Digital Content Part III: Converting Social Posts

Part three of our ongoing digital content series

This is the third and final post in my series on Digital Content. In the first post, we discussed how your advisors can build a personalized professional brand using NexJ Digital Engagement and Artificial Intelligence. In the second post, we discussed using the same AI tools to deliver personalized touches to your existing clients. In this post, we are going to talk about using the same AI engine to convert social media posts into real leads.

To recap, NexJ’s Artificial Intelligence uses text-based analytics to automatically categorize public news and firm-created research. It also categorizes advisors and bankers, based on their existing social media accounts. NexJ uses this same engine to categorize anonymous people who click on the posted links.

Here’s how it works

Every article sent out by NexJ’s Digital Engagement platform is wrapped in a URL that is unique to both the article and the person who sends it out. For example, if two advisors send out the same news article, there are two URLs. With every click, NexJ tracks the advisor/banker, the article, the publication, and the categorization of the article.  But that is not all that we track, we also track the individual who clicks on the article, even if that person is anonymous. Over time, we build an interest graph of the anonymous leads including what types of articles they are reading (whiskey vs retirement advice), which publications they prefer (New York Times) and which channels they prefer (Twitter vs Facebook).

This is where the magic happens

For example, if this is the third time that an individual has clicked on an article about scotch, a message can pop up in the browser inviting them to register for a scotch tasting hosted by the advisor. Not only does the scotch tasting provide an opportunity for the advisor to start building a relationship but, thanks to the form completed for registration, we now have the name and email address of someone who both follows the advisor on social media and is interested in similar things. We also have a history of which other articles they have viewed and an initial insight into their likes and interests. This information can be leveraged during the sales process to increase the conversion rate and boost profitability.

In our experience, individual advisors and bankers rarely take the time to understand the data and set up events. However, since we are tracking information about the anonymous prospects through a central set of URLs, all of this information is available for firm-wide analysis. By aggregating the data across all of your front office, financial services firms can start to understand where prospective clients are spending their time, allowing them to you host larger events of specific interest to prospects.

The aggregated data can also be used to fine-tune marketing spend. On its own, the popular content categories will help determine which key words to purchase and the spend can be targeted towards the more effective publications. However, if this data is combined with lead conversion and pipeline closure data, you can start to measure the actual ROI of your social media marketing and further tune the ad spend.

To learn more about how NexJ Digital Engagement works, feel free to contact me or watch this webinar replay.

Author: Adam Edmonds

Vice President, Products

With almost 2 decades of experience developing customer management solutions in financial services and insurance, Adam Edmonds is responsible for establishing overall product vision and designing easy to use solutions that solve real market problems.

Adam is excited to share the lessons he has learned and his insights on where the industry is heading with readers of his blog. He encourages readers to join the discussion or reach out to him with their own insights, best practices, and solutions to industry challenges.