Kitces & Carl Ep 13: The Better Way To Send Market (And Other) Commentary Emails To Clients

***Editor's Note: Can't get enough of Kitces & Carl? Neither can we, which is why we've released it as a podcast as well! Check it out on all the usual podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts (iTunes), Spotify, and Stitcher.

Show Notes:

• Episode 12
• Broadridge
• Clearnomics
• JP Morgan Guide To The Markets
• Marketing.Pro
• Advisor Fuel
• Financial Media Exchange
• Horsesmouth
• Jason Zweig
• #FASuccess Ep 51 with Dan Egan
• Bob Veres
• Ron Leiber
• Morgan Housel

Kitces & Carl Video Transcript

Carl: Last week on "Kitces And Carl" episode 12, we talked about the cone of silence and market commentary. This week we're going to talk more about market commentary. Michael, last week we talked about...

Michael: Wait, Carl, last week we talked about the cone of trust. You just made it a cone of silence.

Carl: Cone of silence.

Michael: That got dark really fast. No, we're in the cone of trust, the safety cone of trust. Now, everything might be quiet in the cone of trust because we have that trust level and, you know, we've been working with the client for a few years and they say, "No, no. We don't need to meet anymore." Like, "I'm good. You call me if there's a problem and I'll call you if there's a problem." So it gets silent to the cone of trust, but the conclusion we came to is, it doesn't matter how silent it is, you still have to communicate and send things to the client because you never know if they might've slipped out of the cone of trust and they don't want silence anymore.

Carl: Cone of trust. Cone of trust. So let's go back a little bit. Let's review, because we've got some big questions to answer and people have been waiting on the edge of their seats.

Michael: Yes.

Carl: Okay. You send out a toot on Twitter, and you say... What do you send? And we just spent lots of... If you didn't see episode 12, go back and watch episode 12 because we talked about just the context around, should you be sending stuff? Why should you be sending stuff? And I think there's some, at least for me... Anyway, it's fun, go listen to it. But today let's talk about what do you send? What did you learn from this? So there's a couple of things I watched, because I sent a snarky little response. It was like, "Here, use mine." And it was a sketch. And other people chimed in and said, "You shouldn't send stuff. What are you doing?" And other people gave suggestions.

So let's talk about what do we send in terms of regular communication? Because one thing I think, it's really this dance. You used that word last time which I really like. You don't want to call clients up... Well, let's start here, nobody was born with expectations of getting a quarterly performance report, and market performance, and market commentary. And yet, as we talked about last week, they need to know we've looked at their stuff, and then if there was anything important, that we would be in touch. We're on it. I've seen too many advisors get the mistaken idea that just because we end up at the same piece of advice, which is almost always... If you built a well designed...

Michael: ... stay diversified and stay the course, "No, you should not buy, insert blank here. Whatever the thing is that you called me about the answer's almost certainly 'no.' You should not buy it."

Carl: Don't do that. And just because that's almost always the answer, we assume that we can almost... I've watched advisors and I did this too, where you'd almost come across as annoyed, "I can't believe you're calling me again. Don't you trust me?" That's what came across in your voice. And I think if we just understand, wait, these are humans who get scared like normal humans do because they're listening to normal human stuff on the news. And if you were a normal human, you would get scared listening to that too. So how do we play that dance? How do we be proactive? And this is the last part of my question. I know it's like a 17 point question, but, because we've also all made the mistake of calling... I remember calling some clients. In fact, it's the same client I mentioned last time, Dan. I remember calling Dan saying, "Hey Dan, just checking in with you to see if you're nervous or worried about the markets." And Dan said, "What?" "What, should I be?" He had no clue. So we also don't want to be the ones actually making the clients nervous. So how do we handle this dance in terms of how often, what do we send? What did you learn from your toot?

What Sort Of Are Advisors Sending To Their Clients [04:55]

Michael: So a few things that come to mind here. First is, as you'd mentioned...so I sent out this question that just, "Hey, for advisors who send out marketing commentary of some sort to clients..." And the context wasn't so much quarterly performance reports like, "How are we doing in your portfolio?" Just that high-level market commentary, "Here's what's going on in markets and our take, or a take that is from us." So you as you mentioned, I found...the responses basically fell into three buckets. The first was, "Here's the thing we use that we like. We've got a couple of good suggestions in that end." Broadridge's Forefield Advisor, Clearnomics which is a platform that was made by the people who, or made by some of the people who created the JP Morgan Guide to the Markets, which I know a few advisors use as well. Clearnomics made a version of that, handy charts you can send out on economic stuff. You can white label it to your firm, nice polished stuff. We heard Marketing.Pro which, I think, was Montoya's old platform, Advisor Fuel, Financial Media Exchange and Horsesmouth. A bunch of advisors were using market commentary.

A number of different things. We've got all these good suggestions for people who are listening to this. We'll have some comments, show notes down below where you can look these up if you're actually looking for one of the ones on the list. We'll give you some things to call, or click on, or look at. Then there was a second group of responses, and the second group was, "Why are you sending this stuff out to clients?" "Why bother, you tell them not to look at markets, why would you send them all this stuff and bring their focus back?" As you've said about your client, Dan, "Are you going to just make them more market-obsessed when you send them market stuff while you're also telling them not to look at all the other market stuff out there?"

And then there was a third group that I was struck by, that essentially said, "If you're not creating the market commentary yourself, you're doing it wrong." You have to create it. You have to be the person because either your clients want to hear from you or need to hear from you, or it's not credible if it doesn't come from you. There were, kind of, a couple of different angles or slices to it, but all of them came back to, "The only thing that you should send to your clients, of that nature, is the stuff that you create." And so those, kind of, became the three groups.

Here's a bunch of our suggestions. Don't bother sending this stuff at all, which we, kind of, hit on last episode. And I think made the case, you probably maybe should be sending something, although maybe you're going to disagree in the context of market commentary. And then this third group saying, "Oh yeah, you've got to send it, but you got to make it as well."

Carl: Wow.

Michael: So where are you on these three groups, Carl?

The Better Way To Send Commentary (And Other Content) To Clients [8:05]

Carl: Geez Louise, I don't even know where to start. I learned so much already. There are so many names of things that people do, stuff like Fuel and things everywhere. It's amazing what's going on in our industry. I'm just sitting over here in New Zealand drawing things on napkins. I don't know what... So here's where I think all of this goes all sideways to me. Here's what I think. I think that you should establish some regular pattern of communication with clients, and that if you have some regular pattern established, I don't alternate, I don't change it. So in the case of client... And I happen to think, I have a very strong opinion. I'm often wrong but never in doubt. And my strong opinion is that you should be sending a weekly email newsletter-style to your clients and prospects, to everyone who signs up for it.

Michael: Weekly?

Carl: Yeah.

Michael: Well, that's a high bar.

Carl: Yeah. I'm going to back off a minute. Look, we don't have time here to talk about how easy that is, but let me take three minutes to do it. Here's how easy it is, right? First of all, it's free. You want to talk about the best marketing thing you could ever do, and the best client-retention thing you could ever do is just, every week you read stuff, right? Yes, you read stuff. Oh geez, I'm talking to the guy that sends out the weekend reading notes.

Michael: Yes, I read stuff. I share just some short highlights of what I read with my fellow advisor friends so you've just got something to do on the weekend.

Carl: It's a small version of what you do. Here is all I suggest advisors do. Every week while you read stuff, have a notebook next to your desk. If you want to use Evernote or something fancy online, fine. But at the very least, take notes of what you read, interesting article in "The Wall Street Journal" about X. I found it interesting for these three reasons. Wow, I love that article about Tiger Woods' comeback. The guy who climbed Everest. So you're just taking notes of stuff you've read. Just that alone...Seth Godin would argue that that metacognition alone is valuable, right? At the end of the week...let's say you decided to send your newsletter out on Tuesdays. A week later on...Tuesday morning you open up your notebook, and you've got seven things written down there that you read this week, pick three. One of them could be about the market, one of them could be about family, friends, and whatever. You just pick three interesting things. Send a note that says, "I read three interesting things this week, boom, boom, boom, boom."

If the markets have acted crazy, they're already getting something from you every week. And in that week, you can say, "Market's been crazy, here's something great Jason Zweig wrote. I liked it for this reason, and this reason, and this reason." If that's how you want to do it. It doesn't take creativity. You don't need to be a writer. You don't need to be a technical... Open a Mailchimp account. Now, let me back... Before I did that, I called every client, every month. So I wouldn't call them if the markets got crazy. I can only think of one event in the last 20 years where...two. Two events in the last 20 years where I would have disrupted that cycle, September 11th, and 2008 maybe a Lehman, the height of 2008... But I talked to them three weeks earlier.

Every other event, if I talked to them weeks earlier and they were going to get their normal monthly call in a week and a half, I would just wait. And during that normal monthly call I would say, "Hey, everything's cool. Hey, there's been a lot of news about the markets. Just checking in if you've got any questions. I want you to know we're on top of it. In light of what's going on in the markets, we reviewed your stuff and everything is fine." So I think if it's in the regular pattern, we don't have any of that risk of alerting them that something's bad, and we don't have to write some... I can't imagine, to be honest, really direct, I can't imagine writing my own market commentary and sending, "The markets are doing this and that's based on the economy in the average bear market is 22 weeks and we're only 23 weeks into it." What would you... Anyway, there you go. It's more than you wanted.

Michael: Yeah. Obviously, I'm someone that writes a lot of stuff so I'm always a fan of the writing things and sharing your expertise, but I'm actually much more in your camp on this. Look, if your special skill set and gift from God is that you can write things that are helpful to people and that's your skill, by all means, knock yourself out, write your stuff. I'm sure your clients will be very appreciative when they're hearing it from you and they know it's you because you wrote it. I do think there's probably a little extra something that comes from that, in terms of expertise demonstrated, trust established, credibility established, if that's you. But that doesn't have to be you. I don't think that's the only way it has to be done. If your gift to this world is not writing things, you don't need to flog yourself to figure out how to write market commentary that you're totally not into writing and isn't your fit and style anyways.

Why Sending Regular Content To Clients Matters So Much [13:32]

I do think it matters that you send something though. And we talked about this on the last episode as well. I do think it matters that you send something. And I think you set it up well that if you're sending regular things already, you can decide the tone and style of where you want to take the focus. You can decide if you're going to put in three articles about the markets this week, or just one article about markets and something about retirement, and something about being healthy in your old age. Whatever fits your clients. But there's already a container in place where you're sending things out and you can decide how much to dial it up and dial it down. And part of what that does, and I think you made a good point about here, is...

The thing that worries me in doing it this way are, firms that just want to send something out when crazy market stuff is happening. Like, "Hey, we didn't do this regularly, but there's some crazy stuff going on. We're getting all these calls. Our clients just started calling. We've got to send something out." And, I guess, if you've dug that hole for yourself because you weren't communicating regularly with clients, you have to do that. But the challenge that you create is when you don't normally communicate about this stuff and suddenly you do, I think there really is a risk that you amplify client anxiety.

We had...God, probably like a year and a half ago, we had Dan Egan, who's the Behavioral Scientist of Betterment on, talking about some of this. They've tested what happens when you send messages to clients during volatile times, and basically what they've found is, most of the people who delegate their money to an advisor do it because they don't want to follow that stuff. And if you send them unexpected out-of-the-normal-pattern messages about markets, even if you send a message that says, "Hey, I just wanted to let you know that everything is okay in the markets." All they hear is, "Oh my God, you had to take the time to tell me that? Clearly, things are not okay."

So if you have a pattern of communication with clients, even if it's as simple and straight forward as, look, you probably are already reading some stuff. Just clip one, or two, or three things that you read that you think were pretty interesting, and share those with a sentence in front. That really is enough and sufficient. But if you don't send that stuff, you're setting yourself up for a problem because when you do send something for the first time because crazy things are happening in the market, you break the pattern or you break that there was no pattern. And that brings more focus to the problem than just sending things regularly in the first place, and occasionally inserting some market commentary as part of it.

Carl: If I could wave a magic wand and I had one...what's one thing I could make... Because we've taught hundreds of advisors at this point, and we've got stories from hundreds of advisors at this point to do this weekly email thing and to just do it simply. Three things I read this week that I think will help make your life better. Normally, one's about money. Every single person I know that does that is glad they've done it. It's been the best thing they've done marketing, it's been the best thing for client retention. It solves this problem. Just create...if I could do one thing, it would...every good advisor is sending out from, preferably... And the pressure we're putting on you to do this is, one sentence. "I read this thing. I like it because of this. I read this thing because I like it." So it's three sentences. And in fact, one of the advisors... For some reason, they all think that since we teach them this, that I should be on their newsletter so they all add me to it, which is kind of fun to see, but I get a lot...

Michael: Yeah.

Carl: And one of the great ones I saw was, "Three things I read this week that I thought you'd find interesting." You open the email and it says, "Actually, I only saw two that I wanted to share with you." Which is...that alone is, "Wait, you are adding value to my life because you're my human curator and you're only sending stuff that I think I would know." It solves this problem, it solves so many other problems. So that to me, that's the message.

But What About Third-Pary Commentary? [18:04]

Michael: So I've got to ask, so then are you not a fan of getting some kind of third party market commentary and sending it out? Are you negative? Are you poo-pooing this idea? No offense to all of those lovely people we mentioned at the beginning...

Carl: No.

Michael: ...who do this?

Carl: I think there's... I'm going to be just really, really candid and... I know I'm often wrong, I know that so please... I think there are some people in our industry and I'm going to avoid... I could name names right now, they do an amazing job. And I'm going to avoid that because I don't want to contrast anybody not on the list. But there are some people who do an amazing job of two things. Number one, they may write really thoughtful stuff and you may just want to share that. Like, "Hey, here's an article that..." Somebody like Bob Veres, right? Like, "Here's an article that Bob Veres wrote. That may be...they do an amazing job. That's different to me. Number two, there are some people who are really good at, and ghostwriting is not the right word, but there are some people who are really good at working with you if you want to take the next level up. You can work with a writer who is capturing your voice about certain topics. So they do all the writing, but they interview you and it's your voice, your words, okay? The next level is, you're going to buy off-the-shelf commentary, and you're going to sort of pretend...you're not even putting your name on it, but you're putting your firm's, right? Like, "Here's our monthly newsletter." And it's got this article about bond yields, right? I'm not a fan. I'm not a fan because 17 other firms sent that out. I'm not worried about your clients seeing... I'm not worried about that.

Michael: It's not your clients... There could be 10,000 other firms that send it out. I'm fairly certain my clients are mostly only getting our stuff. They're not simultaneously, after they gave us their life savings, getting emails from newsletters from other advisors as well.

Carl: I totally agree, that's not the reason. The reason is it came off a shelf. I think the reason you're sending... If I'm one of your clients and you're sending me something off of a shelf, I'm thinking to myself, "Hey, I want to see you. I want to see your view.

Michael: But like five minutes ago you... I can't send market commentary off the shelf, that's bad, but I can totally send three articles week that are off someone else's shelf and that's totally fine. What's the difference?

Carl: No... Ey-oh-ah-ah-ah

Michael: What's the difference? Okay, now we're down to Kitces versus Carl. Seriously, what's the difference? Why are, here's three articles I didn't write is okay, but here's one market commentary I didn't write is not okay?

Carl: Okay. Let's make sure that we're clear about this. So number one, it's me saying, "Here are three things I thought were really interesting." One of those could be market commentary. In fact, I would suggest, when markets are crazy, that you carefully think about what's a voice of sanity out there in the world. And I pointed to Jason Zweig, Ron Lieber, those guys. Often, you can look to them as voices... like some of the work that you do. I would...yeah. Some of the work that you do, and Ron, and Jason Zweig, you could say, "Here's three things I read this week, duh, duh, duh, duh." And then you say, "Yeah. Hey..." and then, "...boy, markets have been a little crazy. The news has been a little crazy. Here's one of the best perspectives I read this week." That's adding a flavor of like, "Here's how I see the world. Here's why I thought it was good." I'm adding human...instead of me... That's different. And I could even slap in, "We've attached a bit of market commentary from this research firm that we really trust." That's even fine. That's different than this templated newsletter with the couple holding hands on the beach or the compass of the lighthouse, and a bond deals article that came off a shelf that I could've sent last month or this month or next month or 12 months from now. And...

Michael: I feel like you're just...now you're just comparing best practices of content curation with whatever the crappiest possible market commentary services that is so bad it didn't probably even make the list of the ones that I just mentioned. But somewhere out there, I'm sure someone actually still sends market commentary where every cover page has couples holding hands walking on the beach with a lighthouse that we already banned six episodes ago, that you're not allowed to have on your website anymore. No more lighthouses. I'm not talking about a bad version of any of this. I'm talking about the good version. What if I find market commentary from someone that I think is freaking brilliant and they put out great stuff, and I say to my clients, "Here is the latest market commentary from the research firm that we think is fantastic" and I send that to my clients every week, or month, or however often they put it out?

Carl: Okay. So I agree. I think if you've established a pattern of regular communication, we talked about a monthly phone call to the client, we talked about a weekly news email, whatever, you've established a regular pattern of communication. And if you decide as part of that pattern, you've got a research firm that you really like and you think they create really good stuff, you could say, "This week, or this month..." And you could say that every month, "By the way, here's the research from XYZ Research Firm and here's why I like it." Just give me some...why I should care. Give me a bullet point or two as to why I should even care, "This is why I think this is important to you. Here is the highlights. Here is what I saw. And, by the way, here's about some guy climbing Mount Everest." You know, whatever. I'm just saying... And, by the way, I think your clarification is good. You're talking about the good stuff, but I want to make sure you understand...

Michael: That there's also bad stuff and no one's allowed to use that.

Carl: You're over estimating the number of people who send the good stuff, because I still get a lot of the garbage stuff. And my friends and my clients forward them to me because they know how passionate I am about this and they're like, "Look, lighthouses." Right? And then again...

Michael: We're all going to start forwarding you bad comical market commentary so you can just make a catalog of these.

Carl: I have a file called the financial pornography file, and it's right next to it.

Michael: So here are my takeaways for some of this. So number one, well, there are some bad market commentary options out there, but there are some good ones. So do a little due diligence, find some good ones. We at least mentioned a few earlier that other advisors are using and seem to think are pretty good, so you can start there. Clearnomics, Forefield Advisor, Advisor Fuel, Financial Media Exchange, MarketingPro, and Horsesmouth, I think we're the ones that we'd had before. So if you want to do this you can find some stuff. As an extension from last week's episode, I think we're actually in agreement, you should be sending some communication to clients on a pretty doggone regular basis. You've talked about it weekly, which I suspect for some people listening are still going to feel like it's overwhelming, even if you're boiling it down to a couple of sentences.

So if you're feeling overwhelmed with that just...at least start monthly. If you're less often than monthly, people forget that you sent them anything recently. I actually agree with you, I like the weekly cadence, but if that's overwhelming for you, start monthly.

Carl: And be consistent with it.

Michael: And be consistent with whatever you do. And then, to me though, probably one of the biggest takeaways for this, to me, is look, if you can write it, write it, more power to you. If that's your special gift, do your thing. For everybody else, probably the other 90% to 95% of advisors out there, the takeaway to me from this conversation is, not only is it okay to send someone else's commentary, you don't have to completely package it and white label it, and pass it off as yours if it's not really. But not only is it okay, it actually gives you permission to only write one sentence that adds all the actual value to the exchange, which is, "I'm sending this to you because..."

Carl: Yeah.

Michael: And just finish that sentence. And the fact that you did that...all we're trying to go for here is, "I'm thinking about you. I'm thinking about your challenges. I'm thinking about your portfolio because I am responsible for it. And here's a thing that I thought you might be interested in because I'm thinking about you and the responsibility I have for your money." And as long as you make that connection and...hopefully, you actually read the article and it is useful and interesting should they happen to crack the spine and read it. As long as you said something...

Carl: Wait, wait.

Michael: ...that's fine.

Carl: You get to finish that sentence in just a minute. Two things. Number one, you cannot take somebody else's stuff and pawn it off on your own. We see a lot of people doing that. Whatever, it's legal, it's fine, it's whatever. You can call it, whatever, but you're not allowed to do that. Number two, you can't send it if you haven't read it. And, I think, it's almost worse than not sending anything. I think you're spot on, spot on, if you can just simply answer, "I am sending this to you because..." That's all we need because all they want to know is that you care about them, and you didn't just grab something... That's called noise. Don't add to the noise, send the signal. And the signal is going to be, this is like... What will we call this? We'll call this Kitces' test for Content. The Kitces' Content Test, "I'm sending this to you because..." And you can't do that if you... Don't add to the noise. Please, we're just begging everybody, stopped with the noise. So I just wanted to make sure we put a fine point on that. That's all I had to say. So now you can finish your closing argument, and where you were going.

Michael: No, you wrapped it up well. You were going the same place I was, which is just... And the thing you send has to actually be useful and relevant, which means you better darn well have read it and made sure, and actually know what it says. But frankly, if you don't have time in your week to read a handful of articles, at some point through your week, there's a whole other discussion about rebalancing your time and some of your priorities, because you're a professional. You need to be taking in some new information and reading it on an ongoing basis so you have, coincidentally, a couple of things to share out. So if you don't have time to read it, maybe we'll get to that in a future episode. But to the extent you're reading, just understand, just taking a few of the things you read and sharing it out to clients, and adding that one sentence line, "I'm sending this to you because..." Finish the sentence, you only get one sentence. You don't have to write a whole thing, just one sentence, "I'm sending this to you because..." And you check what are actually all those boxes for the client. Like, "Here's something with expertise" whatever the article is. You're showing that you care, you're showing that you're paying attention, you're showing that you're thinking about them and their money. They can feel like the box is checked, is my advisor paying attention to my stuff? Yes, I'm being a good steward. I've made sure of that because I'm seeing that they're sending me stuff. And you've closed the loop on this dance that you're doing with the clients.

Carl: That's so good. And yeah... Just one last thing. Almost all the advisors that I talk to in person, they have no problem talking... They say things like, "Oh man, did you read that article by Jason Zweig?" Or they'll even send it to me like a personal... So it's like, if we get over that you're writing for an audience and you just think, "Hey..." I get your emails, you say, "Hey, this was a great article. I really enjoyed it. I loved the piece about this." You may even cut a little call-out quote and you... "Here's the whole thing, but I thought this section was awesome." Every advisor I've ever met, every advisor that's watching this, I know does that in person, right? They just do that. They have thoughts... Many of us... It's a little bit like sports even, right? We have thought around the market, we watch what people say. And it may be that you're sending the anti-market commentary. You may be saying, "Market's crazy. Here's a voice of reason."

Michael: Sure.

Carl: You know? Insert, whoever, Jason Zweig.

Michael: Jason Zweig, yes.

Carl: Like, "Morgan Housel just wrote something great. We thought you... This may help you get some perspective on it." That's all we're talking about and maybe the anti-market commentary. And then again, it may be, "Man, there's been a lot made of the trade deal with China. Here is..." What's Ian... Anyway, here is Advisor Fuel's..." Whoever, here's what they have to say about that. So I think we're all on the same page. Just stop worrying about the pressure of you being a writer. And that conversation that you're already having... I know you're already having it. You're at least having it in your head, but I'm positive with staff or colleagues, you've been like, "Oh man, did you see that?" Just share it and establish a regular pattern. Whatever that regular pattern is for you, make it part of the regular pattern. Now the nice thing about email, last thing, nice thing about email is you can see the open rates.

Michael: Yup.

Carl: And you can see links. Like in Mailchimp, if you include a link that's...the guy climbing Everest, the woman who swam across the British channel, and Jason Zweig's article on interest rates, and you see 99% of your clients open Jason Zweig's article on interest rates, you know something.

Michael: Yeah.

Carl: Right? And what you know is like, oh wow, maybe I need to hit...

Michael: ... a little more of that.

Carl: And 1% opens it, you're like, "Oh cool. That's good news. Nobody is worried about it." Okay. Michael, any last words?

Michael: No, I think we wrapped up there. You brought it back to my one true favorite subject, which is, "And you can get data on all of this and data is a beautiful thing."

Carl: Oh yeah, of course. Of course. Cool, man. Thanks