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Advice Architects Ep. 7 with April Rudin, The Rudin Group
Personalized Engagement: Talking to Clients in Their Language
March 7, 2023
Personalized Engagement: Talking to Clients in Their Language
Personalization is one of the most important trends in wealth advisory today. Clients increasingly expect their services to be personalized, customized and tailored to their unique needs because so many of the other technology driven services they consume are already doing this. Order anything from Amazon and you’ll receive suggestions for other products you might want to purchase too. Watch something on Netflix and you’ll get suggestions for other shows you’ll probably like. Listen to Spotify for a while and it starts to suggest new music that fits with your taste.
Segmenting clients by age, gender or virtually any other demographic category and then assuming every individual in those groups wants to receive the same type of communication, at the same frequency, on the same channel, no longer cuts it. In this episode, we talk with influential marketer, April Rudin, about the personalization of wealth advisory services and how advice providers can and should be communicating with their clients.
Listen to the full episode below. All episodes are also available on Apple or Spotify.
For more information about April Rudin, CEO at The Rudin Group, you can find her on LinkedIn, or check her out on Twitter.
For more information on Responsive AI’s solutions for advice providers, contact us.
Day:
Welcome to this week's Advice Architects episode titled Personalized Engagement: Talking to Clients in Their Language. This is Day from Responsive. And today, we are speaking with the founder and president of The Rudin Group. April Rudin is widely acknowledged as a top marketing strategist for the financial services and wealth management sectors. Her thinking has appeared in Huffington Post, American Banker, WealthManagement.com, Forbes, and the Financial Times, just to name a few. April, it's been a minute. Very glad to catch up. Welcome to Advice Architects.
April:
I'm happy to be here, Day, so thank you for thinking of me.
Day:
So, at the start of the show, we kind of do a Proust Questionnaire, except we call it the Advice Architects questionnaire, where we get to know a little bit about you. The first question is what is your job title? And what do you actually do?
April:
Well, that's a big first question, so I'll see if I can cull it down a little bit. My title is founder and CEO of The Rudin Group. I founded my firm 14 years ago against a backdrop of what I saw as wealth, next gen, and technology intersecting and brands not catching up as fast as they should. A day in the life of me is quite varied. Mainly, I'm spending time in front of clients, working with clients, doing client work. Sometimes, I'm spending time with my kids, who are almost grown but still need a little bit of help, and also spending time on some self-care things for myself. And then finally, wrapping it up with spending time with other people that I work with and helping and working on other client work. So, it's a really varied day, which I really enjoy.
Day:
Sounds like a well-balanced and wonderful life.
April:
We try, this pandemic, post-pandemic, or wherever we are in this cycle.
Day:
When and where were you happiest in your FinTech or WealthTech experiences, like sort of a highlight?
April:
That's a great question. I would say, actually, now. So, not that much has changed in the 14 or 15 years since I've started my business, but I think there's more of a recognition and more action. So, whereas things before were more listening, I feel like it's more active space in FinTech and WealthTech now. So, for me, that's really exciting to see people implementing and doing and thinking rather than watching and waiting.
Day:
Awesome. It feels like something's on the move, so I agree with you. Why do you care about WealthTech?
April:
I care about WealthTech because it's really the underpinning to our whole financial services system. For me, me, I really like the term WealthTech because of its specificity. FinTech for me is not very specific and way too broad for a lot of what we talk about. FinTech can include payments. It can include processing, so many different things across different financial services institutions. So, I really prefer the term WealthTech because it's very specific to what's happening in terms of automating wealth and wealth management. But on the flip side, I would say that WealthTech and FinTech are really overused terms because what isn't FinTech or WealthTech? I think we'd be hard-pressed to find any FI or anyone now doing business without technology.
Day:
Okay. Today, we are talking about personalized engagement, which if you've been in WealthTech has become both a Holy Grail and a nearly meaningless term. Behind the catchphrase, though, is the idea that advisors and advice businesses can talk to clients in their language and about things they care about, and that maybe technology has a role to play in making this process better. What are you seeing in the market in terms of changing client demands for personalization?
April:
So, again, it's kind of a broad question, but let me do a little bit of a deep-dive into that. WealthTech, as I was saying in personalization, a lot of these things are jargon terms. And being a marketing professional, I really tend to shy away from those terms and really define what they mean by that. So, I would say that the real movement or part of the real movement that we've seen, Day, has been as a result of end investors who are end customers receiving personalized, customized, and even humanized experiences across the board from other vendors and other experiences that they interact with. And so I think what that's done is to drive that movement that we're seeing now into using technology and using automation in a way that really plays to clients in terms of what they're looking for, but also advisors. So, it's really sort of a two-pronged approach. Some people have a B2B solution, and other people are B2B2C. So, I think it's important to think about exactly what we're talking about there.
Day:
What are some of the concrete avenues specifically that advisors can take to offer a more personalized service to their clients?
April:
Many advisors, let me say that, are not really in control, that's in quotes, of their personalized experience on the technology side because many wirehouse advisors, RIAs that are making decisions that are large enough that have CTOs, roll-ups, have a tech stack that is dictated to them by their employer and by the firm that they're doing business with. So, that is one area that I'll go back to.
But the other area really just has to do with personalization, which really is humanizing and listening. I think for many advisors today, they think about model portfolios. They think about workflow. They think about ways of automating themselves and coming up with faster and simpler ways of talking to clients when, really, people really want to work with people. And they're not really interested in the brand. So, the best advisors today in terms of concrete advice, I would say, are thinking about their clients as individuals. They're thinking about their goals as individuals. They're thinking about their family situation as individuals and personalize, and not thinking about how they can be slotted into different categories or different client segments.
Day:
And what are some of the challenges that businesses and advisors are facing in moving towards that idea? What are you seeing that stands in the way or the obstacles to achieving that kind of perspective?
April:
I think it's really behavior and habit. With the average age of a financial advisor being in the low 60s just generally here in North America, there is a whole cohort of people who are really used to doing, I'll put in quotes again, air quotes for you, Day, business as usual. And so business as usual has really changed, but it's really difficult to change behavior and change the way people work.
We've come a long way, certainly in the pandemic. I think that the work from home movement, or at the beginning, really necessity, has been a real opportune moment for advisors to get closer to clients, because what better way to show off the way you live and how you live by showing your workspace and some of the things that might appear behind you in your backdrop? And also, looking at your own clients and seeing how they are in their own natural environment. Coming into an advisor's office and meeting at the mahogany table with the leather chairs is usually uncomfortable. And it's something that probably neither advisors nor their end customers, clients, are really familiar with and feel comfortable with. So, I feel like that's been a real boon.
The pandemic has also humanized people just from the standpoint of knowing that everybody's got a struggle and figuring out what their struggle is, and advisors being able to help them no matter what. So, broadening out of simple stock-picking or simplistic, I'll say, or one vein, stock-picking, moving more into holistic financial planning and thinking of clients as a whole and their family as a whole and different generations I think is one way and a really broad way of personalizing, customizing, and then humanizing the way that advisors are actually working with clients. That's one client at a time.
Day:
So, humanization I think is a big theme here. In a recent Forbes article, you talk about how we can market or communicate to clients on their terms with language and topics that resonate. I wanted to walk through a couple you brought up, so I'll start with the first one. You said put people at the center of their own stories. What does that mean? And how can an advisor do that?
April:
Everybody wants to be the star of their own story. For example, at Responsive AI, you want to be the center of your story with your copy and your marketing materials talking about how Responsive AI is the solution for advisors. And I think for end clients, they need to be and want to be the center of the story so that they can understand how to bring to bear the skills and experience that financial advisors might have for their own gain.
So, most people or many people are not sure what a financial advisor beginning and end might be. They might think that they're only really working on their portfolio or working on giving investment advice. They might not think that they could talk to them about college savings or about healthcare or about their residence, where they should move, or sending their children off to college. All these different lifecycle events are different opportunities for advisors to frame up their communications, whether it's written or oral or video or whatever it looks like, but frame up their conversations in a way that end clients can feel like they are talking about their own personalized story and how an advisor can help, rather than something that looks like the aggregate, like, "Many people do this," or, "A lot of people do that." For example, advisors will do themselves a big service, again, to... I'll go back to it. Sorry to be repetitive, but humanize it, right? "What can I do for myself? Or what can I have my family do that's unique for us?" And I think that's the way everyone wants to be treated.
I'll just add in one other point there, Day, that I think is really important, is for the most part, financial service is not concentrated or focused in on client experience. They might give lip service or think about it or talk about it. But the truth is luxury brands, for example, spend a lot of time thinking about what the client experience is and how people are interacting with their brands. So, I think financial services can take a page there.
Day:
What do you think is the blocker there? Because as you mentioned, people talk about these things all the time. They come up in innovation papers and on-stage at these FinTech events. Why do you think it's such a challenge to get to that?
April:
I think for the most part, it has to do with... Or, much of it has to do with generational, and people are just used to working a certain way. And so it really requires a culture shift. I think that we're going to see a big change. And I think we've already seen it just socially in North America because of the rise of new generations and next generations who have different priorities and different passions. And so that generation will approach financial advice in a way that is more comfortable for them and feels more organic for them. And I think at that time, everything will change. So, I don't think it can be something that's legislated. I feel like that's a really good question, Day, and I might even turn it back to you, because we attend those same conferences. And yes, people are on-stage talking about it, but it really doesn't make it down to the point of an individual advisor, an individual client. What in your opinion do you think we could do to help move that forward?
Day:
I think you're right. I mean, I think your first answer is right. It's a cultural change. It's hard to reinvent the ground you walk on. And then beyond that, there's so many day-to-day problems and fires to put out and compliance and old pipes. It's hard. It's hard to change the way it's done once habits have formed and once you've installed the foundations. So, I just think it's just a big challenge, and it'll take time. And it'll be a bit-by-bit thing. I think it probably has to come from two places, businesses creating cultures where it's... The incentives are creating that change for relationship managers. And then, two, tools that make it easier and create value for relationship managers and advisors. So, it's not like a new piece of technology to learn. It's like a shortcut to getting to a better place. To bring it back, we're talking about language and topics that resonate with clients. I'll go to the next one. You said appeal to people's sense of hope. What is hope in wealth management and advice? And how can advisors have that conversation with their clients?
April:
So, I feel like one of the things that advisors need to do, and just general overall wealth management marketing needs to do, is to be more emotive, Day, to show more emotion and more feeling than is typically shown. A lot of times, many advisors will present numbers, let's say, without any interpretation. Or maybe it's just interpreted as better or worse than where someone was last quarter or last year. But I think that a financial advisor, I don't want to use the word coach because I don't really like that word either, but I feel like that they can be on the same level as their clients and helping them to understand what are certain market conditions that may have dropped their portfolio? Or what are other things that are happening in the marketplace that can make them more hopeful? So, maybe investing in alternative investments, getting out of the equity market, just a broader mandate than what they have now.
And then appealing to people's emotions. I guess that's my idea of hope and of optimism, that I feel like it's not part of anyone's training program that I've seen. I don't know about you, but I feel that financial advisors and bankers and anyone that's interacting with the public needs to really be more hopeful and more sympathetic and more empathetic to their own clients' needs. And again, that really plays into the whole personalization and humanization, that people really want to be treated like people. They don't want to be treated like a segment or a cohort. They don't want to be treated like all millennials think this way. Or as a woman, you might want to do this. That sort of language and that sort of thinking I hope goes by the wayside.
Day:
And also, wealth means different things to different people. It could mean safety for loved ones in the future. It could mean education. It's not a process of just generating returns. And I think being able to identify what a client hopes for in their life is the key to maybe unlocking their confidence. Yeah.
April:
Totally. And then aligning that, their investment strategy and their planning strategy even broader, which is a great point that you made, toward that hope and letting them feel like they're on a path.
Day:
Exactly. Okay. Last topic that resonates. You said recognize generational differences. And I think you've already alluded a bit to how there might be cultural or communication differences, but there's also ages and stages. Do you want to talk a little bit about that and where the value can be created there for clients?
April:
Sure. There was a really interesting article in Business Insider that I read, it was really interesting, talking about Gen Z. And the title was something, Day, like Gen Z Comes to Slay. And it really caught my eye. I'll send it to you if you want. But I would suggest that others read it because it really talks about the communication style and the words that Gen Z is using. And so when you want to make sure that communication is clear between two individuals or two entities, you really need to get down to the nomenclature and the words that they use. So, I feel like it's very important to understand the words they use, what they mean by things, and that can also be humanization.
I feel like I did lean into... So, 14 years ago or 15 years ago when I founded my firm, I really leaned into millennials. And I thought of it as being really a mindset and not an age, which I do think about today, also. I think that that is a really important distinction for people to understand, and then not to, as you talked about, ages and stages. You can have a new child, and you can be Gen Z. You can have a new child, some of the people on my team, and they're Gen Xers. They're having children at a later date. So, I think it's really important for advisors not to over-generalize and to over-segment. I feel like that is really bad for people to do, just like we wouldn't want to be over-segmented ourselves, like, "Here's what women do." I mean, I know you're old enough today, Day, to know that not all women are the same. Right? Is that true? You know that, right?
Day:
I'm learning that.
April:
Yeah. Okay. So then, you know that not all women would want the same offering. So, it doesn't even hold water when people think about it, or millennials want technology, something like that. It really goes across generations. It really ties more to behavior. And I would say that is a really important lesson that I've learned over the years. Again, just going back to personalization and customization and humanization, it's really important to ask clients how they would like to be communicated with. Is it text? Is it email? Is it phone? What is it? And not make the assumption that, "Oh, Gen Z always wants to be texted," for example, "but baby boomers always want to receive an email." Particularly with the acceleration of digital as a result of the pandemic, I think it's very important for advisors and others in financial services and even ourselves not to over-generalize.
Day:
So, to conclude, it seems like the goal here is to really understand who people are and where they are and what their priorities are and how they like to be communicated with.
April:
And it sounds so simple, right?
Day:
Yeah.
April:
It sounds almost ridiculous. Why would we have to tell people that? But wealth management is such an old and old-fashioned industry that they are not used to thinking like that. And so I think that being reminded of that every day and then having tech tools that make that easier will be the reinforcement that people need to really change as much as they can and adapt themselves for the future.
Day:
Okay. So, that leads into our next question. It seems like technology might be an enabler of personalization in different ways. Starting kind of at the bottom, what should advisors be delegating to tech versus taking charge of personally when it comes to client conversations and service?
April:
So, for me, the routine, repetitive tasks are those that are really largely improved by technology. The second basket of things that are done better by the technology is the management and ingestion and understanding of data. And that is obviously more and better understood by technology. So, I think that if advisors can use that lens in thinking about their own business and thinking about what does their day look like? What is routine and repetitive that could be automated? And then how can they use data in a way that makes their own advice and their own actions better and more customized for clients, that those would be two areas to really focus in on.
Day:
And in terms of what an advisor should absolutely hold onto as a personal and old-fashioned activity, what are the things you think they should keep close to them?
April:
Well, technology doesn't replace humans. It augments humans. And again, I feel like I've said this so many times for the past 15 years, and people don't really get it. They want to think about... Even that term robo-advisor. We're going to be replaced by machines. These extremes are really too much, and that's not going to be what's going to happen. We all know that somewhere in the middle is where people settle in. And so I think that line of demarcation between technology and human is going to be different for every advisor, and then again, reflected differently by every client. Sometimes, people may want to hear from you. Other times, they don't. But I think that's where it's really important for advisors to get to know their clients and understand the way that they want to be communicated with and to and by and think about those things.
So, rather than doing a mass email or setting up quarterly meetings, let's say, for all of your clients, it might be good to ask your clients just as one concrete way of moving forward, Day, like, "How often would you like for me to communicate with you? Is it important? Would you like to talk to me when it's a down day in the market?" Some clients need more and more different handholding. And so it's beholden on the advisor to find that out from their client rather than having the client, which is what happens many times, tell their advisor, "I wish you would've called me." Or, "I wish you would've told me that." So, I think those client conversations need to happen ahead of any sort of seismic events that might be happening in the marketplace.
Day:
When it comes to marketing and communication technology, are you seeing any interesting developments in terms of personalization enablement or just great tech that can help advisors? And how is it helping advisors?
April:
So, MarTech, especially over the past couple of years, has really increased significantly. For those advisors who are working for firms that have MarTech stacks, it's improving slightly in terms of what can be, quote-unquote, personalized or customized. But to me in my eyes, it really still looks pretty perfunctory and pretty robotic. So, I'm not a big fan of many MarTech stacks for that reason. Even though we work with a lot of global banks and global clients, the sheer number of people that the marketing departments need to serve might drive some of that. But I think it's, again, really important to think about how that information is customized and how the marketing teams might be receiving feedback both from clients, their clients who are the financial advisors, but then the end investors and the end clients. So, I feel like focus groups and talking to people and just improving overall communication is really important and not having things be implemented from on high, meaning corporate or enterprise or home offices deploying things to field organizations without a clear view of how they can be customized in the field.
Day:
It sounds like the technology in that space is kind of so-so and okay, but the real value is actually going and talking to clients and getting involved in what their priorities are, and not just designing something and firing it into the stratosphere, as you say.
April:
Exactly. I mean, I think for large global banks and big investment advisory firms who have 10,000, 15,000 advisors, it's difficult for them to come up with something using today's technology, even if it is somewhat customizable, that is sort of a one-size-fits-all solution. That's why I'm saying I think it's really important to keep the lines of communication open for advisors to report back to home office and for our clients to report back to their advisors and to just really ask and generate questions about whether something's working or not working from a MarTech stack.
For example, MarTech stacks might be sending out content to you that is totally irrelevant based on some of the data that they have on you. But there's no real check and balance on that unless it's reported or somebody notices it. So, that's where I feel like it's really important to communicate that. And what you might find is that there's client attrition, and you might not know why. But it might not... I'm not saying that MarTech solutions will drive that, but it certainly can be part of a client's feeling like, "My advisor doesn't understand me if I'm receiving content on," I don't know, something like, "saving for college when I have a fertility problem," for example. That could really be very irritating and off-putting. So, that's where I think everything really needs to be customized and just really humanized.
Day:
Can you speak to how data could be used to create a more personalized experience for clients and to help advisors achieve more humanized conversations?
April:
I guess that really is the Holy Grail. And depending where you think we are in the evolution of technology, I think we're sort of in, I'll give a baseball analogy, but maybe we're at the third inning or the fourth inning, but this game might be going into overtime. And so I think the more feedback that we can get... So, in the gross way, data is always really helpful, and coming from a lot of different sources that can be aggregated, curated and analyzed and used with a very good lens to understand what behaviors might be and planning for next best action, whether that next best action is from the advisor or the client, are very helpful.
But it can only go so far now because that is, again, in the aggregate. And so it might be that most people or many people have a certain action that they're taking at a certain point in times in their lives, but it's not everyone. So, when it comes to the point where we're able to not only curate, aggregate, analyze and utilize data from the standpoint of what others have done, because I think people are always interested in that, but also say what is personal to you, will really be in a sphere that does that. And how soon that will be, I really don't know.
I can say that it's really encouraging to see what AI and other technologies are doing in the medical space toward personalized medicine. I think that would be the thing that I would take a look at. The more that we will have more personalized medicine and diets and medications and things that work for individuals rather than for people who have stage four blah, blah blah, but more about how these individuals' bodies might be and what their other symptoms might be and how doctors can come up with a personalized medical plan for them is akin to what financial advisors will be able to do at some point in time, too. So, using data in a way that's really important to help get you so far, but then some personalization to help people know that it's about them, and it's not about their cohort or their segment.
Day:
So, the Holy Grail is using data to really understand the human individual and meet them where they are. We're coming to the end of the episode. We end with a deep question, and this is a three-pronged question because I think it's interesting to ask it that way. In this-
April:
As long as it's not my weight and my age. Okay. But, yes. Okay. Go.
Day:
So, in that task of understanding the human individual, what do you think are the three most important things an advisor should know about a client to help personalize the conversation and the service?
April:
I think it's just really important to get to know the person. So, even the way we began our call, Day, when I asked you where did you grow up? What are your experiences? Just finding out what those things are that are really formative for people in their early years and making connection points. We discussed Canada. We discussed some of our favorite foods. So, creating some connection points is really important for advisors and clients, because that's what helps build the trust. So, I would say that that is a really important aspect of getting to know people.
The other thing is getting to know their family situation, so whether they are single or married, have children and so on. What can you find out about the dynamics? One of the stats that's kind of crazy is 75% or so of widows change financial advisors within a year of their husband's demise because they have no relationship with the woman. So, spending more time getting to know the family, the family dynamics, what might be important to them, again, so that they're thinking about the family as more than a unit, which is a way some CRMs and some software deals with it. So, I feel like that's really important. What does their whole picture look like? So, not just as an individual, but as a family.
And then the third piece I would say that's critical is what are their goals? Where would they like to be? And can you help them get there? Is it realistic? Is it unrealistic? Can they do it if they do certain things differently? But how can advisors partner with their clients in that personalized, customized way to help them reach their financial goals helps them reach the pinnacle and is really what creates satisfying relationships, and then really helps advisors who went into the business to really help their clients achieve their goals feel a great sense of satisfaction in their daily work.
Day:
Thank you so much, April. My wheels are turning right now about how we can use some of these ideas to make what we do more impactful for advisors. So, thank you for stimulating my imagination. It was a great conversation.
April:
Thank you. I appreciate it.
