Background
Blueprint Investment Partners depends on its value-driven blog content as a primary method for engaging with financial advisors. Prior to their partnership with AdvizorPro, Mike knew Blueprint was not reaching its full market and struggled with previous data providers to access the level of accurate and targeted contact data required to efficiently engage independent advisors.
Finding the right advisor database
for Blueprint's targeted marketing
Before partnering with AdvizorPro, Blueprint’s outreach efforts to advisors worked well when they reached the right audience, but email address inaccuracy and excessive unsubscribes were issues. Mike attributed the unsubscribes to Blueprint’s inability to dial in to the right advisors with their then-current database. Frustrated with the lacking data quality and hoping for an innovative data provider, Blueprint decided to look for a different partner.
Mike knew that increasing Blueprint’s advisor engagement depended on their ability to cut through the noise of the crowded wealth advisor space and understand who the Blueprint team should really be talking to. This required a more detailed ability to identify the right advisors, and gather reliable contact data for them.
Blueprint's advisor data "wishlist"
So, when AdvizorPro came across his radar, Mike was interested to see whether it could check the right boxes on their advisor database “wishlist”. Eager for having a farther reach in their email outreach program, Blueprint hoped to find the following traits in a new data platform:
- Getting in the inbox – At the top of Mike’s wishlist was email accuracy. The team was used to an advisor database that often made “educated guesses” for email addresses, which led to high bounce rates. But when they saw AdvizorPro’s methodology and technology used for collecting and validating email addresses, Blueprint knew their emails would be able to land in more of the right inboxes. Now, with this precise, clean data, Blueprint wouldn’t get penalized for “bad” emails.
- Less unsubscribes – In order for emails to get more engagement, they need to reach the most relevant audience possible. Sending to uninterested parties can cause emails to be sent to spam, skipping the inbox – even for qualified prospects. Like many asset managers, Blueprint wanted to find advisors interested in their niche. AdvizorPro’s capabilities allow Blueprint to now instantly search hundreds of thousands of advisor bio pages for keywords indicating a likely interest – e.g. “tactical”, “management alternatives,” ”mathematical engineering” – which would indicate their investment philosophies aligned with Blueprint. Blueprint was impressed with AdvizorPro’s filtering capabilities and even worked with the AdvizorPro team to further hone them to really focus on the right advisors.
- A true partnership – As the founder and leader of Blueprint’s sales team, Mike knew he needed a true partner from a data perspective to help them grow. Mike was impressed with AdvizorPro’s tech immediately. When they asked Blueprint “what’s on your wishlist?” and came back months later with the advisor website crawling engine Blueprint had asked for, it was clear AdvizorPro was the innovative partner they were looking for, who would value their suggestions and work closely with them to meet their unique requests as a company.
How AdvizorPro met Blueprint's
advisor database “wishlist”
As Blueprint’s data needs were finally being heard and met through the AdvizorPro platform and team, the successes were tangible and exciting, including entrance into a key market segment and winning an overall material increase in their email engagement.
- Greater reach into a key market segment: Corporate RIAs and Independent Broker-Dealers are a key market segment Blueprint is trying to grow their business in, particularly with advisors at firms like Cambridge Investment Advisors, LPL Financial, and Commonwealth. Since working with AdvizorPro, Blueprint has been consistently finding noticeable improvement in email accuracy for advisors in this segment, as compared to with the previous data provider. The additional data has significantly increased their reach into this target audience.
- Minimizing email bounces and “unsubscribes”: Since partnering with AdvizorPro, a notable success is that Blueprint has been able to minimize the number of email bounce backs and “unsubscribes”. Mike estimates that with their current email efforts, their bounce rate is noticeably lower, as compared to with their previous data provider. This has been crucial in reaching the right inboxes.
- Creating better lead lists: Leveraging AdvizorPro data filters to pull quality, refreshed lead lists of wealth advisors has had a direct impact on their addressable market. With AdvizorPro, Blueprint is now able to engage with new advisors that they wouldn’t have been able to identify without AdvizorPro data. Two key examples they use are Advizor Pro’s keyword search and 13F search to strategically isolate the types of RIA and wealth advisors who best fit their ideal client profile.
- Keyword search: Instant access to up-to-date advisor bio pages allows Blueprint to find the needles in the haystack and focus on the lowest hanging fruit. This targeted search has opened up a whole new channel of advisors for Blueprint’s sales team to pursue and engage. Mike searches for keywords unique to what Blueprint as an asset manager firm does, in order to optimize who he wants to send tailored messaging to.
- 13F filings: Mike previously pulled advisor firms’ 13F filings directly from the SEC website – a tedious process that was hard to do at scale. Now the team can instantly search 13F filings within AdvizorPro by ticker and more. The AdvizorPro platform pulls the filings down and links them back to the advisors Blueprint is after. A process for Blueprint that was once a nuisance and time consuming is finally streamlined.
- Increased Engagement: Advisor interest and engagement with Blueprint’s blog posts have increased. They use analytics to measure engagement and have seen a significant increase in responses. Mike noted that he wouldn’t be surprised if their email engagement nearly doubled!
Conclusion
AdvizorPro has become Blueprint’s “missing piece to the puzzle,” offering a partnership that Mike calls a “true relationship.” The robust data that AdvizorPro brings to the table, coupled with Blueprint’s always-current content, has been invaluable in launching Blueprint’s reach into a new market and finetuning the accuracy and success of their email efforts.
Mike attributes Blueprint’s increase in engagement to this combination of AdvizorPro, a robust CRM with great analytics, and a consistent stream of interesting blog content. Blueprint has found the recipe to successfully reach the right RIA.
Interesting marketing content+ AdvizorPro data+ CRM system+ Email sequencing = Success
AdvizorPro plays a key role in the recipe for us.”