How Hyper-Personalization Has Changed Client Expectations

When you last logged into Netflix, how did you decide which movie to watch?

Did you have to scroll through Netflix’s hundreds of menus for an hour before you found something you wanted to watch? Or, more likely, did you flip through the “Recommended for You” section and find something that looked similar to your other interests, and then let the auto-play feature do the rest for you?

Media companies like Netflix have pioneered the use of hyper-personalization to cater directly to the individual interests of each of their customers.

Through the use of data collection, they know what you like to watch, how long you watch it for, and what else might keep you hooked long enough to keep paying $14 a month as you wait for the next season of Stranger Things to arrive in two years.

Financial advisors have long held the belief that personalized customer service is critical to building a successful advisory firm, and that’s still true today. But in a world of hyper-personalization, client expectations are radically different from what previous generations have considered “personal.”

In this blog, we’ll show you how to keep your firm at the forefront of creating an amazing client experience with hyper-personalization leading the way.

What is Hyper-Personalization, Anyway?

Hyper-personalization means that the interactions an individual has with a company are specifically targeted to their wants, needs, and interests.

Typically, hyper-personalization relies on digitally-recorded data, and it may often require elements of artificial intelligence or even rely on data analytics, like business intelligence. Those analytics may or may not require a human to interpret them in order to provide hyper-personalization at scale.

Why Client Expectations are Changing

As evidenced by the Netflix example earlier, clients of financial advisors are witnessing rapidly changing experiences across almost every type of interaction they have with a brand.

But Netflix is far from the only brand to use hyper-personalization to provide its customers with better experiences. Another top brand, Amazon, also uses personalization throughout its recommendation engine and advertising as well.

All told, consumers interact with brands every day who don’t just cater to the needs they express—they seem to predict their needs and wants before they even have a chance to express them.

It might sound like a tall order, but financial advisors have the opportunity to bring hyper-personalization into their own offices as well.

3 Ways Advisors Can Meet Client Expectations with Hyper-Personalized Experiences

Clients may have higher expectations than ever, but financial advisors can meet these by using data and planning to excel in three key areas.

1. Personalized Marketing

How can advisors personalize their marketing and communications? It all starts with data, and for most firms that means having a rock-solid CRM and likely a marketing automation software too.

One recent study found that 80% of consumers were more likely to buy something when their experience was personalized—and advisors need to take note.

The very first step of hyper-personalization in marketing is to set up analytics on your website so you can understand what pages a visitor views, and for how long. Once you can track a visitor through cookies, you can then do what companies like Amazon do and send them retargeting ads that serve information relevant to the pages they’ve already viewed.

2. Personalized Investment Management

When you know your client’s personal risk appetite, you can deliver a more personalized investment management experience for them as well.

Starting with risk means that you know the detailed, intimate ways that a client might react given certain situations. And tying their answers to a hyper-specific Risk Number® instead of something generic like categorizing them as an “aggressive” investor gets you so much closer to building a portfolio that’s truly custom to their needs.

In the end, instead of putting a client into another generic ETF portfolio, you can be certain that you can offer an investment strategy that’s as unique and tailored to their goals as any recommendation engine Netflix can offer.

3. Personalized Events

In-person events have been forever changed, and that’s only for the better. Financial advisors have long relied on events to connect with clients and prospective clients, but the way they were done before is going the way of the dinosaurs.

In-person events for all clients to attend at the same time can’t possibly serve the interests of each client who attends. If you hold a golfing event, you won’t attract clients who are non-golfers. If you hold a whiskey-tasting event, you’re leaving out the wine drinkers.

Instead, using your CRM and personal connections to record personal data and preferences from your clients allows you to create in-person events that don’t just show appreciation—but authentic connection.

Using your data to build out personalized events may mean more, but smaller, events for your closest or longest-tenured clients. Intelligently using the information available at your fingertips in your advisor tech stack will help you achieve greater client trust and retention.

For large advisory firms developing events for their network of advisors, this same rule of hyper-personalization applies. Using hyper-personalization to create experiences for advisors will help bolster employee morale and retention by building comradery and connection.

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Curious about how thousands of advisory firms use the Risk Number® to meet the hyper-personalized expectations of their clients and teams? Drop us a line or register for a demo. We’d be thrilled to meet you.