AI-Powered Marketing for Financial Advisors with Robert Sofia

Jack Sharry: Welcome, everyone. Glad you are joining us for this week’s edition of WealthTech on Deck. Our podcast is all about listening to what the marketplace is thinking and doing and where we’re going around the confluence of digital and human advice. We’re always on the lookout to speak with people who are thinking about and working on what’s next around how to better serve consumers, advisors, and firms. Our guest today is all about all the above and more. Robert Sophia is the CEO of Snappy Kraken. He is as innovative as they come. He’s always listening to what the marketplace is thinking even before they think it. And today we’re going to have a conversation with Robert about all this. He’s been on our show before and looking forward to hearing the cool things that he’s working on since we last spoke. Robert, welcome to WealthTech on Deck.

Robert Sofia: Thank you, Jack. I’m glad to be here.

Jack Sharry: Robert, let’s start with you telling our audience about Snappy Kraken. Tell us about the company, who you serve, and what you do.

Robert Sofia: Yeah, thank you. Well, Snappy Kraken is a platform that drives organic growth for financial advisors and the enterprises that support them. And we do that with a combination of content and automation. And the people we serve, actually, there’s three groups we serve. And not everybody always thinks about the three groups, but one of them is the end client of advisors. So we have actually hundreds of thousands of client records on our platform that represent over a trillion dollars in assets under management or under advisement. So those people are getting communications from us that educate them and empower them to make better financial decisions. So we serve them, we have to serve them with good quality, then we serve the advisors who serve them. And in that respect, we’re always trying to help elevate the relationship, strengthen it, help advisors forge new relationships with people in their networks or prospects that opt in. And then, of course, their most important clients. And lastly, we serve enterprises that support advisors. So we have about 160 broker dealers and RIAs and TAMPs, actually over 200 in all different types of firms that support advisors who we give visibility to and control to and compliance to, to make sure that all these things that are happening at the advisor and client level are on point. And then, so they can replicate what’s working in their broader networks.

Jack Sharry: So I read about Snappy Kraken and you online all the time. And I see you’re doing some very interesting stuff. I’d like to learn more. So fill us in, I know you’re… got a lot going on. What have you guys been up to?

Robert Sofia: I don’t even know where to begin, it feels like when I get to ask this question, if it’s one week, I’m going to answer it differently than the next week, because we’re just moving so fast. And, and that’s the pace of business and the pace of technology today. With some of the things that I’m really excited about right now, Jack, we’re actually in beta with 100 of our advisors in something new called the marketing hub. And what it really is, is a really new way to approach marketing all around. Because historically, the marketing that we do has been done en masse for advisors. So, mass emails, mass text messages, mass mailers, mass… everything is mass. But we know this is a people business. And you can do a lot of mass marketing, but what you really need to do is convert those audiences that are very large into the right type of relationships. And so now we’re analyzing a lot more data points. And we’re surfacing the very hottest, most qualified opportunities to advisors, and we’re giving them a hub where they can log in and see those opportunities every day as they’re coming in, real time. And then giving them one click, personal one to one actions to take. So we’re basically saying, “Hey, Jack Sharry has been engaging with a lot of your content. He’s a really well qualified prospect. Click here to send him a text message, click here to send him an email.” And we’re taking that mass marketing, and we’re bringing it down to a very narrow focus of the relationship. And, and that’s a big innovation, especially when you think about the the predictive analytics that are involved, because our system is powered by AI and the ability to generate content with AI on the fly that’s very personalized. Those things are just really changing the game right now.

Jack Sharry: So I want to talk some more about AI. But let’s hold off on that for a minute. But I want to go back to something, I’m not sure how this has evolved, I’m assuming it probably is. But I know you did a recent marketing study to gain insight into your advisors and their clients and… talk a little bit about that survey, and how are you using it, and how you’re deploying and leveraging it?

Robert Sofia: Yeah, we did. Well, you know, when I got in this business, like 20 years ago, and started doing marketing, all my decisions, were just based on, what do I think we should do? Let’s try it. And then you throw everything up, and you see what sticks. And, you know, now business is different. We have a real advantage I never had in the past, which is that there are 10,000 advisors in all 50 states at all different stages of growth using our platform and so we can look at the data and see what’s working, what’s not, what tactics perform, and we analyze it right down to the headline level, the subject line level, the button placement level. And so we actually looked last year at the 600,000, that’s the number of campaigns we deployed, all 600,000 of them, went out to 39 million contacts for those 10,000 advisors. And when we started looking at that data, 250 million data points in all for this study, we were able to surface insights to see what is working across the board for advisors, there’s always outliers, we hear about them sometimes when they say, “Well, I just blog and it’s amazing. And I have a billion dollar business.” And other advisors are sitting in the room like, “Yeah, nobody comes to my blog.” So we’re saying, what works for all advisors? And then we benchmarked all of that, and we extracted the most powerful growth strategies and distilled them into one report.

Jack Sharry: So can you share some of the maybe high level insights? Obviously, everything you’re describing is hyper personalized around individual consumers and clients. And then of course, the advisors themselves. But any, any brush observations on what works, what doesn’t work, what people are looking for, not getting, that kind of thing?

Robert Sofia: Yeah, there’s a ton in there, Jack, I would love to give anyone that’s listening a copy of the whole 40 page report. But I, I will share with you what I think are the three most relevant. I probably got a top 10 list, but I’ll tell you what my three biggest aha moments were when we analyzed that data. Or I should say, when my analyst analyzed it and gave me the data. This is what stood out to me. So here’s the first one. Of the thousands of advisor websites we looked at, the ones that had a proactive SEO strategy, so search engine optimization, where they’re actually intentionally setting up their website for SEO purposes so that Google especially can find them because Google is 93% of the traffic on the internet, they are getting, on average, double the number of website visitors. So our typical non SEO website for an advisor will get about 3000 visits a month. An SEO optimized website will get 6000. So you’re doubling the traffic with an SEO strategy. That’s, that’s number one. Contrast that with organic social media, which is driving on average, less than 10%, of advisors’ traffic, SEO is a big deal. So that’s one, that’s what’s getting advisors more eyes on their brand. Number two, once people get there, what’s converting them at the highest rate? What’s getting them to actually raise their hand, say, “Hey, I’m ready to talk to you,” or “I want more information.” And there were two things that emerge. Number one, by putting an opt in on your website that is text messaging enabled, so “Text me your questions,” or, “Do you have a question about how to save money on taxes? Text it to me.” The conversion rate, or the number of people opting in for that goes up 400%. 400%, Jack. So there’s something about saying, “Give me your email” that performs way less than “Text me.” And that’s huge. Because if you’re getting more traffic, and then you’re getting higher conversions, double your traffic, 400% increase in conversions…

Jack Sharry: If I may interrupt…

Robert Sofia: Of course. Go ahead. We just, we text people that are close to us. It makes perfect sense. Yeah. Actually, Jack, 83% of consumers said that they want to be able to text the businesses they work with and the service providers that help them. And 60% of consumers said they’ve tried to text the business a lot, and it didn’t go through. So you know, people are using text messages, a common communication channel. Advisors need to embrace it, and it drives a 400% conversion increase on your website. So it’s a no brainer. Done compliantly, done compliantly. That’s the caveat. And then, you know, the other big thing that came out, and I could talk about this study all day, but we saw that advisors who send to their network, their group of emails, or their group of text messages, if they sent people a video, or a email that said there’s a video in it, or an email with a link to a video in it. Okay, so just using video instead of text only. The increase in engagement and conversions… So people actually saying okay, let’s talk or submitting a question is 120% better. So more than double the performance by using video. So I will just kind of recap, I know I’ve been talking a good bit here. But think about this, you double your website traffic number one, you increase your conversions on that traffic by 400% number two, and then you engage them at double the rate, 120% better, by sending a video. If you do those three things, you’re just turbocharging all your organic growth results.

Jack Sharry: Robert, one of things I observe, once… just in terms of my own personal business development activities, once I’m connected to someone on text, I’m closer, I’m tighter. Don’t you think?

Robert Sofia: I think that’s a great observation. Yeah, we text our mom, we text our best friend.

Jack Sharry: Yeah. Totally get it. By the way, a theme we’ve been working on, picked up at Tiburon, you and I talked earlier about Tiburon, is this whole notion of organic growth, of which there’s little in our business. So I think, frankly, that’s, going forward, that’s going to be a huge deal. But for another day, perhaps, or perhaps you have more to share around organic growth. But I do have to ask, as you know, our business is all around tax optimization, minimization, that sort of thing. I heard somewhere that you had some findings around taxes, anything you can share with our audience around the importance of taxes, as far as the consumer and the advisor is concerned?

Robert Sofia: Yeah, this is fascinating to me. I was a little surprised by this, I probably shouldn’t have been. But you know, when we’ve got 600,000 campaigns running, they’re all over the map in terms of the content. I mean, we’ve got everything running on our platform, from, you know, should I buy an annuity, to estate planning, to college funding, to you name it, any financial topic. And the number one, the number one highest converting lead magnet was tax related. So actually, the top performing campaign bar none by a huge margin was one called hidden tax opportunities for high net worth investors. And that campaign outperformed all others. And it shows that advisors who want to capture visitors to their website, to their social profiles, they want to engage them with topics that are meaningful, should absolutely lead with tax related topics, because it drives way higher engagement.

Jack Sharry: Interesting. Any ancillary observations around the topic of taxes? We’ve been saying that because that’s what we hear. But it’s all anecdotal, but any other, either in the data or just anecdotal commentary from your advisors, any other observations around the topic of taxes and their promotion?

Robert Sofia: Yeah, I will say, although that’s the highest converting lead source is tax related, a lot of advisors balk at the idea of leading with that, because they don’t feel either qualified or equipped to lead with that. And they’ll say, you know, I’m not a CPA, I don’t want to go out front with that. And we’re like, well, you know, you gotta approach the topic from a financial advisor’s perspective. And there are a lot of things you can do. And you need to look at tools in the industry that empower you to have meaningful conversations around taxes. And what that really means is, this is anecdotal, but I think there’s opportunity because the advisors will lean into it. Same with estate planning, that’s number two. And advisors have the same objection. But if you want new leads, talk about taxes, talk about estate planning, lean into those things, bring people in, in an initial conversation, be willing to talk about what’s on their mind related to those things, and have a solution of some kind that plugs in, so that you can serve them in those areas.

Jack Sharry: So, I… not unlike you, I’ve been around this business for a long time. And I’ve worked with advisors of all different kinds of stripes. My observation, advisors tend to… this will come as a shock, I know, but advisors tend to like to talk about what they’re comfortable talking about. And so you’re gonna find stuff that they’re not comfortable talking about. So how do you handle that? How do you help advisors do well? I… having been way, way, way back in my distant past, I was a wholesaler, and I was always trying to help advisors do what I called more and better business, quality of business, more business, all that kind of stuff. But I also found they were often reluctant to take on things, they just weren’t comfortable. So how do you, how do you deal with that? How do you advise them? How do you counsel them?

Robert Sofia: Yeah, I mean, I want to be clear, you know, we’re not a coaching firm, we’re a marketing company. And so our number one job is to help them create engaging conversations, meaningful connections, with cold prospects that can become warm, or with clients who maybe aren’t as engaged as they want to be or should be. And we help empower all of that. That being said, we lean into what we’re great at, and we lean into what other companies in wealthtech are great at. And so for example, you don’t need to be an attorney to talk about estate planning, just go get Trust & Will. And so, you know, we, we try to create these really nice integrations with other tools advisors like to use to help them. And those companies are experts in these areas. And like you, Jack, if, you know if an advisor needs some support, talking about taxes as part of their strategy and having tools for it, like, obviously, you can talk to LifeYield. So, I think, for us, we mostly, at our annual conference and through our communications and webinars, we try to show them examples of advisors who are absolutely crushing it and inspire them to step out of their comfort zone to be willing to do the work to learn and to grow. And that’s not always easy, but we only really align with firms that are growth oriented. There’s a lot of advisors that will never use us because they don’t want to grow. They don’t care to grow. They don’t wanna put the effort in. And they’re not, they’re not for Snappy Kraken.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, yeah, no I get it. So one of the things I’ve been observing as I read and hear about you and your firm, struck up some big partnerships. I noticed LPL, Nitrogen, many more beyond that. Talk about that. Your enterprise strategy, how do you, how do you work with large enterprises? I’m sure you’ve, I know you’ve worked with individual advisors as they might sign up, but how do you work with a large firm? And then how do you? How do you work with them, frankly, from a home office standpoint, in terms of driving campaigns? Or do you? I’m just curious how that all plays out.

Robert Sofia: Yeah, you know, when we started, that was not our plan. It was just to serve individual advisors. But what started happening was that 10, 20, 30, 40, 100 advisors from a firm would be joining and using Snappy Kraken and having success. And then the home office would come to us and say, “Hey, we see that all these advisors are using it, we should probably negotiate a discount or something like that.” And so we ended up becoming enterprise solution accidentally. So as that part of our business was growing, about three years ago, we started really leaning into that, and what we learned from talking to our enterprise partners, a few key things. Number one, they want really good visibility and data into what their advisors are doing, especially their top advisors, and what’s working for them. So we created tools to give them insight. So we can install an instance for them. Now they have control, they have compliance reporting, and they have really good data. So they can say, this advisor gets that, this one doesn’t, this is approved, this one isn’t. Let me see the FINRA letter. Okay, that’s approved for everybody. And then ultimately, okay, these advisors are logging in every day, these ones are never logging in. These ones have launched 10 campaigns, wow, this is the number one performing campaign across our network. And then their marketing department can go in and create a new campaign. We’re gonna take our, our monthly newsletter, and we’re gonna put it into Snappy Kraken and approve it for all our advisors. And they can automatically send it out for them. And, and so we’re giving them the ability to market for the advisors at scale, especially when the advisors have different individual brands, everything’s automatically customized to their brand. Or even if they don’t have their own brands, like if they’re an RIA integrator, or if they’re a firm that requires everybody to use the same branding, we give the individual advisor the ability to go in and personalize things, add a personal touch. And do that at scale for the firm. So it’s firm approved, firm sanctioned, firm created, but now advisor personalized, which makes it more effective. And so these are the ways that we’re just empowering enterprises to do better marketing at scale for their advisors.

Jack Sharry: That’s great. So the big question that we’re all talking about, trying to figure out, I know I spend a bunch of time on the topic of AI, and what it means and where is it going? And where are we now? And I’ll be blunt, it’s… a lot of it’s BS, what I hear is that it’s going to be important, I got that part. I’ve seen that a few different places. How are you using it? Where are you now? Where do you see it going and kind of looking, I gotta believe this is going to be an important way to power, what it is that you do and how you serve advisors and their clients. So talk to me a little bit about how do you view AI today and where do you see it going?

Robert Sofia: Yeah, well, when we say AI, it means a lot of things. And I know for some of your listeners, they’re probably thinking about AI stock picking and AI portfolio management and all types of other things. But when I talk about AI, I just want to be clear, I am focusing right now on generative AI. And because I’m in the field of marketing, we are primarily using generative AI for marketing purposes. So that’s my little segment of the AI marketplace. And I’ll tell you what I think about that, and where I think it is today, and where I think it is going. First of all, it can generate pretty much anything, any type of content, but it’s not usually of the best quality because people don’t know how to prompt it correctly. And although it’s getting better at doing good outputs even if the prompts aren’t good quality, there is a lot of opportunity for companies that build technology to prompt AI correctly in our space compliantly and to generate outputs that are unique and personalized in the advisor’s voice. And so we’ve leaned into creating some AI tools on our system that allow advisors to generate emails, text messages, landing page copy, social media posts. And I’ll just give an example. You know, an advisor, signed up for access to our new AI tools. They were having a client event later that week, they wanted to promote it again, they’d already mailed the invitation. They weren’t getting as many registrations. They literally typed what the event was, the date and time, AI generated a complete invitation for them. They sent it out to their clients and they boosted their registrations for the event by over 30 people. Instantly. Took them about five minutes. Another advisor had an advanced hedging strategy they were trying to write about, they got the idea out but they weren’t good at finessing it. They wanted to explain it, they put it into the AI email builder, they… it was done. It was generated for them within five minutes, they were able to send it off. So we’re trying to give advisors these tools to create unique, original content in their voice with generative AI. Now that being said, there’s a lot of ways to do that. They can go to ChatGPT and do that. But that’s where it speaks to the future. I believe the future value, and the future for Snappy Kraken, it’s not just in generating the content, it’s in generating hyper personalized content based on good data. So right now, we’re in an integration process with Catchlight. They were incubated out of Fidelity. It’s a big data set and helps to show what people’s estimated net worth and other things about them, investable assets, where they live, you know, career information, other things. So that integration, it’s already in place for one of our enterprise partners. But in that case, we’re looking at that data, we’re saying what can we extract from their accounts, from their CRM, from Catchlight, and then take this proven template for communication, and now tweak it here, here, and here, to make it hyper specific to the person receiving it. And I’ll tell you why I think that’s really important is, for example, let’s say you decide this month in your newsletter to address college planning and you send it out to all your clients, but 40% of them have kids that are out of the house and no grandkids yet, and it wasn’t relevant for them. You just sent them something not relevant. So, the same is true when you send information about retirement to people who aren’t ready for retirement or anything else. So I think the future of AI in our business where marketing is concerned, is at the intersection of content, content delivery, and personalization with generative AI. Because if AI proliferates more bad content all over the internet, and people are just getting more junk everywhere from the machines, you’ve probably heard about the dead internet theory, okay. If that’s happening, then the people who are going to win are the ones who have a human approach. And I think that’s, of course, advisors, but you empower them with the right tech. And they can do that at scale. And that’s what we’re trying to do with data and generative AI.

Jack Sharry: Not at all surprised you have this figured out. It’s aligns with what I think, hope, expect is going to happen. Because I think we all find ourselves, when I get contacted on something has nothing to do with me, frankly, it pisses me off.

Robert Sofia: Yeah.

Jack Sharry: Why are you doing that? You know, anyone who’s that stupid, I just don’t want to do business with them. On the other hand, if someone kind of knows what matters to me, and they’re speaking my language, I’m ears, I’m all ears. I’m looking for whatever it is, a better deal, a better set of guidance, whatever it might be. So, anything else? I think you, from my perspective, you’ve covered the AI question, just as I would expect and hope. Anything else you’re seeing as we look out into the future, before we wrap up? Well, anything else you see out there that catches your attention or you want to share with our audience in terms of what’s, what the future holds?

Robert Sofia: Yeah, you know, there’s so many things, Jack, but I gotta say, when you ask it that broadly, the thing that comes to mind foremost for me, is how the role of the advisor is evolving. And I think about what advisors used to be, right. They went from being stockbrokers to investment managers to wealth managers, but do they even really manage wealth or are they still just investment managers with a new title? To financial planners. And what this is doing, essentially, what consumers are doing is putting more and more pressure on the advisor to do more and more, and to do so at compressed fees. So advisors are going to be asked to do more, and maybe, not necessarily, get paid less. Because there’s a lot of debates about that. And I don’t know that there’s going to be so much fee compression that advisors can’t compete, especially good ones, but I do believe the ones who do not compete on value will be in trouble. And so because the advisors have to be yes, an asset manager or a financial planner, and/or a counselor, and/or maybe even health and lifestyle coach. And by the way, I’ve got an advisor who is absolutely killing it and growing their business exceptionally fast because they offer, you guessed it, health and wellness seminars right along financial seminars, and they’ve got the whole, the whole person in mind. And I just think we’re getting into a time when the advisor relationship is more important than ever. If you look at the country, the role of clergy has decreased. The role of traditional experts has decreased. The respect for social media influencers has decreased. Where do people turn for advice? Who do they trust? Their doctors, their accountants, their attorneys, their advisors. I think it’s one of the four professions that people are going to look to for advice and so the more advisors can be there to serve their clients holistically, the better they’re going to do. And the advisors who do that are going to squeeze out the ones who just come to the table with the same old, here’s a 97 page financial plan that I just generated out of my software that’s gonna die as soon as you put it on the shelf,. And that’s gonna force the whole industry to level up.

Jack Sharry: You know, Robert, I could not agree with you more. I just think that is the future of financial advice, because the wealth manager, investment manager, whatever advisors might call themselves along those lines, that’s just… there are bots that can do that, as well or better, arguably better. But you need to understand the person’s issues. And so often, they’re not even clear on what their issues are, they just know they have them, they’re trying to sort it out, they really need someone consistent with what you just said. And they’re trying to make a lot of lifestyle choices about where to live, how to live, what they need to do about their health and well being et cetera, et cetera. It’s all part of decisions that, as people go into their 60s and 70s and beyond, the financial decisions that need to be made are, are fundamentally important. But they’re more than that. They include much more. I think we’re gonna have to have you back on that very specific topic. I do think this is where the world’s going. So we’ll put a note on that and get you back here to get into that, because I’m sure some of your data shows that. But it really comes down to, I just think, the role of the advisor is changing. And I know from WealthTech on Deck’s perspective, we’re all about that technology helping out but at the end of the day, technology only enables the human conversation. So, for another time, we will do that. So, Robert, as we like to wrap up our conversation, this has been wonderful, I really appreciate it. What are three key takeaways you want to share with our audience about what they might want to keep and takeaway?

Robert Sofia: Yeah, well, it’s funny that you say three, because you also just got three data points from me that drive outsized, organic growth, and you, you acknowledge that the industry is not growing. And I am in the business of driving organic growth. That’s what we do at Snappy Kraken. And our advisors are growing. And I’m in the midst of benchmarking their growth against industry averages and the data already is showing us that it’s much, much faster. And I think, along those lines, I’m going to reinforce what I said earlier, which is, if you’re already out there marketing, if you already have a website, why not just make it perform twice as well by having an SEO strategy? If you already have opt ins on your website that say, “Contact me” or “Book a meeting,” why not make them convert 400% better by using text message? If you’re already sending out communications, why not record them as a video instead of text and get 120% better engagement? These are just examples. But if you’re at, either an individual advisor or you’re at the firm level, and you’re saying how do we drive organic growth? Take those things away, go put them in place and watch your growth out… start outpacing the rest of the industry. That, to me, that’s, you know, the thing that we’re in business wise, what I get out of bed every day for is to help advisors grow. So I’ll leave with that.

Jack Sharry: So, as we do with each of our podcasts, one last question, what is something you do outside of work that you are excited or passionate about that people might find interesting or surprising?

Robert Sofia: Well, I run a technology company, but I am a bit of a country boy. Actually, as I sit here on my front porch, I can look to my left on one side of my yard and see the chicken coop that I’ve started last weekend and will be finishing this weekend. Now when I look over to this side, I can see my garden house where I’ve probably got 100 plants, lettuce, peppers, tomatoes, all growing, beans and herbs and all kinds of good stuff. And that’s what I love. You know, I find that if I get my hands dirty, you know, either building with with wood or planting in the ground, it balances me out. It’s very cathartic and therapeutic. So my, my high stress job, I leave it and I go water the plants and everything’s better.

Jack Sharry: I get it. I get it. That’s great. So we’re both out in the country. I happen to be speaking to you from my home in Vermont. What state are you in?

Robert Sofia: Yeah, so I’m in Hiawassee, Georgia, which is in the Appalachian Mountains right at the beginning of the Appalachian Trail right on the border of North Carolina. In fact, the Nantahala National Forest is across the street and the Chattahoochee National Forest is behind me.

Jack Sharry: Great, great, terrific. So, good to be where we are. So, Robert, this has been a lot of fun as always. I’ve learned a ton, which doesn’t always happen, but has certainly happened in this conversation. Thanks so much. For our audience, if you’ve enjoyed our podcast, please rate, review, subscribe, and share what we do here at WealthTech on Deck. We’re available wherever you get your podcasts. Robert, thanks again. This has been a real, real pleasure.

Robert Sofia: Indeed it has. Thank you, Jack.