Build Your List, Engage Your List: Advisors' #1 Marketing Priority in 2025

By Zach McDonald

If you want to invest in the most reliable marketing channel—the most proven and stable tool on your belt—go with your subscriber list.

With so many marketing channels available today, why focus on subscriber list, that seemingly outdated, old-as-the-internet tool? What about your podcast? YouTube? LinkedIn?

Why Should Your List Be Your Top Priority?

There are several reasons your list should be a top priority, but the core of the issue is that the internet is becoming more and more unpredictable.

On social media, you have to fight algorithms for attention. If you don’t post enough or engage with others enough, you’re out. Or what if your preferred platform changes the rules (again) and leaves you playing catch-up?

On Google, you have to fight against updates for relevance. Every time Google launches a core update (which happens several times each year), independent blogs like yours seem to take the brunt of the hit. Truly, most independent blogs have yet to recover from what Google euphemistically calls the “Helpful Content Update” from September 2023. Then, March 2024 brought a core update that sent blogs spiraling even further.

On Wordpress (upon which nearly half of the internet is built), you have to fight against the whims and egos of founders to keep your site alive. In September 2024, the founder of Wordpress lashed out against WPEngine, the largest Wordpress host, and basically banned any site that uses it.

In summary, social, search, and sites are not safe.

You know what is safe? A list of people’s contact information you own and can take with you no matter where you go.

Not only that—your subscriber list gives you better access than any other channel. Nowhere else in the digital world can you reach out to individuals—not your podcast audience, YouTube subscribers, or Instagram followers. Only email.

2 Basic List-Building Tactics You Can Do Right Now

Let’s start with the two easiest methods to help you capture the “low-hanging subscribers,” if you will:

1. Add a pop-up to your site
2. Add subscribe fields to your blog posts

Your website is fertile ground for subscribers. These people are already on your site, so the next logical step is to subscribe.

My Favorite List-building Tactic

As a financial advisor, hopefully you’re speaking in front of audiences frequently. Maybe it’s webinars, maybe it’s client events, maybe it’s educational seminars. When you do that, you probably bring a lead magnet of some sort to capture people’s information.

Rather than give them an ebook or fact sheet, ask them to subscribe to your newsletter. Give people your business card with a QR code that goes to your subscription page. Or you could even bring a clipboard to ask people to sign up. I know, pretty old school. But it’s easy to transfer the info into your computer, and it’s worth it!

Whatever you choose to do, replace your old lead magnet with your newsletter. If you give someone an ebook, there’s a 30% chance they’ll actually read it. Subscribe them to your newsletter and they’re sure to remember you when you show up in their inbox next week.

Engage Your List

This is where a lot of advisors drop the ball. Even clients unsubscribe because they just don’t care about most of what passes for content in advisor newsletters.

Here are a few steps for increasing engagement on your newsletter:

1. Send out a survey to learn more about them. To engage your audience, you need to understand your audience. Send out a short (three questions or less) survey to figure out what your readers like. The shorter the better. The top question you can ask them is this: What is your number one financial concern right now? Be sure to include an open-ended “other” option so they can speak for themselves.
2. Write an original, personal weekly email addressing topics they care about. Keep it as short as you can most weeks. Address one topic at a time. Get personal by sharing stories about yourself.
3. Encourage engagement. By “engagement,” I mean replies and to a lesser extent clicks—not opens. (Open rates are dead, in case you missed it.) You want to encourage conversation by asking people to reply with their opinions or their personal stories. Then add a P.S. where you link to another article on your site.

It’s time to stop fighting for attention on other people’s platforms and start building an audience where you have the most control: email.

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Zach McDonald is the founder and writer for Clay Pigeon Communications, a marketing agency that specializes in helping financial advisors communicate more clearly and effectively. He lives in Omaha, Neb., with his wife and five children. Connect with him at claypigeon.us.

image credit: Adobe Stock Images