Stay in Touch with Clients Virtually Hot

Virtual meeting tools have been around for some time and have seen a significant uptick in light of the spending retraction most business has gone through in the past 18 months. There are several types and formats these tools come in that can be helpful to your practice for making the number of “touches” you seek with your clients.

For example, a practice in Utah also has offices in Hawaii and Wisconsin due to acquisitions. These three disparate locations runs very well and are profitable. Yet, the teams have consistently brought up issues with maintaining regular contact with clients as a challenge in light of growth. They are a perfect candidate for some of the virtual tools noted here.

These tools break down, in my view, into three broad categories

1. Simple communications - cards, notes, newsletters (print and electronic)
2. Presentation mediums - information that can be viewed live or at a client’s discretion without a facilitator
3. Virtual Meetings - comprehensive and integrated audio and video with screen sharing 

Getting started, we will look at simple communications. There are a number to tools available in this space, and I will mention only a small sample. These tools offer some level of integration with CRM systems (or exports out of CRM) to populate mailing addresses and email addresses. These solutions are predominantly used to send out postcards, e-newsletters or targeted links to relevant online content for all, some or a filtered number of your clients.

NOTE: There is a sub-group to this category that includes social networking tools such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media instruments. These offer an instantaneous method for communicating with clients. However, they are still viewed somewhat skeptically in financial services due to a lack of archival and management tools to provide regulatory comfort. Don’t get me wrong - I am a fan of social media tools - but also keenly aware that users need a proven and user-friendly method for remaining compliant with electronic communications guidelines that is not quite mature as of today. 

As with any client communications, insure your use of these tools has been reviewed by your compliance principal.

Providers include:

• Cards Remembered - send cards by postal mail to one or more recipients
• Constant Contact - email newsletters and surveys
• Dropbox - online storage and sharing of files/images of any size 
• Files Anywhere - electronic delivery of large files
• iContact - email newsletters and surveys
• Send Out Cards - send cards by postal mail to one or more recipients
• Share This - send web links to one or more email recipients from within a web browser
• You Send It - electronic delivery of large files

The application of these tools can contribute to your goal of extending your reach to your clients without increasing the number of phone calls, travel and face to face meeting required.

This is not a move to reduce the depth or strength of your relationships with your clients, but perhaps open up opportunities to reach out individually or to segments with tools that offer that flexibility.

For example - the Utah practice wanted to accomplish three specific steps with clients each year in addition to the physical meetings they hold with each family they work with.

1. Leverage their CRM to move to a semi-automated workflow of delivering personalized cards for important dates like anniversaries, birthdays and in advance of annual review meetings.
2. Distribute large files securely, as needed, without having to email or otherwise require clients to take multiple steps to gain access.
3. Since they tag client records with keywords in CRM, adopt a process of once monthly passing along a relevant article to their clients via email.

The practice was able to achieve these three goals by utilizing Send Out Cards, YouSendIt and  the ShareThis service. 

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