One of the most valuable features AdvizorPro offers its clients is high-quality, fresh investment advisor email addresses. Having accurate email addresses is crucial to ensuring you reach a full audience and that your emails are not marked as spam and blacklisted. Email quality varies significantly across advisor data providers, which makes it important to choose an up-to-date, rich database to embolden your company’s opportunities. Some providers claim to have high coverage, only to disappoint their new clients when they realize many emails are stale, invalid, or merely guessed. AdvizorPro wants you to feel confident that the intended recipient is receiving the email; otherwise, you risk damaging your brand, reputation, and efficacy.
As mentioned, using un-secure email addresses could result in your company’s email account being blacklisted and your company image damaged. Our clients have shared horror stories due to mistakingly using faulty data from competitors. When considering a financial advisor database, it is crucial to consider email quality. At AdvizorPro, we believe in a balance between quality and quantity, and therefore, we leverage technology to provide the best of both worlds. Here is some insight into why this matters and what to look for:
Why is it necessary to have high-quality email addresses?
If you send an email to an invalid or inactive account, that email will be flagged and may bounce. A high bounce rate negatively affects your account’s sender score, which is used by email service providers to protect inboxes from spam. A good benchmark for bounce rate is around 2%, whereas a bounce rate of 8% or more is cause for alarm. AdvizorPro’s bounce rate is about 1%, where we have seen competitors reach a 10% bounce rate or higher! If an email service provider notices a high bounce rate, multiple incorrect emails (likely fabricated and guessed), or a pattern of low engagement, the provider will flag your domain. Being labeled as spam can damage your brand immensely and cost you the ability to market to prospects effectively using email.
What do many providers do wrong?
Guessing Emails
A common mistake in advisor databases is inferring an email based on an assumed pattern (such as FirstName.LastName@Company.com). Many organizations — especially larger ones — often use several different email formats. Additionally, nicknames or individuals that use their middle names are common in emails and also make this technique unreliable. Advisor databases often use this technique in order to claim a “high email coverage rate” for advisors in their database; yet, you can see this doesn’t ensure the data is trustworthy or quality. “
Stale Data
Competitor advisor databases often manually collect email addresses and other contact data. While this can be a generally safe process, it is not scalable to ensure the data quality is rich and updated. Because of the sheer number of financial advisors, along with inevitable turnaround time and role changes, these providers may have stale data from advisors who leave or switch firms. The problem of stale data extends even beyond manual email collection, as many vendors do not verify and refresh contact data regularly.
What should I avoid?
All emails are not created equal. There are two types of emails to avoid: stale/invalid emails and catch-all domains. A stale/invalid email is a once-active email that is no longer live. These are common spam traps, and some organizations create a blacklist of companies that continually email these traps. Catch-all domains collect all emails sent to a domain name when the server does not recognize the email address. Although these emails do not bounce, they are also not valid email addresses and will not reach the recipient. While seemingly innocuous, they will affect your email reputation score and deliverability.
Where can I find high-quality contact info?
When searching for an advisor database, ensure your vendor prioritizes data hygiene and providing quality contact information. Make sure to inquire about methodology, the frequency of refresh, and bounce rate.
AdvizorPro uniquely uses technology and algorithms to power our advisor contact database, enabling us to collect contact data faster and validate it more frequently. AdvizorPro collects advisor contact data immediately when there are new advisors or when advisors change firms. Furthermore, we revalidate each advisor’s contact data every six months, regardless of any employment changes. All emails pass a proprietary series of checks and third-party email validators, so there is no fear about emails bouncing and your company thus losing connections. We are proud to say that our bounce rate is 1%.
Reach out to the AdvizorPro team to learn how our advisor database can empower your advisor outreach.