A weekly or monthly expert newsletter can be a great way for a firm to grow awareness, get its POV into the world, and build “relationships at scale.”
Professional services marketing is at the early stages of a sea change. Trust in institutions is in decline. Search, as a marketing channel, is dying a death of 1000 cuts. And the tsunami of AI-fueled content is leaving buyers bewildered and disoriented.
A critical approach to navigating this change is to elevate the experts in the firm. By putting as much energy into developing thought leaders as we do into developing thought leadership. So, we can build relationships at scale.
One key aspect of this approach is building a connection between a firm’s key people and the market through personalized expert newsletters. Usually delivered weekly or monthly, a personalized expert newsletter shares the firm’s thinking through the lens of one of their key people. Readers build a connection both with the expert and the firm.
Of course, launching one brings with it a few key challenges and decisions:
- Leaders must grapple with the risk and benefits of tying their brand to individual experts.
- Marketers must weigh the pros and cons of marketing through a single voice or using multiple newsletters for different audiences.
- And, of course, the all-to-common issue of limited CRM data which renders a lot of firms still hobbled in delivering any newsletter at all.
Yet, when implemented thoughtfully, personalized expert newsletters can transform a firm’s market reputation, build relationships at scale, and effectively disseminate its unique point of view. Let’s explore how to overcome these obstacles and harness the full potential of this approach.
The Pro’s and con’s of Personalized Expert Newsletters
Personalized expert newsletters represent a significant shift from traditional firm-wide communications. They offer a unique blend of thought leadership, industry insights, and personal touch that can set a firm apart in a crowded marketplace. But what makes them so effective, and when might they not be the right choice?
Benefits of Expert-Driven Newsletters
- Capture Attention: Leveraging both the expertise of individual thought leaders and their unique personalities and experiences offers clients a unique mix of content they WANT to read.
- Demonstrate Value: They provide a platform to showcase deep industry knowledge and unique perspectives, positioning both the expert and the firm as trusted advisors.
- Nurture Relationships: Regular, personalized communication helps maintain engagement over the months or years long sales cycles many firms sell through.
- Build Trust: They lean into one of the macro trends affecting society – the decline of trust in brands and the rise of trust in individuals.
- Leverage People: Every firm everywhere says their key differentiator is their people. Personalized newsletters uses this strength as a marketing advantage.
Potential Drawbacks
While the benefits are compelling, it’s important to consider potential drawbacks:
- Resource Intensity: Creating high-quality, personalized content regularly requires significant time and effort from both marketing teams and subject matter experts.
- Brand Consistency: Multiple expert voices could potentially dilute or confuse the firm’s overall brand message.
- Dependency Risk: Tying the firm’s reputation too closely to individual experts can pose risks if those experts say the “wrong” thing or leave the organization.
- Scalability Challenges: Managing multiple newsletters for different audience segments can become complex.
One Voice or Many: Determining the Right Approach
The decision between a single expert voice or multiple expert newsletters is pivotal. It impacts not only the content strategy but also the scale of investment, brand consistency, and market positioning. To make an informed choice, firms should consider the following questions:
Assessing Client Base and Service Offerings
- How diverse is our client base in terms of industries, needs, and interests?
- Do our services cater to distinct buyers that need targeted communication?
- Can a single expert voice effectively address the concerns and interests of all our various buyers and buyer types?
Evaluating Expert Profiles
- Who are our most prominent thought leaders, what is their public profile, and do they have the affability to approach the market in a more “personal” way?
- Do we have experts with complementary areas of expertise that could provide value to different client segments?
- How comfortable and capable are our experts in consistently producing high-quality content?
Resource Considerations
- Do we have the capacity to manage multiple newsletters, or would a single newsletter be more feasible?
- Can we ensure consistent quality and frequency across multiple expert newsletters?
- How will we balance the time demands on our experts with their primary client-facing responsibilities?
Brand Impact
- How will multiple expert voices impact our overall brand consistency?
- Can we maintain a cohesive brand message while allowing for individual expert perspectives?
- How will we ensure that individual expert voices complement rather than overshadow the firm’s brand?
There’s no single or right answer. It’s generally much easier for a smaller firm to lean into a single voice. Larger, more diversified firms often have to go a different route altogether.
Starting Strong: Overcoming Data and Segmentation Challenges
One of the most common hurdles in implementing personalized expert newsletters (or any newsletter for that matter) is a lack of robust CRM data and the inability to segmentation a firm’s “readers” based on roles or interests. However, this shouldn’t deter firms from starting. Here’s how to begin despite these limitations:
Conduct a Data Audit and Cleanup
Start by assessing the quality and completeness of your existing data. Identify gaps and inaccuracies and develop a plan to clean-up your database. This might involve forcing practice leaders to share their clients’ contact information, manual verification, or systematically reaching out to clients and prospects to update their information.
Implement Basic Segmentation Strategies
Even with limited data, you can create meaningful segments. Consider segmenting based on:
- Industry or sector
- Company size
- Geographic location
- Past interactions with your firm
- Service areas of interest
These basic segments can provide a starting point for tailoring content to different audience groups.
Encourage Self-Segmentation
This sounds overly simplistic but give your newsletter a name. Tell readers exactly what it’s about, who it’s for, and how frequently it’s sent. Make it easy to sign up. Reinforce all these key messages with each send. Encourage readers to share each one with their peers and make it easy to do so.
best Practices for implementation
Successfully implementing personalized expert newsletters requires a strategic approach. Here are key best practices to consider:
Selecting and Supporting Experts
- Choose experts who not only have deep knowledge but also the ability to communicate complex ideas clearly.
- Look for affability and humility. A key piece to success with this approach is making the expert real. You need to bring some personality to each send through personal and human stories.
- Provide “argument shaping” and editorial assistance. Thought leadership is and always will be a team sport.
Maintaining Brand Consistency
- Develop clear guidelines for tone and style across all newsletters. Set some rules for what’s acceptable and what’s not, but don’t choke the voices either. Part of the magic here is letting your people be human so clients can build a relationship with them.
- Ensure visual consistency in design elements while allowing for some personalization. Your newsletters should “feel” like your firm, but they don’t have to look exactly like it. This is a good place to flex your creativity a bit.
- Regularly review content to ensure alignment with the firm’s overall brand and messaging strategy.
Integration with Other Marketing Efforts
- Align newsletter content with broader marketing campaigns and business development initiatives.
- Use insights gained from newsletter engagement to inform other marketing strategies.
- Create clear pathways for newsletter readers to engage further with the firm, through webinars or other events.
examples: Personalized Newsletters in Action
Of course there are thousands of examples of great newsletters, these are just a few I personally subscribe to.
Dev Patnaik’s Future Focus offers a weekly take on how to become a better, more impactful future-focused leader. Packaged as a personal note to friends, he drops it in your inbox every Saturday.
Scott Galloway’s No Mercy / No Malice offers insights on technology, capital markets, investing, and society. It drops every Friday in the inbox with a bonus audio version on Saturday mornings.
John Dick’s What We’re Seeing offers weekly takes on consumer behavior and market intelligence. His Saturday note is now exclusive to customers of his company, CivicScience.
Overcoming Common Challenges
As firms scale their personalized newsletter efforts, they often encounter several challenges. Here’s how to address some of the most common issues:
Managing Time and Resource Constraints
- Establish a clear, agreed upon content development process; make sure both subject matter experts and content developers know how to work together.
- Develop a pool of “nexperts” to collaborate with your primary experts to distribute the workload. Co-author as much as you can. Today’s nexperts are tomorrow’s thought leaders.
- Consider outsourcing as much as you can — copywriting, design, newsletter management.
Maintaining Quality and Relevance
- Establish clear standards for content quality that includes elements of an effective POV and expectations for tone and style.
- Occasionally solicit feedback from recipients and regularly track engagement metrics to gauge content relevance.
- Conduct periodic content audits to identify high-performing topics and formats.
Adapting to Market Changes
- Establish a system for monitoring industry trends and client needs to inform content strategy.
- Use systems like SparkToro to conduct audience research and directly solicit feedback from clients through your client-facing personnel .
- Build flexibility into your content calendar to allow for timely responses to market events.
Balancing Personal and Firm Brands
- Develop clear guidelines on how individual expert brands should be presented within the context of the firm’s overall brand.
- Encourage experts to develop their personal authority in ways that complement and enhance the firm’s positioning.
- Create content that showcases both an individual’s POV and the firm’s collective capabilities simultaneously.
Building “Relationships at Scale” to Drive Growth
Personalized expert newsletters are an effective way for professional services firms to drive visibility in the market and build meaningful relationships at scale. When implemented thoughtfully, they enhance a firm’s reputation, foster trust with potential clients, and bring out the firm’s unique POV more effectively.
As you consider implementing or refining your approach to personalized expert newsletters, focus on creating a dialogue with your audience. Make the newsletter a habit. If your plan is to deliver every Wednesday, do it without fail.
Clients will come to anticipate your perspectives in their inbox. They’ll build a relationship with your experts. And your firm will be top-of-mind for the issues you’re built to solve.
