For the past five months, potential analytics and lead conversion provider Catchlight Insights has been working with a small group of wealth management firms to help their advisors prioritize client leads in a way that minimizes cold calling and email. To be efficient. 30 employees, Boston-based firm A wholly owned subsidiary of FMR and still within the startup ecosystem of Fidelity Labs. While the startup is planning a general launch of its capabilities in May, WealthManagement.com soon saw
Catchlight is a lead assessment tool that uses data sourced from five publicly or publicly available for-profit databases to help consultants determine which of their leads are more likely to become full clients. The tool specifies 1,000 attributes for each record in its system and contains data from more than 255 million US consumers.
By converting client characteristics into a paying client with the firm’s algorithms and advisors’ own success rates, Catchlight captures information about leads and leads based on the likelihood the consultant will be able to convert the lead to the client. ranks. Such as providing attributes on each lead so that a consultant can craft his/her sales pitch.
Lead generation is often compared to funnels: large numbers of potential customers through vendors selling advisory lists of potential customers, or even contact information from readers or viewers of their own newsletters or podcasts. Received by harvesting consultants. Advisors are then left to evaluate the raw leads — narrowing the funnel — through methods such as cold calling, searching on LinkedIn, or sometimes just their own intuition. If everything goes according to plan, a consultant walks in with some new clients at the end of the process.
The firm did not say how many actual leads it has converted and how many customers it has.
“When consultants analyze all of their leads, they typically see a two to three percent conversion rate over time,” said Catchlight CEO Wilbur Swan, Consultant referring to the firm’s own collection and analysis of lead conversion data, “Our trend model gives results with a two- to three-fold improvement, leading to a conversion rate improvement of four to nine percent.”
One of the first advisors to use Catchlight is Aaron Marks, founding partner and chief strategy officer at Employed Wealth Advisors in Blue Bell, Penn. According to his most recent regulatory filing, his firm, which joined the network of Dynasty Financial Partners last year, has $941 million in assets under management.
According to Marks, Amplius uses a number of lead generation techniques, from social media posts to lead generation vendor Zoe Financial. It is in the process of launching its own podcast, which will be cross-linked to YouTube, providing another source of leads.
Once they have a number of potential new customers, the firm’s consultants search LinkedIn and ZoomInfo to narrow down the list of potential customers, before engaging with leads via cold calls, emails or direct messages on social media sites. make use of.
Over the past few months, Marks has begun using Catchlight to rank leads, whether they turn into new customers, as well as pull lead insights from tools to fine-tune their pitch. Using the tool, they have seen their lead conversion rate increase from an estimated one to two new customers per 100 potential customers to three to six new customers per 100 potential customers.
This is also the first time that Marks, who previously used SmartAsset’s lead generation service, has a tool that ranks leads, he said.
However, Catchlight is not without its manual processes. Consultants who do not use Redtail must input their leads into the tool one at a time or as bulk uploads via a spreadsheet. RedTel has integration with Catchlight, but other CRM providers, such as Salesforce (used by Marx), have yet to be integrated. Access to the tool is $150 per month per seat, with a discount for an annual subscription.
Overall, Catchlight is well worth the monthly fee, Marks said, even though it doesn’t integrate with his CRM. “It takes work on my part, but not a lot of work. If I source the names and screen them through Catchlight, it gives me better results. This is how I look at it,” he said.
In addition to better integration, Marks said he’d like to see Catchlight expand into the top of the lead generation funnel, or provide a ranking provided by Catchlight for firms like Zoe Financial. He added that the greater applicability of the tool in their lead generation funnel will help Marx strengthen its marketing tech stack.
To be sure, advisor-focused firms are already gunning for more functionality. The purpose of Aidentified is to provide an independent advisory channel for prospecting and relationship intelligence. Broadridge and SmartAsset also advertise their ability to convert large potential lists into manageable “hot” leads for consultants.
But the catchlight wouldn’t exist if its competitors were a complete solution. “Consultants have always been disappointed with the quality of leads and prospecting is not a fun process,” said Dennis Gallant, strategic advisor at Eight-Novarica’s Wealth Management Division. , “I could see a lot of mentors” [Catchlight] Really valuable. ,
Advisors that have softened in their prospecting and new client development capabilities over the past decade have been decimated by a bull market, they said last year in a report titled “Top 10 Trends in Wealth Management, 2021: The Future Is Now”. wrote.
According to the report, “in the post-pandemic market, the frequency of adding new customers and prospects will continue to increase.” “Virtual and hybrid prospecting will require the deployment of new skills, tools and technology.”
One of the differentiators of Catchlight, Gallant said, is its scale. Its “algorithm-based process” provides an analytical replacement for advisory standbys like LinkedIn, Internet searches, and advisor intuition.
“Data is more available now than ever before, so it’s not like the ability to deliver it is something that’s been around for 10 years.”
“It’s fairly new in terms of capability and analysis,” she said. “There’s definitely a need in the market.”
