorly Case Study with MBM Wealth

MBM Wealth is a full service wealth management company based in Missouri, providing comprehensive strategies coordinating clients’ investment, insurance, tax, and estate planning needs. We spoke with Brendan Bradley, Director of Digital Brand Marketing, about how MBM Wealth has used Vestorly.

Previously, MBM Wealth relied on word-of-mouth to gain referrals. To support their online presence, they used a marketing suite popular among financial professionals to access and share financial content. The problem was other advisors were sharing the content, and it was generic, non-customizable, and provided no tracking or data.

When the time came to redesign their website, the firm decided to revamp their digital communication as well. They wanted one technology to centralize management of their online presence. It would have to be easily customized, provide true intelligence, and meet their broker-dealer’s requirements for tracking. Vestorly was the only solution to fit the bill.

The customizable libraries of content were critical to MBM Wealth since the firm heavily emphasizes personalization in all aspects of the client relationship. They survey every new client to get a better idea of their interests and preferences, which they use to go above and beyond by, for example, surprising a client with the perfect bottle of wine on an anniversary.

Vestorly’s customizable libraries and tracking capabilities dovetailed with this tailored approach to building stronger relationships. With the knowledge they gain from personal experience and Vestorly’s data, they add a personal touch to every client interaction.

MBM uses this idea in several ways. First, they send two email newsletters per week (market commentary and a roundup of interesting stories). In the weekly roundup, each recipient sees stories chosen for his interests, and sees that it comes from his individual advisor (rather than the firm). As the Director of Digital Brand Marketing, Brendan uses Vestorly’s tools to choose personalized content and to send it from each advisor, allowing every advisor to share custom communication with their clients without spending any of their own time.

“The ability to match emails to clients from their advisors is enormous because every client thinks they’re receiving a personal email from their advisor. That message – ‘Hey, I thought you’d enjoy these articles’ – is just such a powerful relationship-building tool.”

MBM brings this same idea to their website. Each advisor’s information page displays a real-time stream of stories curated to match the advisor’s interests, providing a fuller picture of each advisor to visitors.

The website features additional streams of Vestorly as well on their “Interests” page, hosting a variety of markets, finance, and “Just for Fun” stories, and to host their archive of whitepapers.

“We use Vestorly as access for our whitepapers because it’s an easy way for people to read and share, and we can track it. It’s the best of all worlds. Vestorly is engaging in a way that a standard signup modal box isn’t. A typical signup form makes viewers think they’re signing up for calls and emails. With Vestorly though, visitors are trying to access an article or whitepaper to read, so they’re more likely to enter their information.”

Lastly, MBM shares their Vestorly streams frequently on social media. They’ve found Facebook posts to be especially engaging, particularly when sharing real-time stories in response to major events like Brexit or market dips.

MBM Wealth’s new communication strategy with Vestorly is more engaging in less time.

“One of the most successful things to do is to post to our personal social media pages, which has been very effective in attracting new relationships. We have actually doubled the number of relationships interacting with our content online just by sharing articles we like to our Facebook pages. We went from 54 relationships to 99 relationships in the first four months of our subscription.”

They’ve found that this type of engagement is more meaningful than just counting their Facebook followers or seeing higher email open rates. It’s actually contributing to stronger relationships and more memorable client experiences.

“Every financial firm talks about the trust and relationship side of the business and other than face time with people, it is a hard thing to build. At MBM we want to make sure we know our clients’ lives intimately and build lifelong relationships with them. Vestorly allows us to deepen relationships, both with clients and prospects, by finding out what we have in common and working to strengthen those bonds. Recipients are hearing ‘I know you, and when I saw this it made me think of you,’ and, ‘you were on my mind.’ That’s a powerful relationship and trust builder – two things you really can’t buy. With the Vestorly platform I can manage 500 such relationships spending 30 – 60 minutes per week.”

Though Brendan finds the system intuitive and easy-to-manage, he can always rely on the Vestorly team to help with technical questions and to help align his Vestorly activity with his overall marketing strategy.

“It’s nice to know that behind your great product there’s a team that actually cares about its customers.”