AssetMark launched two new tools aimed at helping advisors on its platform with their client prospecting and marketing, according to recent announcements from the firm. The first tool, called WealthBuilder Prospecting, is designed to provide “a gateway for interested leads to start a low-friction discovery process” with one of the more than 8,500 advisors on AssetMark’s platform.
Accompanying advisors’ new prospecting ability is Marketing Advantage, “an all-in-one marketing platform,” complete with a client-facing content library of posts, articles and visuals. The tool integrates with customer relationship management software from Redtail, Salesforce, Wealthbox and Ebix. Client details can also be inputted via spreadsheet.
The firm’s prospecting tool takes roughly 20 minutes to implement, according to the announcement. The tool generates a unique link for each advisor, who can then embed it into digital mediums like websites, emails or social media posts. When clients complete the prospecting process, which captures clients' goals, their investing preferences and characteristics about who they are, advisors are alerted that a new prospect is awaiting interaction.
“WealthBuilder Prospecting allows advisors to invite leads into the planning process and effectively ‘kick-start’ a warm client engagement process, in a time-efficient way that increases the chance of earning new business,” said Michael Raneri, chief digital innovation officer at the firm, in a statement. Raneri implied that the new prospecting tool would provide advisors with more success than actions such as cold calling, advertising or seminars, which “often require a large investment of time and money [and] with no guarantee of success.”
Once advisors have onboarded their new prospects and converted them to clients, AssetMark is providing advisors with a new suite of tools for automating email campaigns, customizing integrations with advisors’ websites and pushing out a bevy of client-facing content, like videos, articles, social media posts and infographics. The toolkit, built on technology provided by FMG Suite, is designed to help advisors, the majority of which are “really, really bad marketers,” by providing an easy-to-use marketing platform for growing their businesses.
The launch of back-to-back tools for advisors is part of a broader vision for technology at AssetMark.
Nearly a year ago, CEO Natalie Wolfsen announced “new and different solutions” for advisors as the firm pushed to gain a larger share of advisors’ tech stacks. By July, AssetMark had closed its acquisition of Voyant. With the transaction, AssetMark gained financial planning and client-focused digital engagement tools for some 20,000 advisors associated with small advisor firms and financial institutions. Voyant services clients across the U.S., UK, Canada and Ireland.
AssetMark added 201 new producing advisors and more than 6,500 new households to its platform over the course of the third quarter, according to the firm’s most recent earnings report released in November.
Assets also increased year over year. “We realized a 23.7% annualized production lift from existing advisors for the third quarter,” according to the report, “indicating that advisors continued to grow organically and increase wallet share on our platform.” AssetMark had $86.8 billion in platform assets as of Sept. 30, 2021.
The firm is scheduled to report its latest earnings next week.