Summary:
Most financial advisors spend enormous energy chasing new leads, searching for that next “top of funnel” prospect who might convert into a client. But as Mark Mersman argues in this episode, the real opportunity often sits quietly inside an advisor’s existing database. Prospects who have already downloaded a guide, attended a seminar, been introduced by a client, or interacted with your brand in some way are not cold—they’re simply under‑nurtured. The problem isn’t a lack of leads; it’s a lack of meaningful, intentional follow‑up. And that follow‑up frequently fails because it feels automated, transactional, or overly designed to push someone into booking a meeting far before they’re emotionally ready.
Mark explains that advisors often default to long educational newsletters, routine market commentary, or repetitive “book a call" reminders that do nothing to build trust or momentum. At their worst, these drips feel like background noise: unpersonalized content that serves the sender more than the reader. The solution is not necessarily “more email,” but better sequencing—emails that respect where the prospect is, reduce their anxiety, help them see themselves in the message, and gradually establish a foundation of familiarity. When executed correctly, the drip campaign becomes a journey rather than a series of disconnected documents or updates. And the most effective journeys share emotional progression: relief, empathy, authority, vision, and finally a gentle invitation.
The first stage, relief, comes immediately after a prospect requests something from you—a guide, a checklist, a resource. Instead of rushing to the pitch, a strong opening email focuses on delivering the promised content, thanking them for their interest, and normalizing the feelings that led them to seek information in the first place. People rarely request educational materials casually; they do it because they’re uncertain or overwhelmed. A message that reassures them that they are not behind, not alone, and not the only ones wrestling with these questions removes pressure and builds trust without mentioning the advisor’s calendar.
A few days later comes the second stage: empathy. Here, the advisor shares a short, relatable story about someone in a similar position—someone who was confused about taxes, unsure about retirement income, or uncertain about timing an exit. The goal is not to overwhelm the reader with detail but to mirror their emotional state and show quiet understanding. By highlighting another person’s uncertainty, the advisor communicates that confusion is normal, common, and solvable, and that the advisor has real‑world experience guiding people through similar situations. Still, there is no pitch. No “let’s meet.” Only empathy and reassurance.
The third email begins to shift the relationship by introducing authority. Because the prospect already associates the advisor with the guide they downloaded or the event they attended, authority is already implied; now it becomes more explicit, but still not promotional. Mark recommends introducing a simple framework—three focus areas, a high‑level process, a structured way you help people make decisions. The point is not to lecture but to demonstrate that there is an organized, thoughtful plan behind the advisor’s work. Prospects feel more comfortable when they sense structure, and they become less intimidated when they see that the path forward is simpler than they assumed.
Vision forms the fourth stage. This email helps the prospect imagine what life looks like after gaining clarity—what retirement feels like when income is steadier, how decision‑making changes when tax exposure is fully understood, or what it looks like to transition a business when the planning is genuinely comprehensive. Vision provides an emotional destination, not a technical explanation. It allows the prospect to visualize a future state in which the problem that motivated them to engage has been softened or removed.
Only after these four steps does the advisor make an invitation—and even then, it is gentle, optional, and pressure‑free. A short conversation. A quick clarity call. No gimmicks, no artificial urgency, no limited‑time waivers. Genuine authority never needs theatrics. As Mark notes, people unsubscribe from pitches but they lean into insights. When every email feels like an offer, the relationship breaks. When every email feels like help, trust deepens.
From there, Mark shifts to cold emails, which many advisors fear or misuse. The goal of a cold email is not to close but to open—to spark curiosity, to begin a dialogue, to create a moment of relevance. The biggest mistakes in cold outreach mirror the mistakes in drip campaigns: writing too long, sounding robotic, leaning on credentials, including attachments, or feeling like a pre‑written sequence. A good cold email is barely 125 words and reads like a thoughtful human reached out with a simple, relevant observation.
Mark outlines a structure that balances clarity and restraint. First, establish relevance: explain why you’re emailing someone like them in the first place. Then offer one concise insight—something specific to their situation that suggests you understand the challenges they face. Next comes curiosity, often triggered by a non‑threatening question, especially one introduced with “I’m curious…” Finally, end with a soft, optional invitation: the smallest possible commitment, framed as a conversation rather than a sales interaction.
He emphasizes behavioral psychology throughout. Curiosity increases response rates; specificity increases credibility; personalization increases the feeling of reciprocity; and shorter messages dramatically reduce cognitive load. Cold emails should feel like a nudge—not a pitch deck disguised as a paragraph.
Mark wraps the episode by offering practical next steps: rewrite your first drip email to focus solely on relief, shorten your cold emails by half, remove calendar links from initial outreach, and add stories that demonstrate experience with people just like the prospect. Above all, remember that follow‑up is not annoying—poorly structured follow‑up is. When done intentionally, follow‑up builds trust before the first meeting ever occurs, and that trust is what ultimately drives leads to become clients.
Transcript:
Mark Mersman, Chief Marketing Officer at USA Financial - Welcome to another episode of the Playbook. Today I want to talk about drip campaigns that nurture and not annoy and we'll get into cold emails. And here's the truth. Most advisors don't really have a lead problem. They have a follow-up problem. If you think about, know, just look at your database right now, you've probably got dozens, if not hundreds of opportunities of people that are not your clients already that could become clients, yet you are busy trying to get the next lead into your marketing funnel when perhaps there's an opportunity for you to cultivate those existing opportunities that you've already perhaps paid for or nurtured in some way or gotten introduced to. So, for example, if somebody downloads your guide and never hears from you again, that's not marketing, that's simply leakage, right?
And the thing to understand is that there is a fine line and a strong difference between annoying and proper nurturing. And really the difference is intentional sequencing. So let's talk a little bit about this because advisors either don't follow up enough or they follow up in a way that feels transactional. And really that's not what anybody, any of us want to feel like when we're being cultivated. And think about it, all of us go through this in some way, or form in our everyday lives from businesses trying to get us and earn us as a customer. The goal is not more emails. In some cases it might be, because if you're not sending anything. But the real goal is fostering momentum and building trust. And today we'll cover two things, drip sequences that build trust. you know, another topic that I wanted to work into this conversation is cold emails that open conversations without feeling spammy because there's a lot of tools out there now that are fostering the opportunity for you to, to leverage cold emails. And there's certainly some right ways and wrong ways to do that. So we're going to, we're going to talk about that today, but let's start with drip campaigns that, that are intentional at how they seek to nurture a prospect. But I want to start with talking about kind of the big problem in terms of why most email drips fail. The first is their educational newsletters, not journeys. So think about that educational newsletter number 47 is not exactly all that compelling. And they're not a journey that you're taking that prospect through. You know, most of the time these drip sequences, lack any emotional progression. They'll ask for the meeting too soon. And, you know, unfortunately they feel very automated. And in many cases, in most cases, that's because they are. And if you really think about, hey, could I spend a few hours cultivating a meaningful drip sequence for prospects that really comes from my heart? Not the heart of pick your online marketing automation tool and AI generated tool, but something that really feels like you. know, most drip campaigns, you know, there's a market update that nobody asked for. There's this, hey, I'm still trying to book you. They lack the emotional progression. I mean, think about the...
The most common drip sequence is, you requested this guide, here it is. And email number two is book a call. Email number three is book a call. And email number four is, are you still there? There's no empathy with that sequence, right? There's no story, there's no evolution. So I wanna talk about kind of reframing the purpose of the drip and the nurture campaigns. Drip campaigns are not about selling. They're about building familiarity, demonstrating your competence, your knowledge without, you know, putting your entire resume on display. They're about reducing fear and increasing comfort, right? We have to think about these things as natural humans and consumers. So let's talk a little around kind of a five stage sequence that I would encourage you to think about working into your drip sequence. So we're going to talk about kind of a very simple five-step nurture sequence framework. And the first stage is relief. Okay, each of these stages is going to have a primary goal or purpose behind the email itself. So the first stage sent immediately, you know, if they downloaded it, requested a guide, they're obviously going to get the guide. The goal is to reduce anxiety. So deliver what was promised. We want to thank them.
And most importantly with this, we want to normalize where they are because assuming you're targeting the right audience with this and they've requested something, we want to normalize where they are. So reassure them, hey, you are not behind. In fact, most people don't feel fully confident about insert whatever it is that your guide is hoping to provide some relief around and make it really short and sweet. The point of that email is simply relief, reduce anxiety. We're not selling immediately. We're not asking for that, hey, come into my office type of moment yet. We're just trying to set the stage that you're delivering what you promised, you're thanking them, and you're normalizing where they are. The second one is empathy. This one will be sent three to five days later. I think a good rule of thumb with any of these sequences is somewhere in that five to seven range in terms of length of time in between. The second stage is empathy and the goal is really to show your understanding. So I would consider sharing a short story about someone in a similar situation. Presumably if they're downloading a guide about retirement income planning or taxes or you name it there's gonna be some nugget inside of there or there was some sort of compelling reason that they decided to request that. Therefore we wanna show understanding. And we wanna do that through a short story about someone in a similar situation. The goal is to try to normalize confusion because hey, it's understandable. You might be confused. We wanna mirror their situation and again, no selling. So a simple example for this might be, You know, most people feel this way. In fact, I recently spoke with a couple who felt overwhelmed by conflicting advice or who had a tax challenge that they didn't even realize how big it was. And you're not going to go into tons and tons of detail about the situation, but you want to share a couple of points that that consumer, that person that's on the other end of that email is going to look at it and say, I can relate to that.
So think about that empathy is kind of that second stage there. The third stage with our third email again, five to seven days later is to start to introduce your authority on the matter. Now in theory, there's been some subliminal messaging around your authority because you were the one that provided the guide. But now we want to introduce your thinking framework, introduce your process for how you help people share one simple framework, keep it simple not overwhelming, something like our process helps our clients focus on three very simple things. Boom, reducing taxes, boom, reducing waste, whatever it is, try to boil down what your process, especially when you know what's the guide that they downloaded or what was it that got them, maybe they came from a seminar event and the seminar event was on taxes or maybe it was on legacy plan, whatever it was, you know that that was their area of interest. So we want to play that through with your drip and nurture sequence. So very simple, three simple things, put it out there, boom, boom, boom. This is what our process helps clients to focus on. Again, now you're starting to demonstrate authority. You're also starting to demonstrate to them that, hey, you do actually have a process and you're not just winging this. The fourth one is the fourth email is going to be focused on vision. What we want to do is the goal of it is to kind of paint the emotional outcome and help them imagine clarity. So you want to think about painting what the after picture looks like. Since we know that they likely have some pain, we want to communicate, hey, this is where you were before or where you currently are. But here's what the after could look like. Communicate what a transformation looks like to them or clients that are in were in similar situations. And an example could be, you know, what retirement feels like when income is more predictable and you're able to spend more freely your, you know, the clients that have gone through our process feel more confident in terms of how they approach their day to day or how they approach the decisions that they're going to make about what their life, their retirement life is going to be like. Again, paint kind of that imagine moment, right? Help them imagine what clarity can look like because now you're starting to draw them in to how this is what a relationship with this advisor might look like. And then that fifth email is really now the invitation. Now we're going to open the door gently. We're going to have a soft, call to action, you know, hey, we've, we've shared a few ideas with you, some thoughts around it. If you'd like to talk through your situation, we can schedule a short clarity call, make that call to action, not overly salesy, but enough that you're opening the door gently. And I highly discourage you from doing any of the, the urgency gimmicks, if you will. So, you know, if, if you call by tomorrow will waive the cost of that meeting. Everybody's seen through that and candidly, you don't want to be viewed as that person. You're coming from a position of authority and trust and not desperation and gimmicks. So some really simple drip campaign rules to be thinking about one idea per email. Don't overwhelm them.
Try to keep this short and concise 150 to 400 words max on that email. Make sure it's in a conversational tone. I would really avoid putting too many links in there. You can certainly put a link here or there, but don't pepper them with eight links that you're going to send them all over God's creation to explore and research. Certainly if you want to include a link to your site, whether it's a specific blog post or maybe you're looking at some social proof that you want to point them to. You can certainly do some of that, but don't put a bunch of links in there. Space them five to seven days apart and really understand that stories are much better than statistics and financial jargon because there's really not much more that will annoy a prospect than too many stats. You you start citing all these different things, all these different stats, whether you're trying to scare them or impress them with your knowledge, too much and their eyes are going to glaze over and they're done. The other thing that will annoy prospects with drip sequences, hard closes too early. In the daily emails, don't do it every single day. You're going to quickly get put on the list that you don't want to be on or unsubscribed.
And I would avoid the long market commentary. The truth of the matter is the second they see the long market commentary, you know, the only person that might be interested in reading that is the do it yourself investor that you probably don't want as a client. So that market commentary for the average, you know, for the average Joe, the average Jane in America is going to be absolutely meaningless is going to get hit delete and you'll get pushed aside. Here's the thing to remember with this. If every email feels like a pitch, people will unsubscribe. But if every email feels like insight, people will lean into that. Which brings me now to cold emails. Slightly different than the traditional drip campaign where they downloaded a guide or maybe they came to an event or you were introduced to them through somebody, a cold email is obviously somebody that you don't know and you're trying to kind of bust through to see if you can't get an appointment. Now, obviously your conversion rates on these are gonna be much lower than somebody that you met at a live event, if you will. So let's think a little bit about reframing what a cold email or the intent behind a cold email is. The first is you have to understand The cold email is not about closing and it's about opening, right? It's about opening a door. So, you know, we're trying to open a loop, not close a sale here. mistakes that most advisors make with these, and this isn't just advisors, this is true. mean, you all get, I'm sure you all get cold emails. I know I probably get five to 10 a day, if I'm being honest. And candidly, I have some of these cold emails have led to me doing business simply because of how the email got structured. The first is, you know, too long. You want to avoid being too formal. Again, being too credential heavy, just like we talked about earlier. This is not the time and place for you to put your resume on display. If they're intrigued by your message, they'll find some of that stuff on your website as they're vetting you out. We don't want it to be sales driven. Cold emails should really feel like a thoughtful note and not per se a campaign. So inside of every good cold email, the core structure to it. And this is going to sound like a lot in one email, but I'll try to read. I'll share an example for you in terms of how you can bring this all together in a fairly short email. The first is relevance. Demonstrate and show why it is that you're reaching out. This is kind of like I work with several business owners in the area. So you're demonstrating at least connecting the dots as to why you're reaching out. Then
Step two in that email structure is insight. Share something useful for them. Something that a simple one-liner or a bullet point or two that is gonna be helpful for that particular audience. So hopefully if you're doing this in some sort of larger campaign type of structure, you're drilling down into, hey, I've got 50 business owners that fit this niche. And so I can confidently say all of them are going to have some of the same pain points. And so we want to share something useful there. And then the third part of the cold email structure will be curiosity. And ask a non-threatening question. Hey, I don't know if you've looked into this recently, or I'm curious. The words I'm curious, you can get away with asking just about anything after those two words. So work that into that email structure. And then the fourth part of it is a low pressure, soft close. Are you open to a short conversation? Some really simple cold email principles to kind of live by here. With cold email, you want to even be shorter than what some of the nurture sequence we were just talking about a bit ago, you want to keep it under 125, 150 words if you can. No attachments. Attachments, number one, people are going to be really skeptical to open them from a stranger. And number two, it's only going to increase your likelihood that you get caught in spam filters. I would avoid calendar links in your first email. Again, we're not trying to be overly salesy. If we are going to put something out there, it's going to be really soft and low pressure. No heavy formatting. This is a big one. For those of us that get cold email all the time, we can quickly tell through heavy formatting, my goodness, this was clearly automated. It was clearly written by some sort of bot and it makes my eyes spin. And perhaps the last and most important one here is to write like a human. I totally get you might use AI or other tools to help you draft these, draft some cold email sequences. Just make sure you're going through and writing it, rewriting it, revisiting it. Don't just accept that first flash that you get from whatever AI tool you're using, write it like a human. I'd encourage you to maybe write it out yourself first or take the output and then redraft it. Here's something, here's kind of an example of how this might look. Subject line might be quick question. We'll talk about subject lines in perhaps a different episode, but there's certainly an art to the subject line. But the note might be, hi John, I work with several business owners and we were in Grand Rapids, Michigan in Grand Rapids, who happened to be within five to 10 years of selling their company.
One thing that surprises many of them is how exposed they are to taxes in the year of a sale, even when they've planned ahead. I'm curious, you know, have you had a second set of eyes on your exit tax strategy recently? If it'd be helpful, I'd be open to a short conversation, then my signature. That's it, very simple. Now, we'll talk about how many of these and what's kind of the structure to this, but I wanna talk first about the behavioral psychology behind cold email. Curiosity bias is gonna drive response. So that will tell you that you don't need to put everything you know about a specific topic in a single email. We wanna invoke some curiosity out of the recipient. Specificity is going to build credibility. This means Understand who it is that you are emailing and be very specific about communicating with them and demonstrating that you have some specific knowledge that would benefit them to potentially meet with you. Personalization will increase reciprocity. Okay, we know that. And that email, the length, when we talked earlier, here's the thing. Short emails will absolutely positively reduce the cognitive load. So understand, don't try to get everything you can into one email. That's part of the purpose of having multiple emails that you might put out to that person. Cold email should feel like a nudge and not a pitch. I think that's really important to be thinking about that. I think too many cold emails we're trying to get our entire pitch deck, if you will, into the email when really we're just trying to get a nudge. We're just trying to invoke enough curiosity that they say, maybe there's something here for me to look into. So here, guess, kind of a closing thought around some of this stuff, maybe some quick wins that you can get. First, I'd encourage you to rewrite your first drip email to focus on relief and not selling. So if you have a drip sequence, think about it from that perspective, rewrite that first one, look at it and say, I touching on relief? If you're using cold emails, shorten them by 50%. Just go through whatever it is that you got. And if you're over 150 words, just cut the thing in half. Find a way to trim that down using that framework I shared with you. I'd remove your calendar link from the first email. And, you know, as you look at both nurture and the cold side of things, add one story to your, to your sequence, you know, think about some of the people that you've helped that are in a very similar situation to the people that you're trying to connect with and add a story to them, you know, personalized, you don't need to use specific names, but add a story so that there's an implied social proof that comes with that that you can demonstrate I've helped people just like you. You need understand follow-up is not annoying. know, that's the thing. I think a lot of advisors, they miss the boat on the sweet spot because they're either reluctant to do any sort of follow-up and drip sequences or they go overboard the other way and they're hitting these people's inboxes every single day. Follow-up should not be annoying. Intentional sequence is what will win the day. In Done Right, a good nurture campaign builds trust before the meeting ever happens. And so I would encourage you think about leveraging other collateral that you already have, whether you have videos, whether you have blogs, whether you have guides. Use some of that to continue to build trust with your nurturing. Don't just completely rely on some of the CAN campaigns that exist out there. And there's nothing wrong with them. I'm not trying to put them down. But if you really want to amp up your effectiveness on your drip sequences, think about being a little more human. Think about the things that you would respond to, I would challenge if you've, if you've ever interacted or engaged with somebody who sent you a cold email or the nurture emails, what was it? Think about, look at the emails that caused you to open it, read it, and maybe take a click and look at their website. What was it about that email that really caught your attention and start to mimic that? Because I guarantee you they follow a very similar framework and structure to what we just laid out.
If you like this content, if it's helpful, would certainly ask you to subscribe to our YouTube channel, follow me on whatever podcast player is your preference and give us a like and a follow. If that helps us with the algorithm gods and hopefully we'll help you as we continue to deliver this type of content. That's it for now. Hope you have a good one. Take care.
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The Financial Advisor Marketing Playbook is a podcast/video series for high-performing financial planning professionals that are committed to improving their craft, helping their clients, and growing their business. Hosted by Mark Mersman, Chief Marketing Officer at USA Financial, this series contains a wide variety of content – from quick win ideas to long-form interviews, each episode provides actionable marketing ideas and insights that can be implemented easily into your practice. From digital marketing to traditional direct-response marketing, each episode delivers straight-forward and engaging content that any financial professional can use to improve their bottom line and grow their practice.
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